The Best Way to Get Inspired to Write Music

It’s fine to say that good songwriters would be writing every day. But what if your songwriting problems are so deep that everything you write just sits there like yesterday’s porridge? “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle can help free up the logjam, and get you back to writing music on a regular basis. More..

If you’re waiting for inspiration to write your next song, you’re probably wasting a lot of time. Most top-level composers of music of any genre need to be writing pretty much every day. If you were a film score composer, imagine telling the producer that you aren’t feeling inspired enough to write!

There are two kinds of inspiration that come into play with regard to songwriting. One type, the one everyone is familiar with, is the inspiration that comes from an emotional event that touches our lives. The birth of a child, the death of a loved-one, important social events – these are all great sources of excitement and inspiration. We might call these “external” sources of inspiration.

The problem with externally-sourced inspiration is that the excitement that’s generated is usually fleeting. In my book, “Beating Songwriter’s Block“, I compare it to throwing paper on a fire. It will burn brightly and start with great promise. But usually very quickly it dies away. Without something to take its place, externally-sourced inspiration will hardly sustain you even through one song.

The second type – one you might call “internally-sourced” inspiration – comes from within, and it is generated as a natural by-product of the compositional process itself. In other words, the act of writing music creates a sense of excitement, and that excitement causes you to feel momentarily inspired. That little shot of inspiration then creates a desire within you to create something to add to that idea, and a little more inspiration is created.

And so on and so forth. So to put it succinctly, the act of writing creates the very inspiration you’re looking for.

If you’re unable to find the inspiration to get writing, write anyway. A lack of inspiration deceives us into thinking that we’ve got no ability to create viable musical ideas. But in fact, humans have the ability to generate music in any circumstance, even in the complete absence of inspiration.

And once you create and listen to that one small idea, you’ll feel the inspiration that you’ve been lacking. It’s why setting a daily schedule and sticking to it is one of the best cures for writer’s block. A daily schedule ensures that you’re always creating something. Songwriters who stick to a schedule encounter writer’s block to a much lesser degree than those who wait for inspiration.
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Written by Gary Ewer. Follow on Twitter.

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