Charlie Puth’s 5 BEST Songwriting Tips | Studio Deep Dive

One-liner

Charlie Puth reveals his intricate songwriting process, emphasizing the importance of capturing fleeting musical ideas, the iterative approach to building melodies and sounds, and the value of drawing inspiration from a wide spectrum of music to craft something uniquely personal.

Key insights

Capturing Ideas

  • Charlie begins with a melody in his mind, emphasizing the importance of immediately recording any promising idea to avoid losing it.
  • The act of recording and reviewing ideas not only preserves them but also allows for further development and refinement.

Building Sounds

  • Puth focuses on creating clean, rudimentary sounds first, believing that a high-quality initial sound can inspire further melody development.
  • He takes a methodical approach to adding elements to his song, showcasing patience and precision rather than rushing the process.

Committing to Decisions

  • Charlie discusses the significance of committing to audio over MIDI, echoing advice from Max Martin to render and finalize tracks to streamline the creative process.
  • He demonstrates the value of making decisive choices to keep the songwriting progress moving forward, highlighting the importance of commitment in the creative process.

Inspiration and Lyrics

  • Drawing from his own experiences and emotions evoked by the music, Puth creates lyrics that resonate with personal memories and feelings, showing that emotion-driven songwriting can yield relatable and compelling lyrics.
  • The song's melody and sound guide the lyrical content, illustrating the interconnectedness of music and words in songwriting.

Influences and Creativity

  • Charlie employs an imaginative approach by referencing other music for inspiration, then deliberately altering these references to create something fresh and original.
  • He exemplifies using musical influences not for imitation but as a springboard for innovation, challenging songwriters to transform existing ideas into something uniquely theirs.

Key quotes

  1. "The most important thing for me is making like the rudimental sounds... super clean from the beginning."
  2. "Commit everything... it's so much more pleasant to look at when you render everything you did."
  3. "One of the biggest questions for developing songwriters is whether the lyrics come first or the music comes first... really there's not [a right or wrong way]."
  4. "How do I take something I like but change it in some way to really make it my own?"
  5. "Why you have to go and get my hopes up... I feel like people could relate to that."

Make it stick

  • "Capture it before it escapes": Always record a good melody immediately.
  • "Quality first sparks further creativity": Clean sounds inspire further development.
  • "Decisiveness drives creativity": Committing to choices pushes the process forward.
  • "Inversion for inspiration": Invert or change musical inspirations to create something new
This summary contains AI-generated information and may have important inaccuracies or omissions.