Songwriting Inspiration – Where Does It Come From? 2/20/18

Songwriting Inspiration – Where Does It Come From?  2/20/18

Some songwriter’s will tell you they only write when the heaven opens and rains a song down on them. And I am sure it does happen occasionally.  But there may be long dry spells in between.

 If you talk to your best songwriters you will find that they approach songwriting  totally differently.  More like a job, a craft that can be developed.  Show up every day at 9:00 am with your coffee and write for an hour and learn.  Read everything you can get your hands on.  Look at hit songs and analyze them, what makes them great?  Take a songwriting class, they even offer some online or join an online or local group.  And it’s gonna’ take time, probably years and you’re probably not going to make a lot if any money.

If your only goal is to be rich and famous, forget it because I’m 99% sure it ain’t happening.  You have to love it and just want to do it for yourself.  If you find people that like your songs that’s even better.  But you will run into your share of frustrated musicians, narcissist egocentric people who can’t understand why the world never recognized them as rock stars.  They carry a chip on their shoulder and many times they will not be encouraging or even nice.  Many times musicians critiques are just their biases, likes and dislikes and will not have much value in truly analyzing the quality of your craft.  And maybe they’re not really qualified to do that.  You have to take what is helpful and positive and have a pretty thick skin.  If you are lucky you may find a mentor you trust who will be qualified to judge your work in an unbiased way.  And with all that in your life, writing songs and creating music may still end up just a hobby.

So back to the topic, where to find inspiration.  The answer is everywhere.  Your life, the people you hang out with, your spouse, neighbor, strangers, things you read online or in the newspaper, see on TV, from other songs, books, movies, poetry, the weather, etc.  The key is to start looking for inspiration and have a system of organization where you can retrieve ideas, notes, stories when you have time to write.  I use Microsoft OneNote.

I visit several web-sites where others write songs and I look for ideas there that I might incorporate into my own songwriting.  Inspirational quotes are great.  I read stories about people’s lives and problems and sometimes get an idea from that.  I also go to writer web-sites and they have daily prompts and I can read what others have written.  There’s a site called 365 Day Prompts, which has a prompt for everyday.  I have gotten ideas off things people posted on FaceBook.  

Pat Pattison has a web-site called objectwriting.com where he gives you a daily word and many people write using all their sensory perception which helps you be a better writer in that you show rather than tell in your songwriting. 

Ideas are everywhere.