Great songwriting ideas while playing in the bathroom

My kids were taking a bath and I was sitting strumming my guitar with no particular goal in mind, just playing chords and humming. Within a few minutes an idea came to me, so as soon as they were finished I rushed out into the studio and wrote a song. I'd been playing with my digital video camera and making short movies with some of my students, so I decided to make a "How I recorded this song" video/movie to post online.

I think anyone who writes music may find it interesting, embarrassing, enlightening, or entertaining.

Posted by don at 10:10 AM

Songwriting Primer for Budding Songwriters

This is a tool that I use to teach people to learn very fast.

Once they know the basic chords in the first position, I show them how to use those same chords sliding up the neck, following the "dots" on the neck, then I tell them there are no rules

As soon as they have a couple of basic progressions down, I turn on the casio, and run thru a lot of different drum patterns, some slow and some fast,...they very quickly begin to get it.

My next step is to teach them how to write their own song, just pick up a newspaper,there's a story on every page

Posted by don at 05:41 AM

Write songs regularly

Even if you don't have much time, you should write something every day. Make it a point to improvise 3 short melodies sometime during each 24 hours.You mihgt carry a small guitar--or uke--in your car and sit three minutes working out a tune before you go into the grocery store or to class.

Posted by don at 04:13 PM

Zen arts as songwriting

The late Harlan Howard had a songwriting tip to take an existing melody and rewrite the words. Then using the new words rewrite the melody. This is similar to the Zen arts where students model the forms of masterworks.

The good news is that those masterwork forms--after much familiarity through repetition--become embedded in the subconscious. And the subconscious, if you let it do its job, will naturally recombine and alter the forms. This is the long way to say it’s probably a good thing if your work resembles other work you admire. How could the Zen arts and Harlan Howard be wrong?

Posted by don at 03:02 PM

Lyrics songwriting exercise with a friend

This songwriting exercise is best done with a friend.

Write down 50 two word adjective/noun phrases.

"Hot Lava"
"Blue Sky"
"Fiery Eyes"

Have your friend do the same.

Now take his adjectives and combine them with your nouns, try different combinations and your nouns with his adjectives.

Makes for some excellent phrases to use in songs.

Posted by don at 10:01 PM

Radical Songwriting Suggestions

Read "The Frustrated Songwriter's Handbook" by Karl Conyat and Nicholas Dobson.

Their radical suggestions include the main one: Days in which one writes 20 songs, then records and shares them with friends.

Lots of staff writers write one or more songs daily, so the song a week project seemed pretty tame to me.

I realized that having had a background as an instrumentalist playing solos, I've HAD to create on demand, sometimes a dozen or more times a night. We set such artificial limits upon ourselves. Why do we think that songs produced quickly (think rough draft) are necessarily any better than the ones we create slowly and carefully as "artistes"? Sometimes the real blazingly original ideas come out of riffing too quickly for the "editor" to knock down the ideas.

So. My tip is to suspend your assumptions about how little you can write, and give quantity a chance, at least once.

Posted by don at 12:49 PM

Songwriters, learn as many cover tunes as possible.

Begin with three semi-easy ones from different styles. Hank Williams Sr.(Your Cheatin Heart), Don Mclean(American Pie), and one of your favorites.

Get the tablature and the song(mp3,ect...) and study the song till you can play it (and sing it) from memory.

Repeat this process until you have a hundred tunes in your pocket.

Every three cover tunes write a simple ditty from what you've learned.

Posted by don at 08:08 AM

Tips on Getting the Muse to Flow

Recently I've been writing 2-3 songs per week. The primary cause is that I have time, but I've been doing the following to encourage the muse to flow.

1. Writing 3 pages every morning (my version of morning pages)
2. Learning new tips and techniques - Taking private instruction, participated in Lyons Song School, reading songwriting information on the internet, and a student at SongU.
3. Quieting my mind through yoga, meditation, hiking and canoeing.

I find that all three of these in combination are the magic elixar. If I get stuck in my writing, I either learn something new or go for a long hike. Last week, I got songs from one hike. Pretty cool!

Since the muse is flowing, I've made it a priority to finish the first cut on each song. I'm saving rewriting for when this creativity slows down.

Posted by don at 05:06 AM

Review your songs regularly

Review your song ideas at least once a week. Make time to archive your finished songs, choose your next song to write, and celebrate all the great song ideas you came up with during the past week. The weekly songwriting review is good for reevaluating, reprocessing and feeding your intuition.

Posted by don at 04:04 PM

Bastardize a popular song to create your own

Here is a little exercise that I have some of my private students do. I have them pick a song. Then analyze the form, and general compositional ideas from the song. Then they are to write a song that sounds nothing like the original, but uses the same form and ideas. So if a song starts with the guitar alone playing a riff 4 times, their song has to do the same thing. If there is a bass playing a single note while a guitar is playing different high end chords over top, and the drums are playing accents on the high-hat, their song will also do that. But again the biggest part is not to have the same feel as the original song. The end product should not be able to be traced back to it's origin.

This not only helps you look at the structure and arrangement of a song a little more closely that you might normally,but it helps you work creatively within the confines of that structure. And restrictions help you become more creative.

Posted by don at 03:28 PM

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Songwriting Exercises