How I Started Writing My Own Songs
I picked up my old guitar during lockdown. The first song I wrote was a gift for Fran.
As told by Bob Zielsdorf
My old guitar had been in the closet for twenty years, maybe twenty-five, when I took it out during the COVID lockdown in 2020. I had to learn to play it all over again. I started with other people's songs and got more interested in playing than I'd ever been the first time around.
By 2023 I'd spent a few years playing songs I knew, and I began to wonder how it would feel to play one I'd written. I'd taken piano lessons through eighth grade, so I knew the rudiments of music notation. I could barely read it by then, and I'd never written a song. What I did have was somebody I wanted to write one for.
I wrote the words for Fran first
My wife, Fran, had a serious accident at the end of 2019. I credit her grit and what I believe was divine intervention for the fact that she was still with us and could get back to living her life. I wanted to pay tribute to her and give her something that told her what that meant to me.
I started with a blank piece of paper. The work at that point was figuring out what I wanted to say to Fran and getting it down in words. That took a while. When I finished, I had something I could read from start to finish. It was basically a poem, and I still had to find a tune I could sing it to.
I found the melody on my guitar
I sat down with my guitar and the words in front of me. I tried different keys and notes, then played around with the tempo and the way I strummed. There was a lot of trial and error. Once I had a melody that sounded good to me, I kept singing the words and playing along until I had a version I felt comfortable recording.
As I went, I wrote the chord changes on the lyric sheet. Say you start on an E chord and move to a D. A mark by the words tells you where to make that change while you're singing. I could follow my own marks and play the song, but if you asked me what notes I was singing, I couldn't have put them down on a staff.
My voice teacher put the tune on paper
I'd taken some voice lessons about a year earlier from an accomplished musician. I brought her two things: the recording of me singing and playing, and the lyrics with my chord changes marked on them. I asked if she could turn what she heard into written music. She said she could.
It took a few weeks. She worked it out in pencil on staff lines she'd drawn by hand. The page I'd given her had words and chord names. The one she gave back had the tune I'd been carrying around in my head.
The first recording was just for Fran
I gave Fran the recording and played the song for her. She was touched and pleased, and she took it as the personal gift I'd meant it to be. She wanted to keep it between us. As I remember it, we waited six months or more before we started talking about whether anyone else might like to hear it.
By then I'd been through the whole process once, from the words on that blank page to a song I could sit down and play for somebody. I'd had help with a part I couldn't do myself. I knew what I'd need to bring with me the next time I had a tune I wanted to put on paper.
How I finish a song now
I still write the words, work out the music on guitar, and record myself singing and playing. These days I send the recording and the marked-up lyrics to a music transcriber named Tom in the UK. About a week later I get back a printed lead sheet. It shows the melody in notes, with chord names that tell you what to play underneath it.
I keep the lead sheets in my songbook and submit the songs for copyright registration. I've written nearly forty by now. If you're trying to finish your first song, the thing that helped me was having a recording to go with the words and chords. It gave another musician enough to work with while I was still finding my way. I still enjoy sitting down with my guitar and a piece of paper to see what comes out.