My current struggle with songwriting
I've dealt with not having inspiration, and definitely when I was starting out I had a lack of skills to work with. At the moment it's wrestling with completing a song. I'm finding that some of my songwriting is like hearing a half of a song. Half of a really great song that I want to keep listening to. Trying to figure out what the rest can feel like I forgot what is it. It's as if it's a crossword puzzle, with some clues but a lot of blank spaces. Continuing this analogy, the clues could be the theme or a few lines and the structure of the story arch. It's a bit tedious at times going over a track which sounds great and I know will be something I'm really proud of but there's still a lot to figure out.
If you're not afraid of having a law suit on your hands, there's lots of new AI tools for suggesting stems and parts for composing the music to a song. This body of available inspiration is naturally contributed to by the fact that certain ideas are repeatable whilst seeming original. But lyrics is a different story, once they've been used they totally belong to someone.
Funny that tith 12 chromatic notes to pull from there is never a wrong move for a chord progression or melody, but if you hear lyrics someone else has written they are immediately something you can't replicate. Even though there are more than 12 words in most languages it seems when you're stuck on lyrics, there may as well be only that many.
How do we get past this?
1. COLLABORATION
I know my favorite way to work through things is to get out of your own head and collaborate with others. This doesn't have to be done directly by organizing with another local songwriter who can come to your house and fix your notes. Even listening to music and hearing different ways other songwriters have expressed ideas in a similar vain can lead to inspiration for your next lyric.
You can even ask freinds and family where they think the song is going. You can then use that idea or flip it on it's head to make it entirely unpredictable.
2. SET A CLEAR TASK
I've taken to taking that crossword metaphor more literally. Writing down what I do know as if it's a clue to some existing but hidden words. I make it clear what I want, eg This verse is meant to develop the part of the story when the couple met which will lead to the relationship breakdown in the next section; it's going to have an A B B B A internal rhyme structure; and it says something about things being unstable or seeming safe but it's not passed it's safety assessment- that kind of Hazzard language.
Now of course once you have that written down it becomes very very easy to cheat to the end of the puzzle by asking AI to give you exactly that as if it were a prompt. Chat.GPT has even given me a response along the lines of 'let me know if you need any help coming up with lyrics.' An AI writing your song for you is just a terrible idea, you don't learn anything without pushing yourself through this, and as soon as AI makes up a line you really like, you'll want to use it but you also didn't really write it yourself. (I've used AI for proofread, restructuring essays, and suggesting titles or topics on writing assignments, but I do not recommend AI for the creative process). So make sure you are using this to promt yourself.
3. THE WORD BANK
Play with language or just read some that I don't often use myself. Olivia Rodrigo said she often uses poetry to inspire her songwriting. Once you've seen how others have connected differernt words to the topic you want to write a song about you are allowed to lean on those exsisting connections. Ultimatly the idea of sourcing some language on the topic before you start is so you can build a word bank to pull from.
I'm sure there are more wany to inspire the lyrics you're looking for, but this is the option I'm going to explore for the next wee while.
See the next post here: The Vocabulary Trick | Songwriting Advice
xxo Beka
Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay
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