How to write your first song: A Step-by-Step Guide

By Chorus Songwriting · 10/20/2026

Write your first song in four steps. Decide who is singing, to whom, about what, and why. Find a short line they might say. Sing that line over a repeating chord loop. Then grow it into a verse and a chorus. A rough finished song is the goal.

Let's go!

Writing a song can seem like a daunting task, but it's easier than many people would have you believe.

You don't need to play an instrument well, read music, or know any theory. If you like music, you can just about hold a tune, and you've scribbled a few lyrics before, you already have what you need.

This guide is the shortest path we know from "I'd love to write a song" to "I wrote a song". It won't be perfect, and that's fine. The goal is to finish a rough version, because that's the thing that makes the next one easier.

There are four steps:

1. Know what your song is about.
2. Find a starting line or phrase.
3. Pick a chord loop and sing your line over it.
4. Grow it into a verse and a chorus.

That's it. We'll go through them one at a time.

Know what your song is about

Start here, before you touch a chord. A song with a clear idea is much easier to write than one you're hoping will turn up as you go, and the idea decides the mood, which decides which chords will sound right.

Fill in this sentence:

For example:

That one sentence tells you who's singing, who they're singing to, what happened, and why they're saying it now. It also tells you the feeling. That example is a bit sad and a bit warm, which is not what a bright, bouncy loop would say.

Keep the sentence somewhere you can see it. You'll come back to it a lot. When you're stuck on a line, read it again and ask whether the line sounds like that person, talking to that person. If it doesn't, change it.

Find a starting line

Now we need a short line or phrase as the "doorway" into writing our lyric. It can be something someone might say to the person in your sentence, a title, or a few words that sound like they want to be sung.

You're looking for something with a bit of a hook to it: short, easy to say, and possibly a bit memorable. Here are some examples. Notice that they're not all trying to tell the story of the song:

If your first try doesn't have much in it, write it again a few different ways. Say each one out loud and keep the one that's most fun to say.

A few ways to get a line if nothing comes:

• Ask what the person in your sentence would actually say. The first thing out of their mouth is often the best.
• Steal from your own life. Something you've said or heard recently, or a phrase you keep coming back to.
• Ask for a nudge. The song ideas generator can suggest a subject or a first line when nothing comes.

Pick a single chord progression for the whole song

Now the music. All you need is a loop: a few chords that repeat over and over.

Lots of popular songs use a single loop all the way through, so we'll do the same so we don't overcomplicate things. The melody and the words will make the verse and chorus feel different, which we'll get to in a moment.

Here are five to try. Press play on each and see which one feels like your song.

Bright and happy

Bittersweet

Hopeful, building

Dark and dramatic

Soft and dreamy

Pick one and let it play. Then sing your phrase over it and start to ad-lib some other sounds and words around it.

Sing the line a few different ways. Try it higher, or lower, or slower. Hum it, or stretch some of the words out. If the line doesn't feel right with the loop, try a different loop. It's quick, and the same words can feel completely different over different chords.

Record yourself on your phone. You'll sing something good, forget it, and be convinced you can't do this. A recording means you can listen back and keep the best bits.

If the loop feels too high or too low for your voice, play it in a different key. It's the same loop, just starting from a different place. In Chorus, you can switch the key of all the built-in progressions so you'll be able to find something that matches your vocal range.

How do I turn my idea into a song?

You now have a line, a loop and a bit of melody. The next step is to work out what part of the song your line is.

Most of the time it's the chorus. The line you found is probably the hooky one, the thing you'd want people to remember, and that's what a chorus is for. If so, build the chorus around it: four lines is plenty, and it's fine to repeat your line (in the example it's the first and last lines).

Sometimes it's a verse line. If your line describes something you can see rather than something you feel, it's more likely to be part of a verse. Write the verse around it, then find the chorus by asking what the feeling or the point is.

Once you have one section, write the others:

• Verse 1 sets the scene. Where are we, what's happening?
• Chorus is the feeling or the point.
• Verse 2 shows another side of it, or what has changed since verse 1.

Aim for four lines in each verse and four in the chorus. It's a starting size, not a rule, but it gives you a target. Go round twice and you have a song of around two minutes.

You don't need anything fancy. Plain words about specific things work better than big words about big feelings. "Boxes by the door" is better than "the pain of departure".

A few things that help:

• Sing every line out loud as you write it. If a line is awkward to sing, it's awkward to sing. Change the words until it feels easy. Words with open, ringing vowels (like "down", "day", "home") are easier to hold on to than words that end in a hard stop.
• Use a rhyming dictionary when you get stuck. Every songwriter does. Our rhyming dictionary is built for songs, so it includes near rhymes too, which often sound more natural than perfect ones. The rhyming dictionary in the app is even better, with phrases, syllable counts and genre-specific results.
• Treat the verse like talking and the chorus like singing. Verses usually sit lower and move around quite a lot. Choruses usually go higher and hold longer notes. That's most of the difference between the two, and it's why they can share the same chords but still sound different.
• Change the words before the melody. Some words won't fit the tune you found. Change the words, at least at first.

Putting it together

Here's a very small example. It isn't meant to be a great song. It's meant to show how little you need.

The sentence:

The starting line, which became the chorus:

The loop, used for the whole song:

Verse 1

Chorus

Verse 2

Is it the best song ever? No. Is it a song? Yes! So we succeeded.

Now you've got a song with verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, which is a very common structure. This will give you a song of around two and a half minutes, which is fine.

Notice that every line sounds like it's coming from the same person, talking to the same friend. That's the first part of this guide doing its job - knowing what you want to say, to who and why.

What if I get stuck?

Almost everyone does, and it doesn't mean you're bad at this. A few things to try:

• Stuck on a line? Skip it, write the next one, and come back later.
• Hate what you've written? Good. It's a first draft. Finish it anyway, and fix it after.
• Nothing to say? Go back to your sentence. Change the who, the whom, or the why, and see if it opens something up.
• Loop getting boring? For a bit of variety, try changing the order of two chords, or holding one chord in place of the next.

Next steps

Your first song is allowed to be rough. The aim is to get from the start to the end once, so that you know you can.

When you want to go further, you'll find that a little theory helps you get stuck less often. Music theory for songwriters is where to go next. It covers how chords relate to each other, so you can build your own loops instead of borrowing ours.

Keep going with short repeats: the songwriting exercises and daily practice.

Or just write another song. Hearing your own ideas will teach you more than reading about them.

That's what Chorus is for. It's a songwriting app for your laptop, tablet and phone, built to help you get from an idea to a finished song. It has the chord loops, rhyming dictionary and prompts from this guide built in, and it works in every key.

Write your first song in Chorus