Songwriters: Create a great song title in 15 minutes with Microsoft Excel
By Don • Jun 20th, 2006 • Category: Inspiration, Songwriting Advice, Songwriting Articles, Songwriting Software, Songwriting Tips, Songwriting Tools
Many songwriters say that once they have a good song title the “song practically writes itself”. If you are one of these people, then this tip is for you. If you are not one of these people, perhaps this exercise will help spur on creativity.
This songwriting exercise is built off of an older, existing songwriting exercise - but with a technological twist. Microsoft Excel is not required. Any spreadsheet software will do - even Google’s new free online spreadsheet application will work.
For the sake of example I have used Microsoft Excel in my screenshots below.
The Object of This Exercise
The object of the exercise is to get you - the writer - to pair unlikely words together for unique song titles. So here is what we do:
Step 1: In Column A, list 10 adjectives.
You can actually list more if you want to, but for the sake of this article we’ll keep it short at 10 adjectives - or descriptive words.
Admittedly, I didn’t use much imagination in thinking up these adjectives, but you get the idea. Using a thesaurus or dictionary will help you come up with much more exciting words.
Step 2: Add another column of nouns.
But don’t add the nouns right next to column A! Instead, scroll over to column Z (so you can’t even see the words in column A) and start writing your list of ten nouns. The point is to not even remember what adjectives you put in column A. If you remember a couple of them, that is fine. We will take care of that in a moment.
Got your 10 nouns? Great. Let’s move on.
Step 3: Cut and paste column Z over to column B.
Cool! Now you have a column of adjectives, as well as a column of nouns right next to it:
Step 4: Scan the new set of columns for possible song titles.
In a real songwriting scenario, I would write those new phrases down in my notebook.
So far, none of the phrases really jump out at me. “Urgent Market” is a possiblity, just because it rolls off my tongue in a cool way. So does the phrase “Unbreakable Auto”. But really, none of these grab my attention.
So we’re gonna try something different. Re-sorting columns.
Step 5: Sort columns for new possibilities.
First, let’s sort column A ascending, by highlighting column A and selecting SORT from the DATA menu as shown below:
Depending on the version of Excel you are using, you might receive a “Sort Warning”. If so, just click “Continue with Selection” and press the “Sort” button.
Then you will get a screen that asks if you want to sort Ascending or Descending. Let’s choose Ascending for now:
Voila! You have sorted column A. Now a new set of song titles appear. Scan the list to see if there is anything that would make a possible song title.
I found a few I liked, and circled them:
hurtful streets
pleasant pavement
unbreakable flowers
urgent people
But it doesn’t end there. Let’s try a descending sort:
I liked:
sad streets
lovely pavement
So we have sorted a lot on column A. Let’s mix things up more and sort column B ascending:
And we have a few more song title possibilities:
unbreakable clouds
sad flowers
So, know we have at least a half-dozen possible good song titles. As I mentioned earlier, you will most likely come up with more creative words to pair together.
Variations on This Exercise
You aren’t limited to just adjective/noun combinations. You can try this exercise with other pairings:
noun/noun
adjective/adjective
verb/verb
noun/adjective (inverted from our exercise above)
You can also add another column. So instead of just “sad flowers” as shown above. Imagine if you had a verb column in column C. You might have ended up with something like, “sad flowers blooming” or something like that.
Realistically, the possibilities are endless. Remember, this exercise is designed to spur on creativity - to get your mind to go places it hasn’t gone with unlikely word pairings.
If you have any cool/quirky/funny song titles you came up with, let us know in the comments below.
Try it out! I guarantee you’ll be surprised.
Don is the founder, writer and editor of BloggingMuses.com. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, USA.
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At first I thought this was kind of corny, but I tried it and got a few keeper song titles.
Hmmmm.
J
Hey, Ok so i am going to try it, But do you have any other ideas for the song park.. like that should the first line be and the second?
thanks…M
sounds corny as f*ck…but i’ll try it out… ACE
Ace, it is a bit corny. But if you look at most creative exercises they usually involve some bit of corniness in order to jog the mind into going places it might not be comfortble going. Some people need to write in a special room. Some need to write with their “lucky hat”. Yeah, it’s corny - but if it makes a great song then it’s a small price to pay. -dm
Very cool. I find that exercises like this one are great for breaking that writers block we all seem to be cursed with. It reminds me of the exercise Jimmy Webb wrote about in “Tunesmith.” He said to assign a note to all the numbers from 0 to 9 with 1 being “doe” 2 being “ra”…etc. Then get a telephone number and viola! A melody.
I have just put my publishing company on the web and was glad to run across your post. Thanks for the advice. I will pass it on if that’s ok.
Ramon
Adjectives-
bad
jittery
purple
tan
better
jolly
quaint
tender
beautiful
kind
quiet
testy
big
long
quick
tricky
black
lazy
quickest
tough
blue
bright
magnificent
magenta
rainy
rare
ugly
ugliest
clumsy
many
ratty
vast
crazy
mighty
red
watery
dizzy
mushy
roasted
wasteful
dull
nasty
robust
wide-eyed
fat
new
round
wonderful
frail
nice
sad
yellow
friendly
nosy
scary
yummy
funny
nutty
scrawny
zany
great
nutritious
short
green
odd
silly
gigantic
orange
stingy
gorgeous
ordinary
strange
grumpy
pretty
striped
handsome
precious
spotty
happy
prickly
tart
horrible
tall
itchy
This is a pretty good idea, but I think using excel is a overkill. Wouldn’t it be a lot simpler to use index cards with ten or so evenly spaced lines? Write your ten nouns on one and your ten verbs on another. Then hold them side by side or slide one up or down if nothing fits. You could even mix and match cards.
[...] Then try some sorting of the columns for even more possibilities. [...]
WOW! I came up with thirteen possible titles! Some of them are catchy sort of oxymorons that work so well in a song. Excellent! Thank you!
[...] Create a great song title in 15 minutes [...]
[...] (Editor’s note: For more on coming up with power words using a spreadsheet program, check out the article Create a great song title in 15 minutes with Microsoft Excel.) [...]
you just pretty invented a way of making a song title with no meaning or personal value to the writer.
your removing the whole creativity in the title, and it failed to occur to you that that is a terrible thing.
“sad flowers” what the hell?
how is that possibly a good song title ?
its uncreative people like you who poison the art .
I hope trip over a sharp rock fall off a cliff and end up hanging by your neck on your intestines.
Seriously,
I didn’t invent anything.
This is a method many many songwriters use and you will see this method mentioned in many songwriting books and as tips from successful songwriters. All I did was added the spreadsheet twist to it.
If you think the process is just “mashing words together” then you are missing the point. You might mash together a hundred different combinations and only have one or two titles that actually resonate with you. That is the key. “Resonate with you“. Surely you must know one of the more enjoyable things about being a wordsmith is working with words. For some of us it is a lot of fun to put words together that we might not ordinarily think would go together. This is not a de facto way to find song titles. It’s only one other tool in your arsenal.
I also think our ideas of creativity might be different. I think creativity is trying new unexpected things and see what happens. Sometimes an unlikely pairing of words will not only help flesh out an exciting song, but it can also help shape a series of songs, a new theme to write about, and who knows what else.
Trying new things and doing songwriting exercises will only strengthen your songwriting and help you grow creatively.
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
Thanks for posting this!! It helped me a lot : )
question - any ideas if you have a song but just can’t come up with a title - I was thinking maybe start pulling words out of the lyrics and put in a spread sheet - using your idea and seeing if anything pairs up or jumps out - any other ideas?
thanks
Heyy any song writers out there wanting to help me write a love song. I want something unique to sing.
seems to me if you want to write a song it should really be actually ABOUT something, not just churned out for its own sake. In this case it would already have a title. This is what is wrong these days, too much writing of crappy, generic balls.
also, jessica, “Heyy any song writers out there wanting to help me write a love song. I want something unique to sing. :)” seems you have a bit of a contradiction in terms there, if you want to write something unique, why not avoid love songs for once?
ovlet: The idea is to trigger songwriting ideas. That’s all. Many songwriters come up with entire songs just sitting at a bar chatting with someone, and the friend says a funny line, or phrase, and a light goes on in the songwriter’s head and they write the phrase down, go home, and write a whole song based on that phrase - because the phrase or sentence resonated with the songwriter. That;s all this exercise does. If you read any of the other comments I’ve written clarifying this you would also know this is a VERY COMMON SONGWRITING EXERCISE. All I did was add the spreadsheet element to it.
Please send us some songs or a myspace link. We’d love to hear some of your genius work.
dm
What a great idea! You can also ask your fans to submit song title ideas through your website. This won’t just help your inspiration but also your relationship with the fans.