As a songwriter, when the song you’re working on seems to be going nowhere, it’s a source of great discouragement. You find yourself facing a day of reckoning: Do you keep going with it, or do you declare it a dud and toss it? There is another option: put it aside, and revisit it at some […]
There is a lot to be said for the chords-first songwriting process, not the least of which is the fact that when you start vamping on a chord progression, a mood usually becomes quickly obvious. And once you’ve got the mood of the music, a topic will often be easier to settle on. And once […]
How long does it take you to write a song? There’s common opinion amongst songwriters that the quicker it happens, the better it is. Lots of people will brag about how quickly a song came together for them, but there are few who brag about a song that’s taken months or years. In the fairly […]
If you’ve gotten partway through your next song, but you can’t seem to finish it, one of the best techniques for breaking the logjam is to take one aspect of your song and drastically change it. It can sound ridiculous at the time, but it can work. For example, if you’ve been working on something […]
The best composers of music will tell you that they have a routine — a kind of daily schedule and creative process — that they stick to religiously. In practically all of the creative arts, a routine is seen to be beneficial. There are many reasons for this, but probably the best reason is this […]
We humans have an innate tendency to stay within our comfort zone, at least most of us. There are risk-takers out there, but more often than not we like predictability in almost everything we do. There’s nothing wrong with staying within a comfort zone, but if you’re a songwriter, writing the same way — staying […]
