Tracking and Developing Song Ideas

[john]

Hey All

 

What do you do to track and develop ideas for your songs?

 

Pen&pad, a notepad app on your phone/tablet/desktop? Do you use the memo recorder on your phone?

 

What about idea generators? Word suggestion tools? ChatGPT? Rhyming tools/books? Online Thesaurus?

 

We all use different ways, and I am interested in what others are using and hoping to also get some suggestions.

 

That aside, I am just interested in what you all do to work your magic

 

Cheers

 

John

[Christophe Tatlocke Holmes]

Hi John,

 

I always carry a folded up piece of paper and a pen, or if I'm at home have a notebook handy, in case inspiration hits - now I also sing it straight into a phone to make sure I get the tune as well. Before smartphones I'd note down the song or songs it sounded a bit similar to.

The thing about having ideas for songs is that they often come at inopportune moments, so you've got to have something handy to quickly note it down, no matter what you're doing at the time.

 

I type the song up and chords on the computer and save it - all songs saved under the year I wrote them. Most never see the light of day again, but just once in a while there's be one I'll feel is worth printing out and then I sing and play it over and over, scrawling changes with a pen on the printed out sheet until it's so illegible that I print out another copy with the amendments typed in, and go through the process again until I feel it's ok - or until the nagging doubt about certain lines goes away.

 

I have a Zoom HD recorder that acts as a mic and can connect that to the computer (which is usually on) so I can make a quick demo for myself too using Audacity at each stage, deleting the previous version when I record a new one. I save these by year and month..

 

I've tried idea generators and fed what I've thought were interesting song titles to ChatGPT and it's come up with the most lame and cliched rubbish you can imagine, complete with forced rhymes and awkward phraseology. I've used Rhymezone occasionally but never successfully - usually if I'm down to that then the song's dead and the fragment I've written goes into the ideas folder.

 

I always try to make a note of any and every idea - it's easy to push ideas aside because "that's not a proper song idea" or "it doesn't sound like what I'm aiming at" - but they can sometimes be the most rewarding ones - not least through being unexpected.

Edited January 11 by Christophe Tatlocke Holmes

[Mahesh]

I still prefer jotting ideas down using pen and paper and recording those ideas on a phone recorder. The thing is to make sure I always come back to it. This is an issue I had with productivity lists and journaling as well. I would write things down but never come back to reflect. It's still something I'm working on. With the songs, recording ideas inside of a DAW or maybe even writing the song within a DAW has helped in the past. It is much easier to get back to it and also to build an idea in a little more solid way compared to my acoustic guitar and voice. My guitar playing skills may limit me in exploring certain ideas while having a DAW within your songwriting session does help experiment with a range of sounds and maybe even try something you have never tried before. 

[john]

I have to admit I am very similar. I use a pen and paper + my phone for recording vocal melody ideas through to interesting riffs. I will add that I also heavily use the notes app on my iPhone. I want to also start photographing my notes and scribbles and use AI or OCR to decipher and record my paper notes.

 

I have no problem with ideas. If anything I have way too many to turn them all into songs. Similarly I have no problems with coming up with topics, perspectives and voices when I need to. I’ve played with ideas generators but find the suggestions to be too contrived and struggling to be relevant. I think they could be fun for challenges for challenge sake, but I don’t think I have turned any into a song I have actually added to my song tally. They are more like ideas to explore for fun and learning. Which is ok. I don’t think I expected them to be anything more.

 

Where I start largely depends on the song I want to write. Pop songs usually start with an emotion, then support it with a basic beat and quickly move into melody supported by a bass line (especially if it is a funky piece!). Electronica can start from a nice synth sound, a sequence, a rhythm or a melody. Rock I start with riffs, melody and phrase ideas. Folk I start with a vocal rhythm quickly followed by words and melody. Modern acoustic is similar except I often start with an emotion and idea, before getting a vocal rhythm, words and melody. Piano or guitar heavy pieces i usually start from emotion and let y that guide all that I do.

 

I usually centre around an emotion or emotional journey very quickly no matter where I start. The emotion helps me stay connected, it helps me retain the integrity of the piece (as I see it). It helps me weave the melodies, feel the rhythm, write words that mean something to me. I think it helps me make my songs feel authentic even if they are fictitious.

 

More and more I enjoy writing as I record. It helps keep a song fresh. I have found it easiest to do this with electronica and chill out music, but it is beginning to feature across the board for me. It helps me to keep songs feeling fresh, raw, unfiltered, at least to my ear!

[Christophe Tatlocke Holmes]

On 1/18/2024 at 2:44 AM, john said:

Where I start largely depends on the song I want to write. Pop songs usually start with an emotion, then support it with a basic beat and quickly move into melody supported by a bass line (especially if it is a funky piece!). Electronica can start from a nice synth sound, a sequence, a rhythm or a melody. Rock I start with riffs, melody and phrase ideas. Folk I start with a vocal rhythm quickly followed by words and melody. Modern acoustic is similar except I often start with an emotion and idea, before getting a vocal rhythm, words and melody. Piano or guitar heavy pieces i usually start from emotion and let y that guide all that I do.

That's interesting. I've never tried to write a song to belong to a specific genre, e.g. pop song or a folk song, or rock etc. Similarly I've never written using a specific emotion as a starting point. I always look to the title to be the springboard - with the aim that it summarises the entire song in a few words. If I come up with a title that inspires me, sometimes the song will pretty much write itself. Other times it's a real struggle though, with countless re-writes and amendments.

[Mahesh]

6 hours ago, Christophe Tatlocke Holmes said:

That's interesting. I've never tried to write a song to belong to a specific genre, e.g. pop song or a folk song, or rock etc. Similarly I've never written using a specific emotion as a starting point. I always look to the title to be the springboard - with the aim that it summarises the entire song in a few words. If I come up with a title that inspires me, sometimes the song will pretty much write itself. Other times it's a real struggle though, with countless re-writes and amendments.

 

That's very interesting! The title of the song usually arrives way later in the process in my case, mostly after I've finished writing the chorus but not always. 

 

A good example for me was Drowning. I did start writing with a certain emotion and a certain backstory in my head. But the last word on the chorus "Are we foolish now? Just hold my hand as I drown" was what captured most of what I wanted to express and thus became the title of the song. 

 

 

[john]

On 1/20/2024 at 9:43 AM, Christophe Tatlocke Holmes said:

That's interesting. I've never tried to write a song to belong to a specific genre, e.g. pop song or a folk song, or rock etc. Similarly I've never written using a specific emotion as a starting point. I always look to the title to be the springboard - with the aim that it summarises the entire song in a few words. If I come up with a title that inspires me, sometimes the song will pretty much write itself. Other times it's a real struggle though, with countless re-writes and amendments.

 

I like to get the emotion, even the emotional journey. Once I have the emotion everything else just flows from there. The words and music are unified by the emotion. The emotional integrity is important for me. As for writing for specific genres, funnily enough I often express things with ambiguity to broaden how people connect with it. I do a lot to enable songs to be fairly portable genre wise, and certainly write enough where the emphasis during edit is on finding a broader genre identity that it’s perfectly ok to have some that genre is much more integral to the piece.

 

For example, some songs are fairly tightly bound to genre. It doesn’t mean they can’t be adapted, just that there may be some limitations. If your melody focuses on a blues pentatonic scale and your lyrics are 12 bar blues in structure, you may well find overcoming these aspects not straight forward. Similarly, topics and language can similarly brand a song with a genre identity. Goth and death metal lyrics don’t really do brightly coloured flowers, skipping and feeling bright and optimistic. Ok, cyber goth does have it’s brighter elements but you get the point.

 

More to the point, if all my songs are to avoid genre specific elements, you miss out on a lot of interesting things that happen because of genre, or at least your songs contain watered-down ideas.

 

Going beyond writing for specific genres, try writing a song or two for specific artists other than you. It’s another way of using constraint to focus your writing. I find that by varying approach it keeps my writing fresh. The same is true by varying target audience, varying restraints…. Variety breeds a very fertile base for writing. When I encounter songwriters in a rut, or writers struggling to write or finish songs, often their approach is predictable, stale and yields fairly uninspiring songs. By keeping yourself on your toes, it feeds creativity.

[john]

Oh and I often try to get the title, or a draft title soon after getting the emotion. The words develop from topics suggested by the emotion and title. It all just helps you get workable fresh ideas that enable more reliable writing, a faster writing process, less frustration, and more completed songs.