If you’ve been planning to write a Christmas tune, you should be working on it now — Christmas is less than a month from now.
In a way, there’s not really a lot of difference between a good holiday song and the ones you’d normally write. But if you’re looking to write something that everyone, regardless of age or musical preference, will enjoy, there are things you’ll want to be considering.
It was almost exactly ten years ago that I wrote an article for this blog, “5 Tips for Writing a Great Christmas Tune“, and there’s no need to reinvent the wheel here: the five tips I gave in that article are still what I’d say about writing a Christmas song that should appeal to pretty much everyone:
- Use the first lyrics to convey a warm, pleasant emotion.
- Try balancing your music strongly toward traditional melodic shapes and chord choices.
- Use lots of stepwise motion in your melodies, and avoid sitting on one pitch.
- Make the formal design clear.
- Don’t get preachy.
For each of those tips, I’ve written a short paragraph to further describe what I mean. If you’re planning to write a Christmas song, can I recommend that you give the article a quick read:
5 Tips for Writing a Great Christmas Tune
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter.
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