Writing & Recording Your First Rap Song

Before starting a song, you need an instrumental (or beat). This lesson will give you a few things to pay attention to in your instrumental.

Counting bars is extremely important for writing a rap song. In this lesson you'll learn how to count bars and I'll give you some examples using our instrumental.

To create a song, you need to understand its structure. Once you understand your rap song's structure you can break down the workload into manageable pieces.

Choruses anchor your song. This lesson will teach you at a high level what choruses usually contain.

In this lesson you'll see me write a chorus, step by step, so you can follow along. As you watch this lesson, write your own chorus!

This lesson contains a high level view of how to write verses and what they contain. After this lesson you'll understand what verses typically contain.

This is one of three exercises for writing your first rap verse. This exercise is about using rhymes to map your song. I write a verse and you can follow along.

This is the second of three exercises. Freewriting is a method that has you write as quickly as possible, then edit. I'll show you how to use this method in this lesson and you can follow along.

This is the last exercise for writing a verse which is outlining plot points. I write my own verse using this exercise and you can follow along. When you're done you should have the three verses for your rap song created.

There are a few more sections to fill in for your song, the intro and outro. These are small sections so this lesson covers what to put in your intro and outro and I'll also be writing mine. At the end of this, you should have completely written your first rap song!

This lesson will give you a few mindset tips for making sure your delivery is solid. You'll know what kind of things you should be thinking about as you go to record.

In this lesson we focus on the actual act of recording. You need a microphone and audio software, then you need to set it up properly. After this lesson you'll have a few basic ideas on how to start recording.

In this lesson I explain how you can record your song in pieces instead of one giant take. At the end of this lesson, you'll understand how to break up your rap song into manageable vocal chunks.

In this lesson we talk about what ad-libs are and how to add them to your song if that's something you're interested in. 

Now that you've recorded your song, there's a couple finishing touches. In this lesson, I'll explain what other things you might want to look for before you consider your song complete.

You've created a rap song! There's still more work to be done though. In this lesson, I cover more ideas about how to rap and improve.