Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Songwriting Tips

So anyway, I write songs, but I've never been too clear on why. I don't seem to have any particular desire to make that my trade.

Anyway, it's pretty fun. You should try it. Your first five will suck, be prepared for that. But at some point during the writing of your first ten songs, you will write the one that you think is really good...the one that convinces you, "hey, I can do this!"...the one that you only look back on years later and say, "hey...that one also sucked."

But by then it will be too late: you're already a songwriter!

So anyway, here's the way I go about it. First off, ironclad rule #1: Never don't write a song. If a song idea comes to you, and it's trying to come through and it's trying to get written, then don't not write it just because it's a really dumb idea. A really dumb idea, well-executed, can be an incredibly great song! I won't mention any examples, because I'm sure somebody would find some way to twist that into an insult.

Second off, ironclad rule #2: it is not the song's job to perfectly reflect your feelings. It is your job to perfectly reflect the song's feelings. You need to find the best angle in, to whatever the subject of the song is. Discard whatever you have to, to make that song the strongest it can possibly be. Discard even yourself! If the core message of the song would feel so much stronger coming from someone else, then write it from that perspective! But even if you're writing from your own perspective, more-or-less...you have to be able to let the song steer the way and tell its own truth. Don't force it to tell your truth. Let it take over and say what it wants to say.

You can always edit it later on, if a better approach comes to you. I often find that I've started out to write a song about something specific in my own life, only to end up writing a really good song - but a song that no one would recognize as having anything to do with the initial situation that inspired it. The song takes over if you let it. And initially, the more you give that song free reign, the more you find it telling you things that would never have occurred to you on your own.

Next time on "Songwriting Tips": what to do when that song starts bossing you around.

2 comments:

blue said...

I feel like I've read this before also, but I thought it was here.
[confusion]
Anyway, I'm better with poetry than song, I believe. But thanks for the tips. Reading them, I feel they are most applicable to people who are creatively inclined to write songs.
;P

dogimo said...

No, I think I talked a little about songwriting but not in any systematic way. I think I said before something like, I look at one of these blog posts like I would writing a song.

I'm still kind of feeling my way on these blog posts though.

But no! These tips are for everyone! Everyone, write ten songs and see if you don't hit the jackpot on one of them!

The creative jackpot, I mean. Because, you shouldn't think you'll make money at something just because you like to do it! That's like, reverse communism or something.