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Just think, as songwriters, every time we write a song we start off with a blank page.

It sits there and it waits patiently for us to pick up our pen and pour out our songwriting ideas from our hearts and minds onto its surface however, a blank page can mean one of two things to a songwriter.

It can either be either something to be fearful of, a scary journey into the unknown or, a doorway to infinite songwriting idea possibilities.

Let me ask you this.

Are you free to create whatever you want, whenever you want without second guessing, self-censorship or prejudice on your part? Or, are you a songwriter that feels shackled by the belief that you must obtain some sort of quantifiable result every time you put your pen to paper?

Which headspace would you rather be in?

I know that I’m asking a lot of questions here but as songwriters, this is something we face every time we sit down to write a song and as our answers to these questions are automatic and unconscious, we wonder why at times we don’t write anything.

This is when we start blaming things like songwriters block.

So, try this simple exercise the next time you sit down to write a song. Look at that blank page in front of you as your friend and playmate.

You see, just the very thought of sitting down to write a song means that there is possibility that the muse will knock on your door and ask if you can come out to play.

It just takes a shift in our perspective

We need to remind ourselves that writing a song can be one or more of these three experiences:

  • A linear experience – You come across a possible song title that jumps out at you and after writing the first line of the first verse, a first draft is suddenly completed from start to finish.
  • A puzzle solving exercise – You take a piece here, a song title there, a bit of a verse here and a half written phrase there and, after discovering the common thread that connects everything, a song is eventually completed.
  • Like incubating an egg – You finish writing a chorus but find you can’t go any further however, after leaving the half finished song for a period of time something triggers in your mind and the song magically completes itself.

Sometimes you start writing a song from the beginning and work forwards, sometimes you start a song from the middle and work outwards and sometimes you start writing at the end and work backwards.

When it comes to songwriting, it doesn’t matter where you start, as long as you start somewhere.

Just remember, a blank page is not proof that you’ve not written a song. It’s merely the doorway to an infinite world of songwriting idea possibilities and all you need to do is have the courage to walk through it, regardless of the outcome.

So get out of your own way and allow yourself to be free to create.

Okay, take a deep breath… How is that blank page looking now? Let me know if shifting your perspective towards the blank piece of paper works for your songwriting process.

It certainly does for me.

Peace,

Corey 🙂

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I, like many, many songwriters have a problem with my songwriting process…

It’s called “perfectionism” and along with an extremely over-zealous inner critic, this problem has plagued me my whole songwriting/music career.

I have tried many times to snap out of it and to some extent have been temporarily successful numerous times over the years but at the end of the day, my default songwriting position is of being paralysed by too much choice.

My main curse is that I don’t finish things. I absolutely love to start things but I’ve never really finish things… Songs, tasks, projects, activities. I rarely finish things to the standard that I’d would like but then again, maybe that’s the problem.

Maybe, I set impossible standards for myself.

Anyways, I stumbled across an article all about this very problem of perfectionism in songwriting and the author was going through the very same issues as I am, right now.

Reading David Silverstein’s article Why It’s So Important To Finish Your Music And Share It With The World resonated with me on so many levels. In regards to his situation of not finishing his music he writes…

I realized that finalizing and sharing my music was the part that scared me the most. I was afraid. I was afraid of marking something complete because then I would have to answer to my own work. I could and would be held accountable for the result, which my perfectionism was never going to be happy with. If I was going to wait until I was 100% happy with something, I was going to be waiting a very long time.

BINGO! Therein lies my issue… Fear of being accountable for my work, fear of being criticised and the fear of having to answer to trolls online.

He goes on by offering some suggestions as to how to get past this fear and for me, the first things that I need to do is to stop setting outlandishly unreachable goals for myself. My goals should be smaller and happen more often.

Maybe what I need to do is to stop looking at my songwriting process as a series of sudden bursts of productivity and try to create a songwriting process that is more streamlined, organised, consistent and sustainable.

More than ever, good music needs to be written and shared with the world so why should fear and doubt in my own abilities get in the way of me sharing my music with the world?

David Silverstein finishes off his article with a simple quote from Leonardo da Vinci…

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

I’ll be using this COVID-19 downtime I find myself in to finally conquer my songwriting fears and doubts. I hope to be finishing a lot of songs.

Do you have the same issue? Love starting off projects but don’t take it to completion? Let me know what experiences you’ve had with this and how you managed to work around it. I’d love to hear from you.

Peace,

Corey 🙂

Check out the original article: Why it’s so important to finish your music and share it with the world

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Let’s look at the word SONGWRITING for a minute. The dictionary meaning of the word is the “… writing the music and words of songs.”

Now that should give us a clue but I think the definition it goes deep enough. I reckon the meaning of the word SONGWRITING should be something like…

“The process in which a song is created using words and melody”

The word itself is comprised of two words, song and writing. The song part is the end result of a process and the writing part is the process itself.

Get it… Without the writing there is no song.

It seems like a simple concept doesn’t it? But it’s amazing how many songs aren’t written. They are started but never finished.

You see, you can talk all you like about verses, choruses, middle-eights, bridges, pre-choruses, the length of the intro and hooks and so on but without the physical activity of writing the song, all of that theory is meaningless.

Introducing the Songwriting Process

Personally, songwriting is much, much more than the song itself. The act of writing a song is a whole process in itself. It’s a discipline, a meditation and for me, a way of life.

Without a songwriting process, a song (being the end result of the process) would not exist at all.

If we, as songwriters didn’t have our own songwriting process, then all of our thoughts, feelings and songwriting ideas will become random, haphazard and lacking in organisation.

How would you be able to maintain a creative and sustainable songwriting environment with all that disorganisation going on?

Pablo Picasso once said that “… inspiration exists, but it has to find you working” and I think that sums everything I’ve been trying to say in this post nicely.

In future posts I’ll be writing about how you can create, adopt and manage your own songwriting process and in turn write more songs rather than just waiting for inspiration to come your way. Plus, I’ll be giving you insights as to how I write my songs.

What does songwriting and the process involved in writing a song mean to you? Feel free to let me know as we all have something to learn from each other.

Peace,

Corey 🙂