Like some others have said, I had song ideas in my head before I even began to play guitar in ‘76. I have no music training, no family musical influences. In fact, for quite awhile after starting to play, songs were just coming to me and I wasn’t even interested in learning covers. Certainly, they started off relatively simple and as I got better at playing, so did the songs. I create songs for my own pleasure, so I don’t profess to be overly great at it. I just can’t help myself.
Though I’ve learned many covers over the years, I’ve always been a perpetual noodler, entirely unstructured which is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I just stumble on what might be an interesting chord progression and if it sounds original and appealing, I’ll work with it. Sometimes the initial music will become the chorus, other times the verse. Whichever it is, next I’ll work on the others section. If there’s to be a bridge, it’s usually last to come to me if it’s needed to create a variation in the song...break up any musical monotony, resolve the story lyrically. Along the song’s development, intuitively I begin to hum nonsensical words/phrases which is the emergence of the vocal melody which in a lot of ways is what makes the song unique. You can tell 10 songwriters to create a song using just G-D-C played similarly, and they’ll likely come back with 10 songs quite different from each other. A lot of that will have to do with the vocal melodic interpretation the music inspires in them.
The curse side of the way I approach it is that my playing journey has been a long, slow one. At best, I’m an intermediate player, not as disciplined as I wish I would be, but then again, it’s the way I have fun with it and it’s not a race.
For about 10 years from around ‘96 to ‘06, I frequented various online songwriting forums. That really helped me. Many of those who participate are lyricists, some hoping that their piece will inspire musicians to put music to their words. Naturally, I’m a music-first songwriter, then develop a vocal melody, then the actual lyric inspired by what the music seems to inspire as a theme. I’m always thinking about possible song titles which inspire a theme. I list these titles in a log that I maintain and draw from it if one seems to fit with the music/melody that’s emerging. From participating in the songwriting forums, I found that I could put music to someone else’s existing words which lead to some fun collaborations and friendships akin to those I’ve made here. Arguably, one of the best of these songwriting forums is
Just Plain Folks. Music theory is great to learn, but you really want to learn about songwriting, just get down and dirty and jump into a site like JPF.
Hope this helps some.