To increase your ability to generate songwriting ideas, it’s necessary to increase your life experience, and that means getting out of your comfort zone and embracing what life has to offer you.

Imagine having the confidence to fully experience your life with the knowledge that there’s a great song to be written as a result of the risk being taken.

That’s a mighty powerful way of looking at life.

A prime example of a situation that can benefit from this way of thinking is the awkward, clumsy and very vulnerable beginnings of falling in love. So many people just don’t take the risk for the fear of getting hurt.

Now, the fear of getting hurt is certainly a real one, no doubt about that but my argument is that if you’re committed to songwriting as a pathway to experiencing your life to the full then it is your duty as a songwriter to take the risk and go with it.

If whatever you take the risk on works out then you have some great songs to write. If it doesn’t work out then you still have some great songs to write (with perhaps a bit of therapy thrown in for good measure).

How can you lose?

Going out of your way to fully experience your life doesn’t mean having to endure mammoth changes, swings and roundabouts or extreme tragedy. It’s the little things that you can do to break the habits and routines of your day to day life that make all the difference.

Here are some examples of little things you can do to get more out of your life and therefore, get more out of your songwriting.

  • Go see a movie by yourself
  • Take a long walk on the beach
  • Go for a drive
  • Call a friend you haven’t spoken too in ages
  • Strike up a conversation with a complete stranger
  • Catch public transport
  • Go to a cafe and write (or start writing) in your journal
  • Smile at people and watch their reactions
  • Meditate and listen
  • Go skydiving (Optional – I can understand if people find this a little extreme)

    Generally, we try so hard to control everything in our lives so we don’t experience anything that we would consider as bad; however, by choosing songwriting as a way to experience life, we can relax and allow our lives to unfold before our eyes.

    Then we write a song about it.

    Just think, if you look at your life in this way, you will never be able to use the excuse “I don’t have anything to write about” ever again.

    What do you think about songwriting as a way to experience more out of life? What aspect of your life can you change up or do a little different today? How would that change affect you? Would you write a song about it?

    Remember (even if it is for the sake of your songwriting process), don’t ever be afraid to fully experience your life, choose it.

    Peace,

    Corey 🙂

    Anyone who knows me knows that I am a great believer in using anything that can create, inspire, stimulate and expand on my songwriting ideas and turn them into a finished song.

    The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in our day to day lives has just exploded over the last few years and the world of songwriting has not been immune to this phenomenon. 

    It seems that “AI” is the newest buzzword around and there’s a huge demand for AI to be involved with any and every part of the creative process. 

    It’s easy to come to the conclusion that any human involvement in the creative process will become obsolete. I don’t think this will be the case at all.

    Now I myself have used AI songwriting/musical tools to expand, embellish and enhance my own songwriting ideas and to get myself out of writer’s block. 

    I do this because I’m truly fascinated by the promise of AI and what it can do for songwriters and musicians alike. The promise being a never-ending flow of randomly generated songwriting ideas.

    Of course these ideas are not going to be perfect but that is the beauty of working with AI songwriting tools. These AI generated songwriting ideas will still need (and will probably always need) the discernment filter of a human brain that’s been trained by years of experience to steer those song ideas to completion.

    Are songwriting ideas generated by an AI tool less relevant than if they were 100% generated by a human? 

    As far as I’m concerned, no way because at the end of the day an AI songwriting tool is just that… A TOOL

    It’s a means to an end and when you think about it, any tool that can generate a songwriting idea is a good tool in my book.

    Recently, I updated my most popular blog post The BIG List Of Songwriting Prompts And Lyric Generators to now include a list of AI powered songwriting and lyric writing tools because whether we like it or not, THIS is going to be a big part of the future of songwriting.

    Whether they’re created by a computer program or, through machine learning, these songwriting ideas and prompts are just there to help stimulate creativity within the human mind.

    They exist to merely take your creativity to places you’d never go. For me, it’s like a mate giving you a tip on a great fishing spot but there are some advocates against AI in songwriting who talk about how using these tools is tantamount to cheating. 

    Yes, I suppose you can technically “cheat” if you really want to, but having AI write a song for you and then claiming it as your own work is a hollow victory (if you can just watch the film Yesterday and you’ll know exactly what I mean). 

    Just letting AI do all the heavy lifting would simply take all the fun out of creating and besides, is a guitarist who uses a capo a cheat? No, not at all.

    I personally want to be on the forefront of these developments rather than be lagging behind to play catch up. I’ll continue to use AI songwriting/lyric writing tools in my songwriting process and if there’s anything that I can share with you all in the future I will.

    So, in conclusion… As long as we control the technology within the process rather than the other way around, I think songwriting as a craft is not going to diminish in its humanity.

    What do YOU think about the role of AI in the songwriting process?

    The role of AI in songwriting has already launched some robust discussion and will continue to be an interesting conversation topic now and into the future so let me know what you think because I’m always up for a good chat.

    Peace,

    Corey 🙂