Last Friday I announced a small songwriting challenge I gave to myself. I won’t re-explain the challenge, but you can read about it here.

In short, I decided to complete 4 songs in 4 hours. Here is what happened:

Hour 1: Beautiful Lies
I finished up the verses but was completely stuck still on the bridge. I have the chords for the bridge and a general melody line. I couldn’t get past the bridge and was stuck. My first hour was winding down so I wrote down some gibberish and moved on.

Hour 2: Loaded Gun
In addition to the music, I already had two verses written and a chorus going into this. Problem was I needed a third verse. My second verse kinda sounded like a “summarizing verse” - meaning it really should have been the LAST verse because it kinda wraps everything up nicely. So I shifted that verse to the third verse and wrote a more lyrically specific verse for the second verse. There is no bridge or middle eight in this song - instead I have a Dylan-esque harmonica solo to break it up and keep things interesting.

Hour 3: Laundry Day
This song was really a challenge for me. With an acoustic punk rhythm, it is a rhythm I do not usually write in and made things difficult from a melody and lyric perspective. Although I felt the chorus lyric was pretty powerful I was having trouble writing verses that didn’t sound forcefully contrived or cheesey. It is at this point I usually give up and move on to another song. But since I had publicly declared I was going to finish these songs, I kept pushing on, and actually got some decent verse lyrics. Whoo-hoo!

Hour 4: Radiate
By the fourth hour I was pretty spent, but I strategically placed this song at the end because I had this one almost performance-ready for awhile. I just needed an extra verse and a bridge. The new verse is alright, and the bridge is adequate.

In all these songs, I accept the fact these changes STILL will not represent the final versions of the songs. In this 4/4 exercise, the item of paramount importance was GETTING THE SONGS DONE as opposed to WRITING THE BEST SONG POSSIBLE.

I felt comfortable saying that because I was already confident the general song structure and chorus for each song was strong.

For me, if I can at least put some marginally acceptable lyrics in and complete the song the lyrics will gradually be rewritten over the next couple of weeks as I listen to my recordings, play them live, and meditate on the songs a bit more.

Additionally, I have always maintained that if I have great melody lines, lyrical hook (in the chorus), and song structure I can almost say anything in the verses and it will still come across nicely live. When I play out no one REALLY listens to the lyrics that closely. They might get fragments and get a general idea of the song - especially if my chorus is still good.

Of course this changes when I record the songs for commercial use. At that point I feel the lyrics should be the best they can be and this refinement is usually done when playing live (as mentioned above).

I have learned that these exercises are really difficult for me because I take great pride in writing smart lyrics, so putting a time deadline on my songwriting made this very challenging.

I’m not one of those guys that likes to try out song fragments on people at Open Mics and stuff. When I go to Open Mics or play out I like to have the songs completely done and confidence that they will sound good. I’m not saying my way is better, but I prefer being confident about my songs when I take the stage. It is probably some sort of insecurity thing that can be traced back to my childhood somewhere - who knows. I actually envy people that can hop up on stage and try out song fragments and still hold the audience’s attention.

Regardless, I think these deadlines ultimately help my songwriting.

I know I stated I would put rough demo recordings of my songs online by last night - but I had an action-packed family weekend and was not able to steal away and record them. I will try to get them up by tomorrow night and will post them then.

Some Blogging Muses readers have stated they might try their own “4/4 Challenge”. If you do let me know and I will link to your project. If you don’t have a place online to do it, let me know and maybe I can host your challenge and MP3’s here.

Happy songwriting!