How do you push through?

[Mason Dixon]

Hey guys, I've been in the middle of a song drought for quite a while now. But finding something to write about isn't the problem, I can write down lyrics all day and come up with random melodies. My real problem is actually writing the music. Even when writing the music first it feels like a waste of time because I know that I'm going to be too critical about whatever I write and end up not liking it.

  So the question i have is how do you guys write at this beginning stage?I know every songwriter goes through this.

     Ive tried sitting down and not caring about how the song I write sounds but then i lose my motivation because whats the point of writing music If you're writing for yourself, but hate everything you come up with? 

    This may sound redundant but I would love to hear your thoughts.

[ImKeN]

I don't like my voice and I can't write lyrics, so I collaborate. Maybe you need a collaborator?

 

Ken

[Michan]

Hey Maxon!

 

For me it's also quite easy to think about melodies and to write lyrics, and I'm able to adapt to different styles, but I can't set up the instrumental tracks. I can only play drums, so the most I can do is thinking about random grooves to highlight the pulses of the song, what is not that useful if you can't introduce by yourself the melodic instruments.

 

So, as ImKen said, and in my case it also worked super fine so far, I get together with other people that have the ability to compose the instrumental parts and are glad to get someone else's help to writing the lyrics, building up melodies and, in some cases, getting the vocals. For me working with others, both in my "physical" band and here in Songstuff, has been amazing so far. It's not only that you can make super cool things complementing your abilitites with others' , but also, since everybody is different, has their own styles and ideas, the result is that you get out of your comfort zone and you find yourself doing very cool stuff that you could never imagine before. The result is getting something fresh and totally unexpected, for you and your collaborators, and getting the challenge is also a great pleasure! Also it helps to build up your confidence, because you see that what you do is working, and can be used for creating beautiful things. And you learn SO SO much. You can't imagine how many talented people we have around, that are ready to try new things and have fun!

That's all I can say! Take it easy, don't be too harsh to yourself. Practice and networking make magic!!

[john]

Hey

 

I decide what emotional space the song exists in. If I don’t have exact experience, I use an imagined equivalence. For example if I want to write about the devastating loss of a child, I can use the devastating loss of a close friend, other devastating losses, to begin to approach how that might feel.

 

Once I feel the emotion, I sing melodies (usually) while thinking about the subject of the song. I step myself in the feeling and try to express it in purely musical terms. If I have pencilled-in lyrics, I perhaps try singing them.

 

I always switch to melody as soon as I can in the writing process. I try to view any phrases I have before that as fuel. They might make it to the finished song (though not always as consecutive lines if I have more than one), but I am completely prepared to ditch them.

 

Initial words and phrases are but the seed that a song grows from. For me, my songs tend to be limited by attachment to draft ideas more than any other factor. The attachment hems me in. Over the years I have learned to let it go by deliberately tackling it.

 

You seem to be limited by not having distinct writing phases. You are mixing the draft phase with the edit phase. That means you are qualifying ideas as you go... which sucks as a way of generating ideas and really, really slows down your writing process. This probably has an effect on all your creative tasks. It usually stems from an over concern about mistakes, every decision becomes critical, everything needs to fit a growing list of criteria before you will accept it... coupled with an over attachment to preliminary ideas.

 

My old art teacher had a novel way to address this, and an equivalent solution can be found in songwriting.

 

Artists who suffer from this often hesitated in the marks they made in a page. Often their drawings were rigid, and because they focused on detail prematurely, their art often had skewed perspective, the relationship between sizes was wrong.

 

The hesitancy came from feeling every mark on a page was critical. Chiselled in stone for all eternity. So they couldn’t make a mistake.

 

The solution was to pin 10 sheets of newspaper (the cheapest printed paper, already used and ready for the trash) to a drawing board, and give yourself 1 minute, or 2 minutes to sketch what you saw before you. After the agreed minute or two was up, you tore the sheet off the board, scrunched it up, and tossed it in the trash. The exercise was not to come up with a finished art work. Sure it might give you an idea, but this was not the implementation of grander visions. It was to get into the mindset of sketching what the mind saw quickly, with zero attachment to result, zero qualification of ideas, no long term buy-in.

 

Quite quickly artists cured that hesitance and over qualification and premature attachment that stifled their work. They learned to express themselves.... and that is one of the key things we need to do as songwriters.

 

I would recommend the equivalent approach for music. Try random mood selection using 2 dice, write a melody in 1 minute or 2 minutes (work up to 5) that matches the rolled mood (2 equals sad, 3 happy, 4 excited etc.) At least at first try recording the melodies, then when the time is up... delete them. Roll dice, next write.

 

When you go back to your normal writing, try having a distinct ideas and draft phase, the equivalent of sketches. Don’t go to edit phase until you have a draft of the overall song. Know that edit can be done in cycles (try an idea, if it works keep it at least for now, if not ditch it, at least for now) you can re-enter draft phase every time around the edit loop. Get used to knowing ideas are not fixed in stone, and at any point you can go back to trying new ideas at zero cost... after all, you still have the previous version of the work so, nothing ventured, nothing gained

 

Cheers

 

John

[MikeRobinson]

When you listen to a song, watch a show, or read a book, your first and only encounter with the work is "perfection."  You never see the process that went into it.  Therefore you might sincerely imagine that process isn't there.  That the people who write these things are magicians.

 

But that isn't the case, and it never has been.  They spin these snippets of thought out of wherever such things come from, then assemble and polish it into something that they like.  (They might even make several things.)  Teams of people work on most projects, and most of their contributions are invisible to the public.  All to produce something that makes you say – if they did their job well – "wasn't it always this way?"  "How could it have been anything else?"  (That fellow over in the corner of the room who just stifled a chuckle knows all too well ... but, he won't bother you with it.  Just keep believing that it's magic, not hard work.)

[Mason Dixon]

On 4/3/2019 at 1:01 PM, john said:

 

You seem to be limited by not having distinct writing phases. You are mixing the draft phase with the edit phase. That means you are qualifying ideas as you go... which sucks as a way of generating ideas and really, really slows down your writing process. This probably has an effect on all your creative tasks. It usually stems from an over concern about mistakes, every decision becomes critical, everything needs to fit a growing list of criteria before you will accept it... coupled with an over attachment to preliminary ideas.

 

Artists who suffer from this often hesitated in the marks they made in a page. Often their drawings were rigid, and because they focused on detail prematurely, their art often had skewed perspective, the relationship between sizes was wrong.

 

The hesitancy came from feeling every mark on a page was critical. Chiselled in stone for all eternity. So they couldn’t make a mistake.

 

The solution was to pin 10 sheets of newspaper (the cheapest printed paper, already used and ready for the trash) to a drawing board, and give yourself 1 minute, or 2 minutes to sketch what you saw before you. After the agreed minute or two was up, you tore the sheet off the board, scrunched it up, and tossed it in the trash. The exercise was not to come up with a finished art work. Sure it might give you an idea, but this was not the implementation of grander visions. It was to get into the mindset of sketching what the mind saw quickly, with zero attachment to result, zero qualification of ideas, no long term buy-in.

 

Quite quickly artists cured that hesitance and over qualification and premature attachment that stifled their work. They learned to express themselves.... and that is one of the key things we need to do as songwriters.

 

I would recommend the equivalent approach for music. Try random mood selection using 2 dice, write a melody in 1 minute or 2 minutes (work up to 5) that matches the rolled mood (2 equals sad, 3 happy, 4 excited etc.) At least at first try recording the melodies, then when the time is up... delete them. Roll dice, next write.

 

When you go back to your normal writing, try having a distinct ideas and draft phase, the equivalent of sketches. Don’t go to edit phase until you have a draft of the overall song. Know that edit can be done in cycles (try an idea, if it works keep it at least for now, if not ditch it, at least for now) you can re-enter draft phase every time around the edit loop. Get used to knowing ideas are not fixed in stone, and at any point you can go back to trying new ideas at zero cost... after all, you still have the previous version of the work so, nothing ventured, nothing gained

 

Cheers

 

John

This make so much sense to me. I know I overthink the songwriting process way too much because I'll hear a song, and want my song to sound exactly like that and that's usually what causes me to become unmotivated, because it's hard to write a song based off of another and have it turn out original at the same time. 

  I've definitely had to work on being less critical about my work, which is really hard, but I think I'm getting better at it. I guess Im just always thinking too much about the end product before I take the steps to get there.

  As for the dice idea, I've heard it before but was always sceptical if it would work for me. But I will surely try it out and try to keep this perspective in mind. Thanks a lot!

[Michan]

Wow, master's answers always leave me speechless! 

See Maxon, what amazing community you are in? ^^

[john]

5 hours ago, Mason Dixon said:

I'll hear a song, and want my song to sound exactly like that

 

Try to avoid imitating someone else’s work. You didn’t get to hear all the iterations their work went through, plus you are combining a learning exercise with a creative task. Sure you can learn from being creative but when you are stalling (like an engine stalling) it is good to get clarity of purpose.

 

So for example, when I was getting up to speed with current pop production there are a few things to consider:

• I don’t have their gear
• What I hear now, they were doing 3 - 9 months ago at least
• Often they create tracks with a team of writers, producers and engineers, each with a load of experience
• I still don’t have their gear

I realised that to learn, I don’t need to do whole tracks. I just needed to identify the new or unique bit, the thing that drew me to it. I could then just do that bit, learn the technique (whether it was synthesis, effects, editing technique or performance). That allowed me to learn faster, to go through a lot of songs, a lot of producers, engineers, writers etc.

 

Pretty soon you are caught up with where they were 3 - 9 months ago. Then you start creating stuff based off of your new knowledge, you start anticipating trends, being ahead of trends. At some point you are creating stuff at the same time time they are producing similar on trend stuff... ie you are now ahead of the listener’s market and level with the creator market. Eventually comes a point where your music is ahead of where they are.... and it all comes from doing focused learning exercises.

 

In other words, save emulating the songs you hear for learning exercises, just doing the new, unique attractive bits. Much like the draft writing exercise, it is liberating.

 

When you are creating new, original songs, create your songs, not a pale imitation... I say pale because you already idealise the song whose style/sound/perspective you are being influenced by... matching up to that is an almost impossible task. You are asking yourself to be as fresh as the idea was when you first heard it, even though that can never be. How can you remotely hope to be happy with that? It is an old idea as soon as you hear it. Sure, hearing the original can still feel fresh and inspiring, but never as much as those first hearings. It is one of the reasons that it is very rare for a cover song to be as good as, never mind better than, the original.

 

So, learn about style, technique etc as best you can within those focused tasks, and focus on creating new, original track using your unique perspective and combination of skills, which no one else has. No one.

[Just1L]

One of the methods I use may help. Sometimes I start with the drums. I'll find a cool drum beat/track and put it in the DAW. I grab my guitar and just play the drum beat a few times. Eventually I start noodling a little on the guitar and eventually, every time, my mind connects with the drums and something comes out. What I like about this method is I'm really feeling those drums. When I start playing my riff, or chords, it's not just a riff or chords, it's the beginning of a song and to me, it makes it much more fun and enjoyable to play, which in turn removes any hesitations I have and the excitement of song writing begins.

 

Some times I try to write music to my lyrics, other times it's the other way around. Sounds like you have no problem with the lyrics, and may have a good amount of them. When you get this drum and guitar going obviously a certain feeling is going to go along with it. Look through your lyrics and see if any of those have the same or similar emotions the song your working on does. Edit as needed.