Songwriting Help
The 50/90 Challenge Is Here Again
Today is the start of one of the greatest songwriting challenges ever constructed IMHO. The 50/90 challenge.
Run by the good folks at FAWM (February Album Writing Month), the premise of the challenge is really simple: Write 50 songs in the 90 days starting July 4th until October 1st. It’s a simple concept but incredibly hard to achieve.
According to the 50/90 challenge website the challenge is:
“… (a) club. Each summer, 50/90 forges a collaborative community where musicians of all walks and skill levels write a slew of new music material in only three months. That’s roughly one tune every other day. Participants are a mix of music professionals, students, homemakers, and folks who work day-jobs but rock nightclubs”.
Sounds great!
I tried it last year and failed miserably (well, that’s how I saw it) but hey, that’s the great thing about the 50/90 community. It’s a community where everyone helps each other, where there’s no failure, just a lot of fun, networking and good songwriting.
Doing the 50/90 challenge last year really showed me that I had very little control over my inner critic and my need for absolute perfectionism. This realization caused a great deal of initial sadness which caused me to question whether I should continue with this songwriting blog.
I was thinking to myself things like: “How can I write a blog about writing songs when I find it hard to write songs myself?”
Thankfully I got over myself very, very quickly.
I’m going to participate in the 50/90 challenge this year but this time I’m going to not take it so seriously and just have fun with it. If I write 50 songs in 90 days then great, if not then at least I’m writing, which is something I really love doing.
Give the 50/90 challenge a go and see what happens. It maybe the kick in the pants that you’ve been looking for.
Until next time, happy writing,
Corey Stewart
Singer/Songwriter/Musician
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Keywords: 50/90, fawm, songwriting, songwriter, writing songs, songwriting tip, songwriting blog, songwriting help, songwriting zen, sonwriting idea, corey stewart
Songwriting Zen Forum Is Now Closed
A couple of days ago I decided to take down the Songwriting Zen Forum.
The reasons for closing it down are twofold:
First of all, I didn’t have the time to devote to it anymore. For all of its good points, phpBB (the software I was using to produce the forum) gave me too much of a steep learning curve to tackle and besides, starting up a discussion forum is easier on something like Facebook.
Secondly, (and the most important reason) The forum has been over-ridden with SPAM to the point where the it has become unmanageable and because of phpBB’s steep learning curve I’ve been unable to control it.
For all the people who have registered and contributed I want to first of all thank you very much for the time you’ve put into your comments and discussions and at the same time I want to extend a sincere apology for not continuing on with it.
I do however, have a Songwriting Zen Facebook Page ready to go so I’ll be moving the forum there. Check out the page and become a fan.
Stay tuned for more information. I’ll let you all know when it’s ready to go. I’d love to pick up the songwriting discussions where we left off.
Until next time, happy writing,
Corey Stewart
Singer/Songwriter/Musician
Keywords: songwriting, songwriter, songwriting forum, songwriting tip, songwriting idea, songwriting help, songwriting resource, songwriting blog, corey stewart
Some Creative Suggestions For Your Songwriting
One of my favourite songwriting websites I visit regularly is the TAXI website. I really like the articles and helpful tips that they have on the site as well as the songwriting A&R service that they provide.
I recently came across an article titled “Creative Suggestions” by Michael Anderson. It’s essentially a huge list of suggestions to help expand your songwriting process and to expand you as a songwriter.
Just the very thing that I’m trying to do with Songwriting Zen. Here is the article for your enjoyment.
By Michael Anderson
(This Article Originally Published in TAXI – July 2008)
One of the great things I have found about teaching is how much you end up learning. The best way to learn about something is to help someone else do it.
As part of my teaching, recently I interviewed a guest, Paula McMath, who came in with amazing material prepared for the class.
I am going to share excerpts of one section here — it comes form a handout she gave the class called “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.”
I don’t know where it came from, or who wrote it — and I am editing it for focus and length here. If you are so motivated, I am sure you can find the whole thing on the Internet somewhere.
So here are some suggestions for your process in writing:
Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it.
The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on.
Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.
Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been.
Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, trials, and errors.
Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question.
Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study.
Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly Postpone criticism.
Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice—begin anywhere.
Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
Harvest ideas—edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence.
Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with strife, friction, exhilaration, delight, and creative potential.
Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.
Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things.
Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.
Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device dependent.
Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise.
Don’t borrow money. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic-simulated environment.
Make mistakes faster.
Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable.
Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did—make up something else.
Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
Excerpted from Michael Anderson’s Little Black Book of Songwriting available at: www.michaelanderson.com
| Need a to get your Songs to Record Labels, Publishers or Major Artists? Then check out TAXI: The World’s Leading Independent A&R Company, helping bands, artists and Songwriters get signed. |
What points really take your fancy? Let me know!
Incidently, I looked up Michael Anderson’s Little Black Book of Songwriting on his website and was so impressed with the write up that I went and bought it. I’ll let you know what I think of it.
Until next time, happy writing,
Corey Stewart
Singer/Songwriter/Musician
Keywords: songwriting, songwriter, songwriting tip, songwriting idea, songwriting help, songwriting zen, songwriting blog, open mic, corey stewart
Using A Thesaurus To Conquer Songwriters Block
I believe that as songwriters we need to do whatever it takes to get our songwriting ideas out of our heads and onto paper.
I started Songwriting Zen to document the many different tips, tricks and techniques that can be used to enhance the songwriting process.
I have written about using a Thesaurus in an earlier post called “Songwriting Tools – Rhyming Dictionary & Thesaurus” however, I came across an article by Orlando Gutierrez from www.songwriteradvisor.com, detailing the way he uses a thesaurus to help him write songs.
The article is called “Songwriting Help For Songwriters’ Block”. I hope you get as much out of it as I did.
By Orlando Gutierrez
Few songwriters use thesauruses during the songwriting process, thinking it’s either a form of cheating, it ruins their natural creativity making lyrics sound forced, or simply because they don’t own a copy of one!
But a thesaurus offers the most songwriting help when it comes to songwriters block and there are actually several techniques on how to use it.
First, I assure you it’s not a form of cheating. Furthermore, when used properly, a handful of related words fished from a thesaurus for a given theme can open your mind up to possibilities you would never think of on your own.
Guess what happens after that? Yep, your natural creativity follows, springing ideas from each useful word you can find.
Plain lines become original and interesting, small ideas turn into larger ones with perhaps alternate story lines or feelings for your song themes, and you ultimately become more and more creative on your own as you write each song.
I call that totally original with a helpful push!
By using a thesaurus correctly, you can actually get rid of writers block forever. Understand, however, that you’re going to have better songwriting sessions than others, but you will certainly not fall into writers block!
Next time you proclaim, “Help, I’ve got songwriters block. I need some songwriting help,” don’t feel so frustrated. We’ve all been there and share your pain.
Use this awesome “use-a-thesaurus-to-get-rid-of-writers-block” tip to get you started on the right track, and you’ll be on your way to getting rid of songwriters block forever:
1. Pick a theme for your song. (i.e., let’s say your song theme is something plain like, “I feel so alive because I’m in love with this person”).
2. Pick an interesting or even bland word from your song theme (i.e., the words feel, alive, and love stand out, so we’ll pick the most interesting one first- “alive”). Don’t worry if the original word is bland. One average word brings others to life!
3. Look in your thesaurus or use an online thesaurus such as Rhymezone, and find related words to the word “alive” while thinking of your theme.
These are the related words I found in Rhymezone: aware, awake, vital, give, exist, breathing, life, remember.
4. Now write down these words in a single column on the left side of a paper.
5. Repeat the process with every single related word retrieved from the word “alive”, starting with “aware”, keep building your word list , and keep writing each word until you have two to four columns.
6. Now you have a worksheet to pick words from, which will naturally spring ideas as they relate to your song theme!
As an example let’s review the original words we found on Rhymezone from the word “alive”: aware, awake, vital, give, exist, breathing, life, remember.
Here are four original, interesting lines quickly sprung from this process:
I keep staying awake
Too aware of my breathing
My pulse is amplifying
Everything I’m feeling
It took less than 1 minute. These lines are definitely keepers and can definitely be the start of a solid song. There are some added words not on the list (last two lines), but that’s the whole idea!
These words naturally came to me by using the other words. Mr. Thesaurus once again to the rescue!
Orlando Gutierrez is a former Warner/Chappell Staff songwriter who dedicates most of his time to his website, www.songwriteradvisor.com, in order to provide innovative songwriting tips and techniques to give songwriters an edge over the competition in an ever-changing music industry.
Look at the free 7-step songwriting blueprint, and sign up for your free monthly newsletter “Tune Sleuth” today at www.songwriteradvisor.com
© Copyright – Orlando Gutierrez – All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Orlando_Gutierrez
I’ve always felt that when used correctly, the thesaurus could be a powerful songwriting tool but after reading this article I now know for sure that a thesaurus needs to be an essential tool to help with your songwriting process.
Just in case you feel a little blocked from time to time.
Until next time, happy writing,
Corey Stewart
Singer/Songwriter/Musician
Keywords: thesaurus, songwriting, songwriter, songwriting tip, songwriting idea, songwriting help, songwriting blog, songwriting idea, songwriting process, corey stewart
Writing Songs For Therapy
When life gets you down and you have no-one to talk to, instead of bottling up your emotions, write a song about it.
Writing a song about your feelings is a wonderful way of expressing what’s inside you and a great way to get things of your chest.
There are far too many people who never allow themselves the chance to release their bottled up feelings. It’s been proven that carrying around your sadness and anger makes you sick, so for us songwriters we are a very fortunate lot indeed.
Just remember, not every song that you write has to be performed in the public arena. You are allowed to write songs for you and you only. No-one needs to know about them. They can be your own little secret if you wish.
Just as long as you write.
If you have a problem it’s widely recognised that sharing the problem with family and friends is a very healthy thing to do. Writing songs for therapy follows a similar concept but you are having the conversation with yourself.
By putting your problems or emotions into a musical context you’re putting a positive spin on a negative situation. At the end of it all you can say to yourself that a good song came out of a bad situation
Writing songs about your feelings allows you to put things into perspective because you have to think about what’s happening to you in a different way.
Instead of spending hours telling yourself the same old long protracted story about what’s happening in your life, you condense it all into a four minute song. This requires you to ‘cut to the chase’ and by doing that, the problem or emotion are not as intense as was first thought.
What you do with the songs you write in this way is totally up to you however, it’s how these songs help you through the tough times not what you do with them that’s the important thing here.
It works for me. I have written a lot of therapy songs, some I play in public and some I don’t.
From time to time I think about what my life would’ve been like if I hadn’t written those songs. I can tell you now I wouldn’t be where I am today, that’s for sure.
Please, don’t be afraid to write about how you feel even if you don’t want to face up to it. This is a great exercise in being really honest with yourself and your feelings.
Don’t you feel a therapy session coming on about now? The doctor is now in.
Until next time, happy writing,
Corey Stewart
Singer/Songwriter/Musician
Keywords: songwriting, songwriter, songwriting tip, songwriting idea, songwriting help, songwriting technique, writing songs, corey stewart
Songwriting Ideas Are Infinite And Sacred
Never throw anything away, EVER!
You just never know. That piece of paper you threw in the bin with the half finished lyrics penned the night before might have contained the ideas for THE song that defines you as a performer, artist or writer.
All it might’ve needed was a few re-writes.
The cornerstone to my Songwriting Zen philosophy is that all songwriting ideas are infinite and sacred at the same time
I know that this concept sounds either paradoxical or steeped in religion but it’s neither of those.
First of all, ideas are infinite because they are everywhere. You just have to allow yourself to be perceptive to them.
One person may see a leaf falling from a tree and not think twice about it while someone else may see the same falling leaf as a metaphor for freedom.
There are lots of songs written about freedom.
If you take the view that ideas are infinite then you cease being protective of the songs you have already written.
By letting go of that protection you allow your songs to truly breathe, be listened to and be performed.
You also stop yourself having the view that everything that you write has to be good.
Remember, if you write a song that you are not sure of, DON’T THROW IT AWAY. Just leave it and go onto something else. You will always think of another idea (if you allow yourself that is).
Secondly, ideas are sacred because they come from you.
That alone is a reason to keep everything you write. Throwing away a songwriting idea is throwing away a part of you.
You should be proud of your songs whether you feel they are good, bad or indifferent.
The good songs are the ones you perform. A gift from yourself to yourself.
The not so good ones should be acknowledged as the stepping stones that they are. You can always go back to them later.
You know, it’s ok to write a song about world peace. It’s ok to write a song about love and it’s ok to write a song about a falling leaf. As long as it comes from you that’s all that matters.
Besides, you are never going to run out of songwriting ideas.
Until next time, happy writing,
Corey Stewart
Singer/Songwriter/Musician
Keywords: songwriting idea, songwriting, songwriter, songwriting tip, songwriting help, songwriting technique, corey stewart
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