This year, I’ll have written a holiday song every year for the last six years. Two weeks ago, I had decided not to write one, but finally took a moment to ponder and reflect upon the current state of the world and came up with the title “Silent Christmas.” I wanted to express the quiet and stillness this season is bound to be, while everyone is under lockdown and hanging out in their own homes, but in a positive light.

First draft

I started with writing some of the lyrics down; this is my usual way of developing a song idea lately. I started with verses about quiet streets, physical distancing from friends and family, and missing live music.

For the chorus, I wanted to drill home a more positive message about embracing the stillness and accepting the way things are this year. As a strong introvert, it’s not a big stretch for me to hang out at home with my wife for the holidays and be content.

I once wrote a song with AAAA rhyme scheme in the chorus, and received feedback from a professional songwriter that this isn’t always a good thing, since it can make the final line too predictable. So I wrote a chorus with three lines of perfect rhymes, then two lines of non-rhymes with a new melody and chords. It sort of reads like a post-chorus, which I really like.

Revised song

I brought the draft version of the song to the Song Talk Meetup on December 14, and got great feedback from the members to confirm that the song was too long. I had three verses, three choruses, and a bridge. When I revised the song, I took the best bits from verses 2 and 3 into one verse. With one fewer verse, I could build a standard structure of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus. I liked what I originally wrote, but decided to excise the stuff about live music, which ultimately makes a song a little more universal. I also took advice to increase the tempo. In the end, I took a 4:30 long song and reduced it to a much slimmer 3:30.

Here’s my worksheet of edits as I went along (click for full-size):

Production

I recently acquired Native Instruments Pharlight software instrument, for some cool choir tracks. The plug-in really impressed me, and I never really had a premium choir plug-in before. I used it throughout the song as the main carrier of the chord progression.

I kept the drums and percussion pretty light, and the bass tone round, as this was a gentler ballad-esque song. I used Native Instruments Rounds for a varied arpeggiator in the chorus parts, which I think really brightens the song.

Download the final lyrics and chords to Silent Christmas.

I also did a quick lyric video: