ideas | The Essential Secrets of Songwriting

How to Brainstorm Ideas For Your New Song

You’re sitting in your room with a blank piece of paper and a guitar. How do you get the songwriting process started? Where do your ideas come from? And how do you maintain a fresh supply of ideas so that songwriting can be a daily activity? I think if you’re using the same process every […]

Ten of the Most Important Things a Songwriter Should Remember

There are things a songwriter should remember because they’ll result in better songs. There are other things that will result in a happier you. From time to time, you need to sit back and bring those things to mind. I write music almost every day. Sometimes they’re arrangements of already-existing songs (folk songs, for example). […]

The Importance of a Good Song Title

For many songs in the pop genres, creating the title is a bit of a no-brainer. You simply take the bit of lyric that comes along with the chorus hook or refrain, the bit that repeats probably more than any other bits, and there’s your title: “Happy” (Pharrell Williams) “Just Give Me a Reason” (Pink, […]

Guitar and Notepad - Songwriting schedule

Creating a Sensible Songwriting Schedule

One of the best ways to avoid writer’s block before it ever happens is to create a songwriting schedule. Scheduling your writing takes patience and discipline, but it keeps your mind feeling creative. One of the reasons you probably hate scheduling is that it forces you to write even when you don’t feel like it. […]

Songwriting Processes: the More the Merrier

When you start your songs the same way, you make it very likely that there will be an unpleasant sameness about them. Your aim as a songwriter should be to feel at ease with as many different processes as possible for starting songs. Comfort with many different processes makes it more likely that your songs […]

What To Do If You Can’t Finish a Song

How early in the songwriting process do you think about the formal design of your song? Do you ever think about verse-chorus design options of your song as soon as you create a good songwriting idea? As you’ll hopefully know, getting good songwriting ideas is not the same thing as being able to write a […]