The UX of Songwriting & Recording
Applying UX design thinking to the craft of songwriting
I have a secret to share with the world. When I was a kid, not once did I ever dream about becoming a UX (User Experience) Design Program Manager. Shocker! Instead, I had a passion for music. I always dreamed about becoming a professional singer/songwriter. That’s right. In my late teens and early twenties, I spent most of my time learning guitar, singing, writing songs, and playing in rock bands. I even recorded a couple of independent solo albums as a singer/songwriter. However, like so many independent musicians who start getting older, I eventually decided to pursue other careers in life so I could save for retirement, pay my bills, and survive the expensive cost of living in an area like the San Francisco Bay. I ended up finding my way into a UX Design Program Manager role within Design Operations because I really wanted to combine my love of innovation, user experience, and program management into a viable career that still felt fun and creative.
After spending several years working as a UX Design Program Manager, getting married, raising my kids, then pursuing an M.S. Degree in UX Design, I had left music far, far behind. I wrote off my musical side as being associated with a past version of myself that no longer served a purpose for me. However, a couple years ago during a soul searching journey, I reconnected with where my personal joy (as an individual) truly lives— in music.
I realized, singing and writing songs is a very important part of who I am.
Creating music gives me energy. It helps me cope with life’s ups and downs and manage my emotions and stress. So, I eventually found my way back into playing music, singing, and writing songs once again. As a result, I started to spend time honing in on my songwriting craft and trying to write quality songs that have: a solid structure, great lyrics, and catchy melodic hooks.
Part of what has made this new leg of my musical journey the most interesting and effective for me (this time around) is realizing how much user experience and design thinking is involved in the process of writing songs. I’m realizing more and more that songwriting can be more a series of experiments than art at times. This is especially true when you get into the commercial side of songwriting, and you want to start licensing your music or songs for various purposes (ie. writing for another artist, writing for movies or television, etc.). I’ve realized, that the business of songwriting, and the process of writing commercially viable songs (though I’ve never written “a hit” myself), is very similar to the UX design process and how you would create a viable and successful software product.
To help explain the UX of songwriting, I will walk you through the general design thinking process of writing a song and then show you examples of my song entitled, Stay Young that I wrote (fairly recently at the time of writing this article). I’ll explain how it started off as a “low-fi” idea and evolved into a completed song with examples along the way to show you how it changed with each iteration. WARNING! You may hear off-key notes and gibberish singing, or even some ideas that weren’t quite working right. But that’s all part of the process, isn’t it? It’s also part of the fun!
So let’s get started.
Gather song requirements
Just like a product you are creating, for a song you usually start with some requirements. Much like the UX process, songwriting has its set of requirements too. Songwriting requirements depend on which goal you are trying to achieve. Just like in a software design project, you always have to work within certain constraints, and writing songs is no different. You might need to answer some basic questions to figure out what your goals are:
- Who is the audience of the song?
- Is the goal to write a commercial song or is it just for fun or for your own artistic expression?
- Is the goal to write a song for another artist to perform or are you the artist?
- Which genre are you writing for?
- What do you want it to sound like?
Once you’ve narrowed in on answers to these questions, you can get more into the hard, mechanical requirements of your song. For example, if you’re writing a pop song intended for a specific artist and you want it to get played on commercial radio, you’ll want to make sure your song fits the artist’s music style and vocal range. You also want to make sure the song fits into the typical song structure, length, melodic hooks, and lyrical content that make up a conventional, commercial pop song.
For my song, Stay Young, my goals were pretty simple. I wanted to write a light, modern, indie-pop song.
But I wanted the song to have some depth for the topic that was inspiring me in that moment: my kids growing out of various stages of their lives and into new ones.
Create initial low-fidelity song ideas
Now that you have an idea of who you are writing for and the song’s general purpose, then you can start working out your ideas. If you’re a songwriter, you might have a bunch of ideas for songs started already. Melodies and ideas may pop into your head randomly with no purpose, that’s okay! You may find that you already have an idea started that fits your song requirements. Feel free to scour your existing backlog of ideas. Also, feel free to begin noodling to get some chords, melodies, and words started. Either way, I recommend recording your ideas with just your voice and/or instrument in the most accessible and disposable format possible such as your voice memos app on your phone or computer. For lyrics, I like using a physical notebook, the Notes app on my phone, or just a Google Doc to capture my lyrical ideas. The low-fidelity process of songwriting is very similar to the stage of UX design where you simply whiteboard out ideas or use wireframes to start hashing out ideas and directions. None of these initial ideas or performances are going to go into the final product and these formats are much more easy to change and adjust when feedback comes into the picture.
The point is that you want to work out your initial ideas in a low-fidelity format that is quick and easy for you to just get ideas out of your head and into a format you can access later on. The other reason you should start with a low fidelity, disposable format is because it prevents you from investing too much time into a high-fidelity idea that may be harder to adjust and change later on in the process. Committing to high-fidelity (such as a studio recording with full instrumentation, drum loops, etc.) versions of songs too early on in the process can lead to tons of rework later on when there are changes. Even worse, committing to a high-fidelity format too early, can lead to mental resistance to rework an idea or direction that was weak or bad in the first place. High-fidelity can easily fool you into thinking your song is better than it actually is. Don’t do it! Stick to low-fidelity in the beginning stage of your songwriting process. This is very similar to the way UX designers work.
You want to keep your ideas as malleable as possible in the beginning so you can easily change and adapt your ideas and direction as the process evolves.
For my song, luckily I still have the original iPhone recording I made that captured the first initial idea I had worked out for the song melody and some lyrical ideas. Below is a link to it on Soundcloud:
The recording I started with is pretty rough and low-fi. It’s a good thing too. If I had spent all that energy recording it onto tracks at that point, I may have stopped developing the idea. Just like a designer would whiteboard out their ideas before committing to digital forms, a songwriter can also use low-fi formats to just gather ideas. Just the beginning, no where near “done” yet!
Use song data to inform your decisions
Yes, I know this sounds very uncreative for many songwriters (and designers sometimes), but it matters. What I mean is simply that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Examine other artists or products success and use that as your data points to inform your decisions. There are patterns in music just as there are in interaction design. Consider the genre you are writing for and what elements are in those songs.
For example, a pop song now-a-days is typically around 3 minutes in length and typically has this basic structure:
verse | pre-chorus | chorus |verse |pre-chorus |chorus | bridge| chorus
As you work out your ideas, it is important to consider the requirements and constraints you defined up front in your process. In both software products and songwriting, there are “patterns” and “formulas” used in both the UX design process and songwriting process that are, for lack of a better word, “industry standard.” These standards exist because it’s what your audience is used to and expects when consuming your product. Creating within a familiar framework is more likely to gain you a larger audience and therefore, more success. However, using a standard framework, doesn’t mean you are any less creative or innovative within that framework, it simply means you are following a familiar format to create your product to make it more accessible.
Once I worked out my ideas on my phone and got my song and lyrics to a structure I thought was working, I then created my first higher fidelity demo of the song to start laying down the building blocks. Below is a link to what it sounded like. A good start with a definite idea starting to form, but definitely not done yet!
The first demo was OK. I laid down a scratch vocal and just some drum loops and the bass to give it some sense of fullness. I think you can even hear my son in the background on this one! A song demo is like a concept design in UX terms. It gives people a way to hear a more “finished” version of your idea with more structure around it, but it is never the final product.
Solicit feedback on your song
Now that you have your requirements and have worked through our ideas, go back and check to make sure your song fits those requirements. If it’s a pop song, is it around 3 minutes in length? Does the content fit your audience? Is it a story telling song? If yes, is the story clear? Do your lyrics have imagery that help the listener get placed in the world you are creating for them? If any of your requirements don’t look like they are met and you don’t love it, keep working on it. The first source of feedback for a song will be your own critique of yourself. To help you stay on track and not get lost in the “oh my song just isn’t working” mode, use your original direction and requirements to really evaluate whether or not the song is doing what you want it to do. For example, if your song is 5 minutes in length, look for ways to cut out extra parts. Do you have too many verses? Are there too many filler, instrumental parts? Pull ’em out! Then rework it down so it fits into a 3 minute song. Does your story not flow well? Go back and break down the events of the story into their parts and translate those events into your verses. What about the chorus? Have you honed in on the main message you want people to remember? If not, go back and break down your idea into one simple message you want your listener to take away. In other words, what is the job this song needs to perform for the listener? Make sure your song fulfills its job.
Once you’ve really honed your own feedback and crafted your song, you can record a scratch or demo version of it that represents how you want it to generally sound. Then, once you have that version, play it for more people and get even more feedback. You can collect feedback from others in multiple ways and you can decide which people are your most trusted sources. Do you want to just get general feedback from your fans? Do you want to share with other songwriters? Maybe all of the above. It’s up to you to decide at what point to share your song to get feedback and with whom.
The point is, you should have a plan to get feedback and then determine whose feedback is most valuable to you.
The most important thing about feedback is to look for patterns in what you are hearing. If you see a very similar pattern, then it’s feedback you may want to consider. If you are simply hearing a lot of opinions, but no real clear feedback, then you may want to not consider that feedback. It’s always up to you to decide. The important thing is to be honest and open.
The link below is a version of one I recorded to see how it sounded with some additional guitars and a little experimental keyboard part. I listened on my own and solicited some feedback to get input on this version. This version was OK, but not really hitting the mark of what I wanted the song to sound like. Not done yet.
Iterate on the song feedback
Now that you’ve collected feedback, it’s time to go back and incorporate the relevant feedback into your song. One thing I like to do is separate “opinion feedback” from “technical feedback”. To me someone’s opinion is “it’s cool” or “meh?” as some examples. But if someone says, “your song is too long” or “your melody is monotone” or “you’re off key in your chorus”, those are very easily fixable things that are truly objective. Fix your technical stuff first and don’t give it much thought. As far as opinions go, again, look for the patterns. If overall, many folks give it an enthusiastic “thumbs up”, then you’re probably good to go. If you get a lot of, “meh” on your reactions, maybe you need to rework some areas of your song to make it connect more.
Also consider if you’ve really chosen the right group of people to give you feedback. Your feedback audience should reflect the core audience your song is meant for. So if that isn’t the case, go find more of your audience and get their feedback. You may find very different reactions and results. Also, trust your gut and instincts too. If something still doesn’t sound or feel right, your song may not be ready yet, so keep iterating and getting feedback.
After using my own ears and getting feedback I realized that I wanted to give the song a more “dreamy” quality instead of the more organic or country quality it had originally. I ended up recording a different bass line and my husband helped me by putting down a more effected lead guitar line. It started getting there! Not done yet.
Finalize the hi-fidelity song recording
Once the song structure, lyrics and melody are solid based on a few rounds of feedback and iterations, only then I will spend time and money recording the songs in a studio. As I’ve been studying songwriting books and learning more about the music recording process, I realized that the process of writing and recording songs is very similar to the way UX design process works.
Be prepared to throw out bad or weak ideas and rework a song if you have to. It’s worth the extra rounds of iterations to get closer to the perfect song (which you will never write by the way!).
As I continued to get feedback on the song and develop the ideas, I realized I wanted to take the song to a new level. I ended up working with a producer, Kenny Schick at Basement 3 Productions who really helped me take the song into an even more modern direction. Check out the “final-ish” version of my song Stay Young!
And here is the final mastered and released version on Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services. Enjoy!
Stay tuned and always, stay young!
