Yesterday, I tried to answer that question.

You see I’m trying to release 52 new pieces of music this year – one a week. After spending the start of the year mixing old recordings and finishing off half-done projects, I’m now at the stage where I have to write new music.

Come 7pm yesterday, I had literally nothing for this week’s music. Not a thing.

I was determined to meet my arbitrary, self imposed deadline though – was going to do it! In 30 minutes I created a new song from scratch, without any inspiration or flash of insight.

Here’s how:

Step 1.

I picked two chord shapes, tweaking them on the guitar until I had two that I don’t think I’ve played before:

A6+9:

-0-
-0-
-6-
-4-
-7-
-5-

and C#min9

-0-
-4-
-4-
-2-
-4-
-x-

I recorded a bar of each, picked as an arpeggio, into Reaper. I then looped this for about 6 minutes.

Step 2. Layers

I recorded three extra layers. First a second guitar part, using the same chords but in a different voicing. This I looped along with the first.

Next I recorded a synth part, then a strings part. Both of these were played into Reaper using a cheap guitar to midi interface I have called the Sonuus G2M. These were improvised, at random but staying in key. I made sure I stuck to atmospherics and left lots of gaps

Step 3. Lyrics

I had no idea what I was going to write about. I didn’t want that to stop me, so i spent a while messing around with the MUSE tools over at www.fawm.org and google translate. This are great fund. Put some random words into ‘lyricloud’ – copy the results into google translate, translate through several languages then back into English and hey presto, randomised words that are kind of connected.

I then sang the result into Reaper, improvising a melody as I went. When I heard a line I liked I repeated it.

Here’s the result of all that, free to download if you’d like a copy. 52 Things #17, Earthbound:

Is it the best song I’ve ever written? Maybe not, but it works and I’m happy with it. And not once did I feel inspired – it was all hard work and craft. It was improvised and sounds it, but it is a genuine piece of music that works.

Have you ever written a song to a deadline, without feeling inspired? Use the comments to share!

Does songwriting really need inspiration?

Here’s my immediate off the cuff response:

What a fascinating question- the short in answer is ‘no’, the slightly longer answer is ‘no, but it helps’. You can write a song purely as an exercise in craft. However, inspiration – by which I mean that unexpected flash of insight – really helps. I find the ebst thing to do is just noddle, jam, improvise, play around and let ideas turn up, then make sure you have recorder/pen/paper to hand to record those answers. However, you definitely can write a song without that flash of apparently ‘automatic’ inspiration.

I feel the need to write a more in depth blog post about this, but before I do can I ask your opinion? Does songwriting really need inspiration? If so, how to you encourage inspiration? If not, what can a songwriter do instead?

Comments please!

This post is a bumper crop, 1 new mix, 1 new song, 1 live ‘bootleg’ album.

#13 – Master of the Sidings.

This song was written last year, but this is a new arrangement of it. I’m particularly pleased with the groove in the verses and the string arrangement. Lyrically, it’s a murder ballad. As about 60% of my songs are.

#14 – Shiver

A song written for FAWM 2011, a game of two halves. I only have a rough demo of this and as it doesn’t quite fit in with any of my other projects I don’t know if I’ll revisit this any time soon.

#15 – Live at the Green Dragon.

This week I played a gig which was broadcast on ustream:

Video streaming by Ustream

I’ve ripped the audio off, for convenience sake, so you can download a free copy if you would care to do so: