Frankly it often takes me months to finish a song. There are few exceptions when something came together in a few days, but that is a rarity. I have pieces of songs that have been put on hiatus for years, only to be dragged out again when I’ve discovered a missing piece that I can now incorporate. For me, this lengthy writing process happens because I think that songs have a certain way that they want to be. No, I don’t think that a song is cognizant of itself, or has a self-image, or is like some fully formed spirit that is ready to be born. This is just metaphor. To clarify: I think that there is a way in which a good song is put together that is right for that particular song. I feel that in the writing process you need to work with that, and respect that in order to have a solid flow.

Say you’ve come up with this great riff, and you want to expand it into a full tune. That riff will have a personality. It will have a tone, and poise. It will suggest to you where it wants to go, melodically speaking. If you do not listen to that suggestion, if you try to make that riff into something it is not, or fit it into other structures that it does not get along with, then that song is destined to languish in some notebook. The imaginary, future song that you were going to write from this seed, had a form it was going to take. Your job as a songwriter is to discover that form.

I see this happen in my own writing. I’ll write out some lyrics, sit on them for awhile, then try to fit a melody around them. Sometimes the style I had in mind at the time the lyrics were written is completely not the style that ends up working. The words have a certain rhythm, and natural intonation that suggest one type of melody over another. When the lyrics were first written, those forms weren’t apparent as I was not focusing on constructing melody at that time. If I were to try to stick with the original vision, the song may sound awkward. I would not have respected the way the melody wants to be.

Never throw anything out. I have notes, binders, and scraps of paper going back to almost the time I started songwriting. The reason for this is that, snatches of tunes, a neat chord progression, a couple of lines that you wrote years ago may find their way into the song that you are writing today. Mine your failures for gold. Often you will find that the songs that didn’t work, failed because part of them wanted to be something else.

For example a song that I’m working on now, the refrain comes from a song that I wrote about 10 years ago. The refrain I had always liked and it was pretty much complete, with the exception of one line that needed tweaking. The verses that I had originally wrote to go with this refrain didn’t make the grade. There was no cohesion and lyrically it was a mess. So that song stayed in the notebook. The new verses come from a song that I had written a few years earlier. That song I deemed a failure for the same reasons as the first. It did have one thing going for it: musically the verses were quite strong. It wasn’t until recently that I was going through my notes revisiting old tunes when I saw that these pieces could be combined and work well. I had discovered parts of songs that wanted to be together, but I didn’t know it at the time. Now the only thing left is to write new lyrics for the verse.

If you ever find that a song just isn’t working for you, don’t trash it. Tear it apart, save all the pieces, and rebuild it, working  in the direction that the song is taking you, because you built it wrong in the first place going in the direction that you wanted. I guarantee you will end up with better songs for it.

I used to write out lyrics in a spiral bound notebook, or loose leaf in a binder. When faced with the giant expanse of a page, I used to start writing, first verse, refrain, second verse, third and so on. It was all very orderly and very difficult. If things didn’t fit, it was hard for me to rework them. Occasionally I would draw arrows to show that some passages should be swapped, or I may have squeezed in a new line underneath an old one. The fact that I had this one big space that would fill up with words leaving precious little areas on the page for doing rewrites, coupled with the lack of ability to easily shift around blocks of text meant that often when the lyrics stopped working, I’d throw the baby out with the bathwater.

What I’ve found now, is that compared to my days of loose-leaf, I’ve started using a very non-linear writing process. Now lyrics come together like a patchwork quilt. That’s not to say that they are haphazardly strung together, it is still important to keep the big picture of theme and narrative in mind, but rather that the pieces of the lyrical whole are put in the places they belong. Reducing my writing area to a space that is 3 by 5 inches has given me great latitude in the construction of a song. I can generate many phrases knowing that I’ll find a place for the ones that fit and easily discard the ones that don’t. Even then, the discarded writing may find a place in another work, with just a little alteration.

One more thing, it occurs to me to mention that there is a good reason not to splurge for the expensive notebooks. I find that I’m more unwilling to sully an expensive notebook with bad writing. This may sound like a good way to provoke good writing, but all it does is paralyse and dissuade risk taking. Good writing doesn’t come about from some divine penstroke that has been fully planned beforehand. If one had to wait for only the really good stuff to burble up before committing anything to paper nothing would get done. Good writing is the result of quantity minus the bad stuff. It’s more important to be a good editor than an inspired writer.

That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February. Go ahead… put it to tape.

Don’t wait for inspiration — taking action puts you in a position to get inspired. You’ll stumble across ideas you would have never come up with otherwise, and maybe only because you were trying to meet a day’s quota of (song)writing. Show up and get something done, and invest in yourself and each other.

Anyone can come up with an excuse to say “no,” so don’t!
For a complete description of the challenge read more …

I fired up the keyboard last night in an attempt to get the juices flowing. I normally compose on the guitar, which usually means I create a harmonic structure first then flesh in a melody. Clearly it’s not working for me right now so I thought I should approach it from the other end and build up a melodic structure, which I find easier to do on the keys. It’s also easier to flip around in the various modes. I’ve never really composed with a specific mode in mind. Having an artificial limit may help me from falling into the old ruts. Alas, two hours of tinkling away have yielded nothing.

If I meditate hard enough on the circle of fifths like it were some mandala, maybe I’ll reach an enlightened state where music just exists within me and all I have to do is play. Until then I must slog through writing, discarding, writing, discarding, writing, discarding.

I think some of the problem is attaching too much importance to the work itself. Sometimes when I’m sketching my best work is done on scraps of craft paper. Quick one offs that I never expect to go anywhere or be shown to anyone. I should try this approach. Just start recording and go. Who cares what happens, just play. If there’s anything worth saving I’ll have it recorded.

Brian Eno made a set of cards he called Oblique Strategies that he would use for this purpose. Each card contained a directive such as “Honour Your Error as a Hidden Intention” or “Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame”. Through having to carry out this directive you take yourself in a direction uncharted, or gain new perspective on a problem.

You can buy these cards on ebay, though the original sets can be pricey. They have since been put into many other forms like a program, placed on the web, and are even available as a dashboard widget.

SongsToWearPantsTo is the brainchild of a very talented musician. This guy takes on the most arbitrary and ludicrous restraints that are suggested by the public and pulls them off with great flair and humour. Be sure to check out “A Rap Song in Which None of the Lyrics Contain the Letter E”

So remember kids, next time you’re beating your head against something, put handcuffs on.