skylimit

Dear borjacobs, I know how it feels to be stuck. But over the years I've found that there are some great tools to overcome these blocks. I'd suggest you to read some books and watch some online videos about songwriting. One book I'd suggest you to read is: "How music really works" by Wayne Chase. I don't know your process of writing a song. But I'd suggest you to start very simple and structurally. Don't think about guitar riffs, production sounds while starting to write the song. I know that people in bands always tend to do that. Just start with some simple chords and melody and build your song gradually. And yeah, that FAWM challenge seems a good motivation to start writing some songs again. And if you have something already, I'm more than happy to give some constructive critique. The others on this forum probably too. Veel succes!!!

What really inspires me are people. I think one of the most important attribute a songwriter must have is empathy. To feel what others feel and put him or herself somebody else's shoes. When I write a song, I always try to listen to it through someone else's ears.

Hi John, Thanks for taking the time to respond so extensively. I must say, I completely agree with what you're saying. I think I formulated my case incorrectly. My complaint was not towards the quality of popular music in general. I think the ones at the top of the charts really deserve to be there. But my problem is with the ones that pop up around 30-40 for couple of weeks and dissapear. The ones that sound like a chart hit, but aren't. Most of these songs have good production but because of lack of creativity on the lyrics department, they don't get to fulfill their potential.

I don't really agree with you dermo33. Songwriting is kinda like math. The most time you'll spend while songwriting is trying to make everything fit well together. Otherwise it's kinda like an unequal equation.

Oh, and I hate it when producers don't want to transpose their songs after a Songwriter has written melody and lyrics on top their "finished" instrumental. of course, the song will be too high or too low for the actual singer. And just because they're too lazy to rerecord all the parts, the whole song gets dumped.

This is a big frustration of mine. I believe that part of the reason why we have all these crappy commercial music is because these producers also try to be songwriters. Maybe it happens that someone is so talented that they can do both very well. But in my experience it's really rare. I've met many producers who are really good at what they do, but they undermine their own work by also trying to write the songs themselves. That's we got all these songs with decent melodies but terrible lyrics with absolutely no imagination like "let's go party and sip bacardi" or "tonight i'll make you mine, because you're so fine"... In the short period that I've been trying to start off as a professional songwriter, I've realized that songwriting is not just a skill, but a craft that has so many technicalities, so many sets of rules and boundaries. I think that songwriting should be kept apart from the production proces. Especially when producers create the complete instrumental first and try to force melody and lyrics into it. Same kinda thing with musicians. I know that some guitarist would start off from a riff and try to force melody into it. By doing that, they're just laking it way harder, in my opinion. What do you guys think?