Join 10,000+ Songwriters
& Get Inspired Weekly
Free songwriting tips, exclusive resources, and creative boosts delivered every week.
Why Songwriters Love Our Newsletter
I was very fortunate to study songwriting under Keppie and truly believe that without her guidance my songwriting skills would not be where they are today. I picked up so many techniques that I draw on regularly when crafting my songs. She is super talented and a pleasure to be around and highly recommend her as a teacher and mentor.
Keppie is an incredibly nurturing individual. She really listens to you and allows your point of view to be heard and understood. I had the pleasure of working with Keppie on a weekly basis in which we were really able to dive into not only lyrics, but she was also able to help me with harmony and choosing the right chords as well. Keppie gave me a lot of tools to get out of my head and just write. It’s so easy to work with her, and I highly recommend this beautiful and talented soul.
I find it hard to say how much my songwriting has improved since I joined…I feel like I’m able to get my songs about 80% of the way there, and the feedback from Keppie and Benny help to steer that last vital 20%, that I wouldn’t have been able to do on my own.
What You’ll Get
Proven Songwriting Tips
Free Creative Resources
Lyric Prompts & Inspiration
Early Access to Songwriting Events & Offers
Get Started. It’s Free!
We transform beginners into pros by teaching proven methods we use ourselves. To get started, subscribe below to our weekly newsletter to get access to the best songwriting tips and tools out there.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Recent Newsletters
- [ANNOUNCEMENT] August Songwriting Sprint Open for Registration
The August-October Songwriting Sprint is open for registration! As an HTWS Community member, Sprints are just $40 for you ($99 full price): Register Now with Community Discount What's a Songwriting Sprint? The Songwriting Sprint is a focused, 8-week creative experience designed to help you write more songs — consistently, simply, and without overwhelm. You’ll join a small group of up to 12 songwriters, receive a fresh songwriting prompt every two weeks, and use built-in deadlines, community… - What Paul Simon does when he has nothing to write about
Hey Reader, Benny here from How To Write Songs 👋 A few minutes before filming a recent tutorial, I sat down and asked myself a simple question: What's really on my mind? Not ‘writing from a title’. Nothing clever. No wordplay, or fancy chords. I wrote about the things that had been quietly sitting in the background of my life: worries about the future, family changes, the strange weight of getting older, and watching my children reflect back uncomfortable truths about myself. None of those…
- How to write the song only you can write
Hey Reader, Keppie here from How To Write Songs 👋 I just finished reading the new Arundhati Roy memoir (with a delightful music reference in the title). She wrote something that really struck a chord with me. In describing her complicated and surprising reaction to her mother's death (and an intersecting meditation on why people revere their persecutors), she said this: There is something knotty here, something puzzling about the human condition in all of this…I’m weary of endless theories…
- In defence of the clichéIn last week's email, I promised to send you some of my favourite lyric writing exercises. This one is about clichés — and I know what you're thinking. Avoid clichés. Everyone says so. Got it. But here's what I actually think: Clichés are one of the most powerful raw materials a songwriter has. Not because they're good, but because they're known. When I say "my heart was broken," you don't have to work to understand me. That meaning arrives instantly, pre-loaded, ready. The phrase has been…
- Can we be honest about AI for a second?AI can't actually write better lyrics than you. I want to tell you something important, songwriter to songwriter: AI cannot write better lyrics than you can. I'm going to tell you why, and it's not what you think. Not "AI can't feel," or "your perspective is totally unique" (both true, but easy to dismiss when AI spits out something that resembles feeling, and is a passable equivalent of lived experience). I went to AI school These past two weeks, I've been taking a short course on AI for…
- ⏰ June Songwriting Sprint: Early bird closing soon.
Hey Reader! On Sunday, the epic Early Bird access to the next 8-week Songwriting Sprint closes! Join now before the 33% discount disappears, and the Sprints become full-price (at $75). Register Now What really shows the impact of deadlines, accountability, and creative prompts aren’t my words—it’s the experiences of past Sprinters: Joan H. "I’m just so happy to have other ears to listen to my songs. It’s like a whole extra bonus, knowing that I can put something out there that’s not finished…
- A trap I see songs fall into all the time…There’s a quiet trap most songwriters fall into. And it’s not about rhymes. Or melody. Or structure. It’s this: We assume the listener knows what we know. This came up in one of our live feedback sessions this week (the fully human kind. Real faces. Real songs. Real-time reactions. No sycophantic AI applauding everything you do as a "great choice"). One of our members shared a beautiful song about a lonely touring musician. The imagery was cohesive, the world of the song was clear, and the…
- [ANNOUNCEMENT] June Songwriting Sprint Open for Registration
The June Songwriting Sprint is open for registration! Register Now Early Bird pricing ($50) closes May 17th What's a Songwriting Sprint? The Songwriting Sprint is a focused, 8-week creative experience designed to help you write more songs — consistently, simply, and without overwhelm. You’ll join a small group of up to 12 songwriters, receive a fresh songwriting prompt every two weeks, and use built-in deadlines, community support, and feedback to keep your songwriting moving forward. You can…
- This Songwriting Mistake is Easy to Avoid, If…
Hey Reader, It's Keppie here! There’s a storytelling mistake that shows up in songs all the time. And it has nothing to do with rhyme schemes or chord choices. It’s this: We bury the most interesting idea. This came up inside one of our live feedback sessions this week — the real, live, slightly messy, beautifully human kind where we can actually move sections around and hear the difference instantly. A songwriter had written a strong verse with a compelling image buried halfway through: “He…
- Jerry Seinfeld Was "Shocked"…Hi Reader, Most songwriters assume that getting better means learning more theory, finding stronger rhymes, upgrading their gear, or simply waiting for a worthier idea to arrive. After years of teaching, writing, releasing, and watching hundreds of songwriters grow inside our programs, though, I've noticed something: the real breakthroughs tend to come from elsewhere. They come from a handful of habits that, on the surface, look almost too ordinary to matter. Here are three that genuinely…
- Hey {{ subscriber.first_name }}, I want you to meet Matt Jenkins.
Hey Reader, When Matthew Jenkins joined his first Songwriting Sprint, he was already a musician with decades of experience. As a bass player, he’d spent years supporting other people’s bands—always the one holding down the low end, but never sharing his own songs. Meanwhile, his notebooks were overflowing. Pages of ideas. Half-finished lyrics. Fragments of riffs. All of it adding up to… nothing finished. “I had notebooks filled with song ideas but nothing to show for my creativity—just…
- Which songwriter has 17 (SEVENTEEN) Academy Award nominations…
Hey Reader, What do Aerosmith, Cher, Celine Dion, and LeAnn Rimes all have in common? It's not numbers of hits; it's not "worked with the same producer"; it's not Grammys. They’ve all had massive hits written by the same person. Not the performer. Not the producer. Not a “songwriting camp” with five names in the credits. One songwriter, alone in a room, writing songs that somehow keep finding their way into the world. Her name is Diane Warren — and even if you don’t recognise the name, you…
- When your melody and lyrics aren’t connecting…
Hey Reader, A lot of songwriters run into the same frustrating problem. You have a melody that feels good—but when it comes to writing lyrics, they all feel stilted, silly, and cliched. The inverse is true too: we hear from songwriters all the time who are more ‘wordsmith’ than ‘melody-magician’—they have lyrics on the page, but can’t quite find the melody to make them sing with the same musical poetry that the words themselves have. In either case, the emotion you know is there just doesn’t…
- How to Find the Key — Even When the Chords Are “Weird”
Hey Reader, It's Keppie here! This question comes up all the time in our workshops, feedback sessions, and programs: “What key am I in?” Closely followed by: Why do these chords sound good together… but my melody keeps clashing? Why do I feel stuck looping the same few chords? Why does this song feel floaty, unresolved, or like it never quite lands? If you’ve ever written a progression intuitively — trusting your ear, following what feels good — and then hit a wall when it came time to write…
- 3 Unexpected Songwriting Tips
Hey Reader, It's Keppie here! This week’s new YouTube tutorial is framed as being for beginner songwriters — but I want to be really clear about something: These are lessons almost every songwriter needs to be reminded of, no matter how long you’ve been writing. In fact, they’re the kinds of insights many of us only truly absorb after years of frustration, half-finished songs, and second-guessing ourselves. In the video, I walk through three counter-intuitive songwriting principles that make…
- I guess it'll have to be you…
Hey Reader, It's Keppie here! Here are 7 things worth sharing this week: 1. "Who is going to give you the authority that what you notice is important? I guess it'll have to be you." A quote from Verlyn Klinkenborg, author of "Several Short Sentences About Writing", referenced by Austin Kleon on his recent interview about writing newsletters that people want to read. 2. Which is very meta, because I have stolen this format right here from his wonderful newsletter, in this 'x things worth…
- Two Ways to Break Your Songwriter’s BlockA quick note before we get to it—I'm trying something new! In addition to the Weekly Newsletter, I love to send out bite-sized songwriting tips on other days, which I'll be sending out as the Daily(ish) Dispatch. Alrighty! Let's dive in! The Secret Hidden in Your Song Title Derrick, one of our Accelerator songwriters came to a coaching session with a familiar problem: “I have so many unfinished ideas. I just don’t know how to turn them into complete songs.” Sound familiar? Here’s the insight…
- What am I missing here?Hey Reader, Over the next 30 days I'll be emailing you more each week…if you would rather stay getting our weekly email only, click here. Family and friends are great, but… Your family and friends are great – they want nothing but the best for you, they love you, and want you to succeed in the projects you take on…but…they are perhaps not always the best test audience for your songwriting (right?). I remember when I started out performing live when I was 17, my mum would come to all…
- The Trouble With Writing Melody First
Hey Reader, It's Keppie here! I recently got a message from one of the songwriters in our membership Community, Leigh Ann, who expressed a very common frustration: “I create melodies but get stuck with putting lyrics to them – or visa versa.” I get it. Finding the right words to a pre-written melody can feel awkward, and often feels like we end up with lyrics that aren’t quite expressing a thought as eloquently as we’d like. Let’s unstick this. A Quick Story… In my early days as a songwriter,…