Songwriting Tip No.6––Writing Songs for Children 

Wednesday, October 05, 2005 - 10:51 AM, (8528 Reads)

by Paul Austin Kelly on Jun 22, 2005

After receiving much mail requesting advice on writing music for kids I’m caving in and writing a separate group of tips just on this subject alone.

I’m going to offer some general advice on writing songs for children to start off with. This is because I’m currently involved in a project writing children's songs for a publisher that markets to the schools, so a lot of this information is very fresh in my mind.

Here we go––

When writing songs for kids assume that the kids are going to want to learn the song and sing along. Therefore:

1) Whenever possible keeps the scansion (the analysis of verse into metrical patterns) consistent throughout. For instance,

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers

has a total of 12 syllables over a period of 6 beats. So in order to mirror that in the next verse try hard to keep the scansion consistent. You might write something like,

Albert Ammons played a piece of eight bar boogie

Again, count'em. 12 syllables total over a total of 6 beats.

Now, you’d probably want to keep all that alliteration consistent, too, but that wasn’t my point and I didn’t want to confuse the issue. ;-)

2) Pitch the song in a key that your audience can sing to. You have to remember that although most kids will have a bash at just about anything, you can make the experience a lot more accessible by knowing what age you’re writing for and finding out where the average voice lies at that age. Obviously sticking fairly close to the speaking range is going to be easiest and then varying above that in the more exciting bits.

3) It may seem obvious––but know your audience and write for them, not just to them. I’ve worked with too many adult would-be writers for children who seem to think that writing a song about what they think about kids is actually interesting to kids.

Truth is, it usually isn’t.

The vast majority of kids don’t care how wonderful you think they are, or how well you can relate to them, or how at 37 you still feel like one of them––they want to be entertained and moved by things that they are interested in. So study children, not just yourself!

More soon!

If this article was interesting or helpful, perhaps you'd also enjoy––

• Songwriting Tip No. 5
• Songwriting Tip No. 4
• Songwriting Tip No. 3
• Songwriting Tip No. 2
• Songwriting Tip No. 1

Paul Austin Kelly is the founder, main composer and recording artist of Walking Oliver, a music company dedicated to creating new and unique music for kids and families. He’s also an internationally renowned American opera singer but that’s only his day job. Paul grew up in upstate New York where he spent most of his youth chasing frogs, snakes and girls––not necessarily in that order. He also spent a great deal of time with his guitar and his trumpet, both of which he still spends time with today. He now lives in the south of England with his wife and his son and his Weimaraner named Oliver. He daydreams a lot and often looks confused.