Role of Music in Songwriting

Abstract

When embarking on this program of research, I was intent on understanding the role of music in the songwriting process. In my years of research and following the research of others, there was notably a strong focus on the lyrics and what the lyrics meant in terms of diagnostic value or their role in gaining insight into the songwriter’s therapeutic process. But lyrics are only part of the complete songwriting experience. What did the creation of music provide that was above and beyond just writing song lyrics? What did it add to the therapeutic experience and outcomes? And what would be missing if music creation were not a component of the process? What follows in this chapter is an overview of the main themes that emerged from the interviews I conducted (Baker, 2013e) and from the research where songs were created using three methods: lyrics only, song parody (lyric creation but to preexisting music), and original songwriting where both lyrics and music were crafted (Baker & MacDonald, 2013a, 2013b).