Listening to your favourite music can lighten your mood, what’s even better is singing along with your favourite artist or musician. Music has a way of reaching out to the soul and depending on the mood you are in there’s a song for it. Here’s the thing, listening and or singing a song isn’t the same thing as writing one. 

If you have a piano, you can play it, and you have experience then you can easily create your own song on a piano. If you have it and you can play it but you lack experience things may not go your way. Well, I believe if you knew how to play songs on your piano you wouldn’t be here reading this article. Creating a song on a piano can be a difficult process, but in this guide I have broken the entire process into steps to make song creation on a piano to be as easy as possible. If you want to learn how to write a song on piano then you should stay on this page.

How to write a song on piano

When it comes to songwriting on a piano, a whole lot of things come into play but I have broken it down into 5 simple steps anyone can follow. With the steps I’ll be showing you, you’ll be able to write your own song effortlessly.

The 5 steps you’ll be following when writing a song on a piano are:

• Select a chord progression.
• Select a few notes and play them.
• Play the theme in reverse order.
• Take the theme and change the starting note.
• Switch up the rhythm.

Not so explanatory, right? Now, let’s look at these 5 steps in detail.

1. Select a chord progression

A piano has 12 major chords and 12 minor chords. When it comes to creating and playing songs, people using make use of the 1-4-5 major chords and minor 6 chord because they always sound good when played together. You can choose to play these chords in any key and any order.

Selecting an order to play the chords can be difficult especially when you have people songs ringing in your head, you might get tempted to play someone else’s and end up not creating yours. A good practice around this is to write down the numbers on small pieces of paper and take them out of a hat. It’s my way of letting fate decide when creating a song. You can skip this if you already have an order you’d like to play in your head.

Once you have chosen a chord order to play, play it over and over in a loop. Use your left hand to play the progression. You can either play the root notes, octaves, chords, or 5ths as you roll through the progression. 

Yamaha pianos are known to be the most reliable.

2. Select a few notes and play them 

Selecting the right notes may not come easily so you may have to play around a little until you find something that matches or something you like. Select 3-5 notes that you like while playing through your progression using your left hand. When you do this, it’s known as a theme in music. Now play the progression on your left hand and then play the notes on your right hand. Do that over and over again. Depending on your mood, you can choose to play the theme at a higher or lower octave.

3. Play the theme in reverse order

Now, try playing the notes you have been playing but this time, change the order. When you do this you’d realize it sound really cool just like your theme and but not exactly like it which makes the whole experience fun.

4. Take the theme and change the starting note

At this point, you can start playing the same interval between notes but your starting note will differ. This usually isn’t a smooth process as you may have to do a lot of trials and errors before you’ll be able to find something pleasing to the ear. Don’t rush the process, give yourself time, you are not playing to save a life. In general, explore all the possibilities you can think of. As an example, let’s say your initial theme was C-E-G-G, you can now play something like G-B-D-D for this step.

5. Switch up the rhythm 

For the last step, try switching up your rhythm. This is step is important because you might never know what you’ll discover as you do this. As long as everything you playing is within the time structure of the signature you are playing in then nothing can obviously go wrong. While you are at it, ensure your left-hand keeps everything on track by playing through your progression. 

That’s pretty much how you play a song on a piano. If you need more help or coaching in order to get the ropes around it then what you need is a piano course. With a piano course and the skill set you already have, learning to play a song should be a breeze.