Getting Great Ideas And Then Having Your Mind Freeze Up Before You Can Complete Them

[Theremin]

I have this problem where a riff or lyric or vision for a song will flash across my mind and for an instant I have it, but then when I try to take it further, something inside of me scares the feeling away and I'm left with this little fragment of a song. Does this happen to anyone else on this forum? If so, do you have any advice on how to let your ideas flow all the way through without your mind suddenly "closing the gates"? It's not so much "writer's block" as "writer's freeze." Please feel free to complain if this happens to you too.

[musicthom]

Often...... too often for my liking i allways write down everything now, or as john tought me get it taped imediatly

but mind you i dont allways have my 4 track with me when i am digging a big hole to plant trees

[john]

*cough cough* dictaphone *cough cough*

That at least captures the melody.

In terms of flow of ideas... is this something that happens away from music or only when writing music?

First thing I would highlight is that writing music is in a large part a creative flow, at least when initially drafting an idea. There is a creative flow element in many things we can do, so it can be a good idea to do tasks where you find that your creative flow is not ipeded.. ie get the juices flowing well, and then move to songwriting.

Note every idea, record it on a dictaphone, whatever.

Next thing is to introduce some discipline into your writing. Try a writing process... there's an article and set of constructive crit questions (though the url is probably out of date you can always check the articles for the same title as the article is still live).... two articles spring to mind... "Improve your Lyrics Writing" and "Songwriting Critique for Musicians" or something like that... establishing some basic processes can be very effective at getting you over the humps.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

John

[musicthom]

*cough cough* dictaphone *cough cough*

That at least captures the melody.

In terms of flow of ideas... is this something that happens away from music or only when writing music?

First thing I would highlight is that writing music is in a large part a creative flow, at least when initially drafting an idea. There is a creative flow element in many things we can do, so it can be a good idea to do tasks where you find that your creative flow is not ipeded.. ie get the juices flowing well, and then move to songwriting.

Note every idea, record it on a dictaphone, whatever.

Next thing is to introduce some discipline into your writing. Try a writing process... there's an article and set of constructive crit questions (though the url is probably out of date you can always check the articles for the same title as the article is still live).... two articles spring to mind... "Improve your Lyrics Writing" and "Songwriting Critique for Musicians" or something like that... establishing some basic processes can be very effective at getting you over the humps.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

John

Thats a bad cough you have there and i use a mini micro br 4 track its compleatly portable so there na na na nana

[SymbolOfSound]

the same thin happened to me yesterday. i had an awesome lyric in my head until got a book out.

as soon as i did that, i lost the whole thing. it annoys me so much

[MikeRobinson]

Here's a few things that I do ...

• If, say, your iPhone has the current software-version with its "voice memo" feature, then you are never without a good tape recorder. Use it whenever the inspiration strikes. Dig the thing out of your pocket and mash the "record" button even while you keep humming that tune that just popped into your head.
• Whenever you are doing any sort of creative writing, do not throw anything away. Ever. Always save "a new version of" anything that you do, keeping each and every copy. (If you want to create a "Trash Can" folder within the project, do so ... but never discard it.) Every now and then, set aside some quality time to re-review every thing that is in it.
• Do not expect anything to "pop out fully-formed like Venus appearing in her clamshell." That is an entirely unrealistic expectation.
• Always bear in mind that everything you hear on the radio (say...) is a final work-product. You have utterly no idea how it got there, nor how many revisions it has gone through, nor what technical processes have been applied to it. "(Of course it sounds great, now.) Duh." When you finally arrive at your destination and you look backward at your trail of bread-crumbs, "of course" it looks like the pathway should have been obvious. Hindsight, after all, is always 20/20.
• "But if it really was that easy, everyone would be doing it." That's why we call ourselves "the lucky ones." We are among The Creators. The luckiest people on earth.

[thepopeofpop]

John Lennon said that his songs were like a lot of little melodies linked together. You might do well to work in a similar way. As has already been suggested, keep all your ideas for future use. If you collect enough of them then some of them are going to fit together to make a song!

The main thing is that it is VERY difficult to maintain inspiration long enough to write an entire song in one go, so you're going to have to learn to develop the little inspirations that you have. I've written hundreds of songs and I've been lucky enough to have written 3 of them in a few minutes - the rest of them I had to build up over time: anything from a day to more than a year.

Remember, the more you write, the better you get!