Orrin

A friend emailed me today to ask me about my songwriting. She was struggling with starting to write her own songs and wanted an insight into my process. Now I'm definitely no pro song writer. I've been writing songs for less than a year but I think I've come a long way and I wanted to share my answer with you guys:

At the beginning of this year I really wanted to get started with songwriting but I was really struggling with getting anything done... So I set myself a challenge. In January I set out to write a new song every single day for the entire month. I wanted to learn how to write a song from start to finish.

By the end, I had written about 17 songs. So not one every single day but I set the rule that I had to finish a song on the same day I started it so that it couldn't drag on. Some days it took me 10 minutes, other days a couple of hours.


Now I don't play any of them any more. I actually only liked a couple of them and only a little bit. They were mostly pretty rubbish, which is to be expected of my first songwriting attempts!

But! The important thing was that I learnt how to finish a song. And because of that, now I can knock out a new song pretty quickly and currently I have very few songs which are half done. These days, once I start a song, I usually "finish" it in the same sitting. Often I'll make some tweaks to it later as I'm playing it a little more.. or sometimes I'll just forget about it completely because it was just not that great (and now I don't have to waste any more energy on it).

I really think that it's better to have a completed song that's not so perfect than a whole bunch of half ready songs.

This worked really well for me because I'm definitely a perfectionist. But really you can't be a perfectionist when you want to engage in creative pursuits because a creative thing is never really perfect, it can always be improved. So I had to learn how to say "well, it's good enough. Not perfect and I probably could have made it better but that's OK. The next song will be better again". It's all just practice.

Like I said, my first few songs pretty much sucked but they were good stepping stones that brought me nearer to my goal of playing my music live for other people (which I can now do!)

I hope some people give this one song a day challenge a go! I really think it's fantastic.

Cheers,

Orrin

 

thalamus

I's really hard to write a song, I'm impressed if you write one in a few minutes !

RonDeezle

Once I start writing I tend to dish them out pretty quickly.

ikandy

I think both is important:
Sometimes going for quantity and not worrying about every detail and perfecting everything is a great way to brainstorm and come up with ideas and let your creativity flow. Other times, if you have a really GOOD melody or idea you want to give it the time and attention it deserves to become the greatest song you ever made. And that may take time and patience. So it's case by case. Remember: most good songs are 10% inspiration and 90% transpiration!

Exit60

That seems like really good advice - I'm going to have to try that, especially when summer rolls around. I'm in the same boat you were in at first - A whole lot of half-finished songs.

yolanta

I usually don't write songs on a specific schedual, so i dont really know how long it takes me to come up with a song. But what i do when i create music, is that i just think in music; like when i see something that awakes an emotional response for me, i think about that with a rythm in my head.

this is how i start writing songs anyway, finishing them off can be harder sometimes though.