“All the posts about changing key and arranging instruments are useful, but before I start doing that, don’t I need a song to arrange? How do I get things written!”
There’s no point worrying about the bassline, the drop chorus or the guitar solo if you haven’t written anything yet. This post should give you a couple ideas about how to get things done.
Last month, as I’ve mentioned before, I took part in February Album Writing Month.
I’ve been writing songs for a good few years now, but in all that time I’ve never been forced to compose to such tight deadlines.
In the end I didn’t quite get the 14 and a half songs written, but I did write a lot more than I thought I would. Doing so meant changing both my working methods and my judgements.
Here are the ideas that helped me:
- Be prepared. I made sure, for the whole month of February, I had a microphone set up in front of the computer, a guitar and tuner nearby and a notebook constantly at hand. As soon as I had an idea, or even before, I could start recording.
- Just do it! Two of the songs I wrote were near enough improvisations. Rather than thinking about structure or lyrical ideas, I just started noodling.
- Start with a first line Which obviously is where you’d usually start, but those two improvised songs started as a first line. That first line informed me what the melody and mood would be, and also what the story of the song would be. Both were on subject i never thought I’d touch in a song.
- Don’t judge This was the toughest and most important idea to get hold of. The point of the FAWM excercise was to write fourteen songs, not to write fourteen good songs. I had to forget whether the song was any good, and just make sure it was written
- Use up old ideas Thanks to my trusty notebook and computer archives, I could dig out all those ideas that I hadn’t finished and finally put some work into them.
All of which are ideas that are worth following in songwriting generally.
Before you can perfect a song, you need to write it!
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