This is a common situation in the creative arts. You get some good ideas that get the ball rolling, and then everything seems to fizzle, and you’re left with an incomplete song. At those times, it seems easier to start a new song than finish an old one.
So that means you’ve got a box-full (literally or figuratively) of unfinished songs. As I say, it’s common, and even seasoned songwriters will experience this problem from time to time.
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But what does it mean when starting songs is easy, but finishing them is hard? Here is the main reason: Good songwriting is all about how you assemble the bits, not just the creating of good bits in the first place.
Here’s more about what I mean. Take a favourite song, one that you’ve known and loved for years, and try to put your finger on exactly what you like about it. It might be the melody, perhaps it’s a moment in the chord progression, something about the underlying rhythmic feel, the lyric… songs have so many moving parts.
But the more you think about it, the more you realize:
- It’s not just the melody… it’s how the chords support it.
- It’s not just the lyric… it’s how the melody moves up and down to enhance meaning.
- It’s not just the rhythmic feel… it’s how the chords lock into the groove created by those rhythms.
- It’s not just the chords… it’s how the melodies bring them to life.
- It’s not just the rhythms… it’s how the instruments make those rhythms sound exactly right.
And on it goes. Every song has those major elements, but in fact, every song has a unique blend of musical components, all working together to build an energy map that ebbs and flows as it pulls the listener along.
So those original ideas that you find so easy to create are important, but what’s stopping you is the assembling of those ideas. And that’s when songwriting becomes a balance between imagination and creativity.
Your imagination allows you to generate song ideas. Then your sense of creativity takes over, and you must now assemble all the bits. If that’s where you get stuck, you’ve got a problem with creativity. Your imagination is probably just fine.
So here are some tips for finally finishing that song that has you stuck:
- Give yourself a break. When ideas happen quickly but then you don’t know how to assemble them to greatest effect, leaving the task alone for a day or two, or even longer, might be the best solution.
- Resume the task using a different instrument. Once you return to the job at hand, try seeing what you can do on a different instrument. It doesn’t even need to be an instrument you’re very good at. Just hearing your ideas being played using a different sound may suddenly give you great ideas for pulling everything together.
- Remember the basic structure of good songwriting. Keep in mind that for most songs, a verse will sit lower in pitch than a chorus. So if you’ve got the chorus and you need a verse, you need to be searching in the lower ranges for it. Remember that a pre-chorus needs to build musical energy. Remember that a bridge section will increase excitement. If you’re not remembering these basic structural commonalities, then you truly are just blindly looking for something good, and that search can go on forever, or at least until you give up!
- Experiment! You’ve got a good chorus melody, but can’t come up with a verse? Play that chorus melody, and then try it at a new tempo; try the melody in minor instead of major; change up the rhythmic feel underneath the melody. Keep experimenting. As you come up with new ideas for your chorus, you’ll likely find that new possibilities for a partnering verse will occur to you.
- Keep listening to other songs. You can create an artistic vacuum for yourself if you stop listening. So take breaks and listen to other great songs. Those songs will stimulate your imagination, and will boost your creative abilities. New ideas will occur to you.
When all else fails, remember that you can pull together various ideas that were never intended to be in the same song. Let’s say that you’ve written two choruses, neither of which you’ve been able to write verses for. If one is primarily lower than the other, you might find that one will serve as a good verse to the other chorus.
The possibilities really are endless, because each song is a unique blend of ideas. When nothing works, don’t trash ideas, simply put them away and work on something new. At least you’ll have a collection of good musical components that might surprisingly find their way into a new song someday.
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter.
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