Songwriting is a crazy animal sometimes.
So to keep up with it, you may need to sneak around the back, behind your internal filters.
To help you do that, here are 10 songwriting tips that can get you out of a songwriting rut.
These are methods I use to shake loose my creativity.
(Note: songwriting has no rules. These are simply suggestions, so take the ones you like and trash the rest).
Here are 78 song ideas
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Be Quiet And Listen
In the book Songwriters On Songwriting, Bob Dylan tells the interviewer, “Poets do a lot of listening.” Sound advice from one of the best songwriters ever.
And he’s not the only one who understood the benefit of listening. Writer Austin Kleon has a whole section in his book Show Your Work! called “Shut Up And Listen.”
Author John Cage in his book Silence touches on this idea too.
“Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise,” he says. “When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.”
So try being silent for an hour and just listen.
Go to a public place and notice what hits your ears. Then jot down anything interesting and look at it later when you’re songwriting.
Set A Timer
Just look at an NBA player in the last seconds of a championship game — the clock is ticking, they’ve got the ball, if they make the shot, they win it all.
This forces them to make a decision.
Do I take the shot now, or do I have time for one crossover to get away from the defender?
Translate this idea to songwriting.
Set a timer for yourself — let’s say 10 minutes — and see how much of a song you can finish in that timeframe.
Let the pressure seep into your skin. Allow it to drive you to decisiveness. Get some words on the page.
Even if you write 10 lyrics and only one of them sticks, that’s progress.
Setting a timer can keep you from wasting time by noodling on your instrument or daydreaming about how amazing your song is going to be.
Write A Song A Day
Give yourself one day to pump out an entire song — melody, lyrics, chords, all of it.
It’s tough to pull off, but it can help strengthen your songwriting muscles.
I’ve enjoyed this method the most when I do it for a set period of time, like a week or a month, rather than making it a regular thing.
Because sometimes, a good song takes time to brew and it needs a month or a year to fully form.
But pressuring yourself to write a full, completed song in a single day can teach you a lot about writing better songs.
You learn more quickly what works and what doesn’t work.
Brainstorm Three Song Titles Each Day
You can also take that song-a-day idea and make it more digestible. Instead of writing a whole song, come up with three song titles a day.
It literally takes five minutes of your time.
I do a lot of songwriting on my phone, so instead of scrolling through Instagram for five minutes, I open up my Evernote app and jot down the first three interesting song ideas that come to mind.
You might brainstorm 100 song title ideas before you get one that’s worth exploring. And that’s okay.
Start With The Title
Speaking of titles, I’ve found it really helpful to start a song with a title.
If a song has a fascinating song title, it’s more likely to be a fascinating song.
Paul Simon told Paul Zollo that he likes to “discover” songs rather than “invent” them.
“It’s like you’re wandering down a path and you don’t know what the destination is,” he said in the interview.
“Somewhere, toward the end, you can sort of see what the destination is and you can understand what the journey is about.”
And when you start with just a song title — no contrived idea or specific message you want to get across — it can really lead you down a fun path.
If you start with just a seed, you can watch the song grow into a tree that’s much bigger than you.
Rewrite Other Songwriter’s Songs
Yes, you read that heading correctly. And it’s one of my favorite songwriting tips.
Let me explain.
Take a song by your favorite songwriter, rewrite the lyrics, switch up the chord progression, use the first two notes of the melody and create your own.
Make the song mean something to you.
Let me be clear, I’m not encouraging plagiarism.
I’m saying you can use another’s song as the foundation for your own.
You can even pull your favorite lyric from a song, come up with a new way to say it, then use that as the title for a completely new song you write from scratch.
The point is, let other songs directly influence your songwriting.
Try Stream-Of-Consciousness Writing
This method is helpful if you’re facing writer’s block.
Stream-Of-Consciousness Writing is basically brain vomiting onto the page.
Start writing (or typing) whatever the heck comes into your brain. Don’t put up any filters and don’t let your hands stop moving.
No one has to see what you write in this exercise, so it’s okay to just let it all out.
It may be gibberish, but I’ve found that a phrase or an idea will jump out among the rubbish. Try setting a timer for five minutes and start writing nonstop.
Make Some Random MIDI Notes In Your DAW
This is one of the more fun songwriting tips on this list.
Open up your DAW, add a new virtual instrument, and use your mouse to make a bunch of MIDI notes in random places.
Vary the length of notes and make sure you cover an entire octave at least.
Then hit play. Listen for any usable melody. It may just be a series of 2-3 notes, but that’s a start.
Make The Music First
Whether you use MIDI, some other audio plugin, or a live instrument, you can make the music first.
Then you can sing nonsense lyrics over it until you get something. (Simon actually did this for his album Graceland).
It may jar some sort of creative thing inside you that leads to a great song.
Write The Words First
On the flip side, you can write just the words first.
Call it poetry, call it prose. Whatever the case, you may end up with more compelling lyrics, more interesting stories, and more vivid imagery.
And a lot of songwriters were also poets — Leonard Cohen, John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, Kurt Cobain, and many others.
I’m not saying you should try to be these writers, but there seems to be something to writing standalone words that might lead to a more interesting song.
Again, find the songwriting tips you like. Then throw out the rest. Whatever helps you write songs you’re happier with.
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