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Alison Marchant

Alison Marchant

Song writer, singer, musician.

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My songwriting process

March 5, 2020 By Alison

Before I start I’d like to make it clear that I am no authority on this matter, I am simply sharing what I’ve done, if you’ve found a better way please tell me and make my life easier!

I released my debut single Last Call on the 8th of November 2019. I am not signed to a label and I did this either on my own or with help from friends and family.

The first step to releasing a single is to write a song. I know you’ve probably heard this before but writing the song is far from the most difficult part. I write my songs either on my own or with help from my brother. At the time I wrote this song I was enrolled at college doing a Level 4 diploma in performance, what this means is I was regularly performing with a band and therefore had people to work with on the music side of the writing.

Some people write every part of their song, some people write lyrics, some people write only the music. Personally I mainly write lyrics, chords and melody, my brother (Simon Marchant) helps with the chords and some of the backing music.

For this song specifically I was trying to write a song with only two chords, forcing myself to be more creative with my melody. I started by playing the chords through, finding a rhythm and then just working out some lyrics to go over the top. I generally start simply and work my way up, I use whatever first comes to my head and then run with it. If the first thing that comes to my head is awful then I will scrap it or change it. Normally I end up going through and editing, similar to the way you write a book. The first draft of a song is usually rough, sometimes it’s missing lines or a bridge or it only has the one verse.

This song came together very quickly, it came from an experience I had where I was upset with the way someone else was acting on a night out. I had the bones of the song and played it for my brother, he added suggestions some of which I used and some I didn’t. Personally I work very hard to take on board what other people say whilst also trying to stay true to my own vision for the song. I also had some help from some of the tutors at my college when in the writing stage.

Once I had written my parts of the song I brought it to the band I’d put together at college. They each added their parts, bass, drums. Instruments I don’t play. They follow the sort of structure of the song, and we jam around until we find something that I like and that they’re also happy with.

Once all of this is done you rehearse and prepare to record.

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