Find Inspiration for Killer Songwriting

When listening to a well-written song (or a poorly written one), you might believe that you are just as capable of doing the same thing. So you decide to put pen to paper and start writing. But as you sit there, staring at the empty page, your mind goes completely blank. All those great ideas you had seconds before are gone. What happened? And how can you get it back? I also share a little of this in my personal blog

Writer’s block is fairly common, especially among beginners. There are as many sources of inspiration for great songwriting as there are snowflakes or fingerprints. All it takes is a little practice to get inspired and those creative juices will be flowing once again.

- Read your old diaries. Love, and all the positive and negative aspects of it, are a good place to start. Just thinking back among your past relationships can give you a year’s worth of material.

- Watch TV. Is global warming burning you up? Or maybe human trafficking is giving you road rage? Whatever the idea, some of the best songwriting, like that of Bob Dylan and newer bands like Rage Against the Machine, is politically charged. John Lennon is best known for “Imagine,” which was in itself a protest against the Vietnam War.

- Freewrite. Grab a pen and paper, and spend 10 minutes writing whatever comes to mind. Don’t worry about spelling and grammar or if it makes sense, just keep writing. After your 10 minutes are up, look it over and see if you have some ideas you can expand upon to make a song out of.

- Have an adventure. Some people have trouble coming up with ideas because they are always sitting on the sidelines. Sell your possessions and live abroad for a year. Go backpacking. Experience the Burning Man Festival. Do something, anything!

- Keep a dream diary. Guns N’ Roses lead singer Axel Rose wrote song lyrics based on his dreams, and turned them into three very successful videos. Dreams give your subconscious mind a chance to work on events and feelings. This can be a great inspiration for songwriting.

- Look at your life. Just take a look around at your present circumstances. “I’ve Seen Better Days” is a song that parodies the singer’s daily life. The music isn’t memorable, but the lyrics ring true to many people of that age group.

- Start with the hook. Though rappers usually don’t play their own instruments, they are extremely talented with words, even making new ones up to fit the flow of the song. Rap songs usually have some kind of catchphrase, known as a hook, that the rest of the lyrics wrap around. Come up with your hook first than write lyrics to fit.

- Music first, lyrics later. Another method taken from the hip hop world is to come up with the music before writing the lyrics. Many develop their beats, or the track that will loop under the rhymes, before writing a single word. They then freestyle without having anything written down to develop the lyrics.

For more information, do check out my personal blog