How many songs do you write a year?

[roxhythe]

I thought I'd responded to this earlier, but I guess not. A couple thoughts:

I only count "keepers." I deliberately exercise no control over the Creative Process, but I wanted to write roughly a dozen "keepers" last year, and I did, and I was happy. This year, I want to write another dozen (an album's worth a year, in other words), and I expect I'll probably make it. I did four last month (I think).

My twin concerns are (1) I want the number of songs to increase, and (2) I want the percentage of "keepers" to increase. Both are currently happening, so I guess we're okay.

I also do not count collaborations of the variety where I write music to somebody else's lyrics. That's just something I do on the side, as it were, when I'm not writing Real Songs. I find it useful especially when I'm going through a dead period, when songs are not coming as thick and fast as I'd like. I had one of those this past winter (I haven't decided if they occur mostly in the winter), with three songs in progress, each of them with little better than a chorus. So I wrote music to two other people's lyrics while I was waiting for whatever mental logjam it was to break loose (which it eventually did).

Have I ever robbed a piece of a bad song to make a good one? Sure. At least twice that I know of (and maybe more--I don't keep track of "non-keepers," remember), I have robbed the *music* from one song and used it for a new one that was better. The older song in each case wasn't that good, so the music might as well get tapped for something that was going to get played.

Joe

[Lazz]

In January, we shall have to have a final reckoning and see how many songs we all wrote. Not a competition, just out of interest.

Hey Al - what was the result ?

[Alistair]

So, as the end of another year approaches, how's everyone doing?

I had a slow year until about 5 months ago. I'd written about 5 decent songs by September but have finsihed 4 since then with another two close to completion by the end of the year.

I know it's about quality more than quantity but you can't have the first easily without the second in my opinion. The more you write, the better you are likely to get at it. The less you write and the more you aginise over perfection the less likely you are to achieve it, I reckon.

So how's it going?

[ramadhaniyanto]

*revives thread*

7 years, 10 "countable" songs

working to record them with full band arrangement

[skinnyarms]

I try to write at least a song a week, of course a lot of them turn out like crap but sometimes...sometimes the ones I like the least when I'm writing/finishing them end up being favorites years later...so yeah, at least a song a week.

Heh, might be worth explaining that my idea of a song is generally a 1-2 minute rough draft, start to finish in about 2-3 hours...I figure I can always go back and re-record it so long as I record all my ideas about it...but somehow I never do. That's why I even consider them songs...because they're done!

[AnneC]

hi...i'm new to this website...actually i'm new to ever writing on any kind of post page whatsoever. ANYWHO I started seriously writing about two years ago. About 4 months ago I realized I was having trouble trying to remember everything i'd written, so i bought a small little recorder to remember the phrasings and chords and what have you. ANYWHO AGAIN i think i'm at around 38 songs, all for piano. I want to start writing choral music sometime soon and also wanna get into filling out orchestrations for a lot of my pieces, but just don't have time bein' in college...bleh

Hi! Glad to have you here... I'll be very interested to hear your stuff sometime. I am a writer of choral pieces and it's great having another person of like mind around. Feel free to PM me if you like.

[Mazrocon]

When I was like 10 or 11 i'd write alot of random gibberish and/or lines that I thought were neat and put them in a word pad file. I'm 13 now and about 3 - 6 months ago (I can't remember) I started making complete song lyricse, so far I gotta 30 songs but alot of them need work. As you can tell i've been posting them up and have got alot of critizism so i'm trying to fix that