Songwriting Zen Article DirectoryHand Picked Songwriting Articles For Your Reading Pleasure :)

Our brains are amazing things, they can soak up information and store things away however, as we get older (and wiser) we start to forget things. It seems we need to let some of the old stuff out of our heads so we can let the new stuff in.

Never trust your memory. Unless your memory is photographic you will lose more ideas than you gain.

Julia Cameron in her book “The Artists Way” calls this concept the ‘filling of the well’.

I liken the concept to siphoning petrol from a car. Once you get the initial flow established (and the awful taste out of your mouth) the flow then becomes constant.

By simply writing what is in your head down onto paper or tape (such as a journal) you are making space for other ideas to come into being. Its like you are creating a vacuum for the new ideas to appear out of the ether.

I have heard songwriters say that they were merely the channel for a song to come into existence. It’s like they were the transmitter and through them the song was able to be received by the listener.

Remember, if at anytime you think of something that could even be minutely used in a song, write it down, record it onto tape or even ring your home phone number and leave the idea on your answering machine, do anything to keep the idea alive and get that flow happening.

About The Author