FREE Songwriting Software – Songwriting Tip #1 – Inspiration

I remember that night like it was yesterday…

I was going too fast…

Her head flew into the windshield and broke the glass.  You could even see strands of hair dangling between the cracks of glass where she struck the windshield.  Right off the bat, I want to tell you a little bit about my car crash and how it relates to your songwriting.

I had been driving for a while, but this was my first car – just bought it – paid cash for it.  It was a 1987 Toyota Tercel, 2 door, stick shift. It seemed like this night was no different than the others, but it was… It was different because I had no experience driving a lightweight car that was packed to maximum capacity… in the rain.

And that’s what made all the difference.

By the time I hit the brakes, I panicked, hit them too hard, and that’s when it happened…

I hydroplaned…

…and BAM!  I ran into a telephone pole, which was just a few feet from a major intersection.  Thankfully no one was seriously injured.  The accident was horrible and I felt so bad for putting my friends into a bad situation, where it could have been much worse.  I hadn’t even had the car for a full two months, but we had to call a tow-truck.  And yep. It was totaled.

My first car – gone down the drain.  My feelings were hurt.  And look at this statistic:

The risk of being involved in a car accident the highest for drivers aged 16- to 19-year-olds than it is for any other age group. For each mile driven, teen drivers ages 16 to 19 are about four times more likely than other drivers to crash.

May not make sense now but think about what I’m saying… when you’re interacting with people who have a TON of experience, lives are at risk, money is at risk, then you’ve somehow got to find a way to match your experience up with the others… because limited experience puts you at higher-risk for failure.

And it works the same way in the Music Industry.  Don’t just write songs when you get inspired or when it hits you, because you’ll never get as good as you need to be, to compete against other experienced songwriters. 

I’m not suggesting that you intentionally crash into telephone polls or have lots of accidents… but I am saying – don’t be afraid to make mistakes in your songwriting.  And in order to make mistakes, you have to do more writing…sometimes a lot more.  Until you’ve reached the threshold at which your songwriting is at the “industry standard”.

That’s a huge takeaway there… that almost every rule you could possibly be given is designed to help you get to an industry standard expectation level - where after that point… you’ve got enough insight on your own to break the rules and develop your own path and still reach your goal.  And your goal is to become a great songwriter, get fans, get song placements, make money with your music, and be known as a great musician.

Don’t wait on inspiration to save your music career, because if you do… you’ll be left behind.  Inspiration can

• come effortlessly (with no hard work or force on your part to come up with a song idea)
• require effort (force yourself to brainstorm new song ideas, use tools to spark song ideas)
• be non-existent (which means whether inspired or not you’re totally forcing yourself to write a song about [X] – this is an “on demand” situation,where perhaps you’ve been given a topic and must write about it whether inspiredor not)

You will obviously have a far better chance of having a sustaining-ever-lasting career if you take the time to strengthen your songwriting skills so that you can write in all three situations.  Whether your inspiration is non-existent, effortless, or effortful.  Sound too easy?

First, in order to accomplish this you’ll have to be willing to do two things:

• make mistakes…
  
• practice and develop your skills

The rule here is this: Don’t ALWAYS try to write a song that’s intended for public use.

I know you’re pressed for time and you need to write a song within the next 3 days, but allow yourself some time to practice.  Allow yourself to be in the “lab” testing different ideas, without always intending to write a song that will be for public use.  I implore you to tTake the pressure off of yourself and allow yourself to write some songs just to practice, as test runs.   You don’t know how much of a difference this will make.

You must give yourself some dedicated time to develop and strengthen your skills, otherwise you’ll add excessive pressure to yourself and inspiration will almost always be non-existent due to the unproductive stress factors you added on yourself.

Here are some tips…

1) First Idea – Take the first thing that pops into your head.

2)  Wish Write – Write about something you really want to happen to you

3)  Word Write – Take a word and form it into a sentence, and go from there.

4) Borrow Write – Watch TV, Read A Book, Go Outside – listen very closely for something that is worth writing about, and start from there.

5) Trend Write – Take a popular song and write a similar song based on the same idea (love song/heartbreak/life enjoyment)

6) Unique Write – Write something that’s personal to you, without caring what others will think and THEN modify it later as necessary to broaden the appeal.

7) Topical Write – Start with a broad topic of

• being in love
• wanting to be in love
• heartbreak
• heartbreak and moving on
• enjoying life
• party life
• life appreciation
• attraction & Desire
• sex (of course)
• thoughts (being unsure about love, unsure about life, certain about life, coming to a conclusion about something)

There’s a lot more way to jumpstart your inspiration and we can’t possibly list them all in this blog post.. but I want you to remember something.

You don’t really learn in the classroom or even on the tips that you learn here. Just like I didn’t really learn when I studied the driver’s manual or even the quick drive runs I made down to the grocery store and back.

Seriously put some thought into this… In many ways, real learning starts when you re-learn it for yourself, that’s the only way it develops maximum value to you and only you.   You learn through constant experience of putting yourself to the test (preferably daily), and by doing so you’ll learn and develop your own unique songwriting style that works best for you.

Get to writing… whether you’re inspired or not – and the more you write (even when you’re not inspired) is the stronger you’ll get, the better you’ll get because you’ll have a premium advantage over other songwriters.  More importantly, you’ll start acquiring new maneuvers and songwriting tricks that will be 10x more useful… when you DO get that lucky stroke of inspiration to write your hit song.

If you stop… you’ll never get a chance to really start.