We could talk about motivation or anchoring overwhelming desire to the thought of writing songs, but one sure fire way to develop a consistent songwriting practice is to make it an unconscious habit.

Here are 5 tips to help you develop the habit of writing songs.

• Write nothing but song titles
  If the thought of writing a chorus, a bridge, and multiple verses is overwhelming to you, then just write some simple song titles. For song title inspiration, read my post on The Astonishing Hit-Making Magic of Song Titles.
• Write for the garbage can without feeling guilty
  The 80/20 rule will tell you that 20 percent of your writing will make the cut, 80 percent won’t. If you write 100 words a day, 20 of them might be useable. So if you need 100 words to complete your song, you need to write around 500 words. That’s why I write for the garbage can.
• Schedule songwriting appointments
  Think of something you do everyday that requires little effort or self-motivation, like eating when you’re hungry. You probably don’t need to schedule your meals in a calendar. You eat when your body tells you that you’re hungry. That’s the kind of habit you’re looking to develop with your songwriting. It’s automatic. But to get to that level, it might be useful to schedule your songwriting sessions and never break them. Keep it up for thirty days and see if you don’t get “hunger pangs” when you haven’t written anything for more than a few hours.
• Edit older songs
  Sometimes tinkering with an old song feels better than starting a song from scratch. If that feels like the case for you, then follow your desire to tinker. You’ll still be exercising your songwriting chops. Now, if you have an aversion to writing new songs you’ll need to look into your reluctance. But you can do that after you’ve developed a strong songwriting habit. Who knows, it might just disappear on its own.
• Transcribe your favorite songwriter’s songs
  Rewrite the lyrics to your favorite lyricist in long hand. Pretend you’re in their head and creating the song from scratch. Transcribe melodies, hooks, chord changes, anything to immerse yourself in the art and craft of songwriting.

As with all tips, they don’t work until you do them. Go schedule some time to write now!

(Inspired by Freelance Folder)

metaphor
noun
a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable

If you’re a writer, of course you know what the word metaphor means. But you might not know that the word was first introduced in the year 1447 with the book The Ordinal of Alchemy by Thomas Norton. Alchemists, because of the forbidden tradition of writing down spells and secrets of their art, had to be obscure when transmitting their esoteric knowledge to prime pupils. Thus, the term metaphor was born.

It’s exciting to think of yourself as an alchemist who can turn lead into gold. You’re a wordsmith who takes language and gives it meaning. Aside from the very real gold your final creation can bring you, contributing your art to the world brings gold to your listeners in the form of improved quality of life.

My favorite technique for creating fresh metaphors is the “duh” technique (I learned this from Shane Adams). You start with your first object, cake. Think of the most obvious characteristic of the object, as in the cake is round. This is called the “duh” description. Now take the “duh” description and think of something else that has that quality or characteristic. The cake is round… duh… what else is round? The moon. Now think of a “duh” characteristic of the second object, the moon glows, the moon is distant. Now plug those new traits into the original, the cake glows like a distant moon.

Your songwriting is the language of your soul. Look within and transform the world.

Table of contents for Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast

1. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-03-06
2. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-09-06
3. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-22-06
4. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 09-29-06
5. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 10-13-06
6. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 04-17-07
7. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 05-20-07
8. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 06-21-07

Andrea Stolpe, an award winning songwriter with writing credits for top artists like Faith Hill, shares some powerful and unique songwriting tips from her new book, Popular Lyric Writing: 10 Steps to Effective Storytelling.

Andrea was kind enough to let me give you a free chapter! Click here to get it…

Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 06-21-07

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Table of contents for Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast

1. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-03-06
2. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-09-06
3. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-22-06
4. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 09-29-06
5. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 10-13-06
6. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 04-17-07
7. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 05-20-07
8. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 06-21-07

Topics covered:
Advice to developing songwriters, the art and craft of songwriting, strategies for writing hooks and melodies, a 7-step process to writing hit songs, and much more.

Subscribe to Samurai Songwriting to hear the rest of this interview.

Molly-Ann Leikin’s Books and CDs:
“How to Write a Hit Song: The Complete Guide to Writing and Marketing Chart-Topping Lyrics and Music” (Molly-Ann Leikin)


“How to Be a Hit Songwriter: Polishing and Marketing Your Lyrics and Music” (Molly-Ann Leikin)


“Master Class in Songwriting with Molly-Ann Leikin (audio book)” (Molly-Ann Leikin)

Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 05-20-07

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Table of contents for Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast

1. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-03-06
2. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-09-06
3. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-22-06
4. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 09-29-06
5. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 10-13-06
6. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 04-17-07
7. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 05-20-07
8. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 06-21-07

Topics covered:
The definition of a song, what a song is not, the purpose of a song, the way of the Samurai Songwriter.

Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 04-17-07

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For example, if you just spent 15 minutes on the kick drum sound but don’t have a single completed verse, you’re not really writing a song at all. If you just spent half an hour practicing a guitar riff when your chorus needs a melody, you’re another 30 minutes away from actually doing any real songwriting.

The 80/20 Rule

An Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, observed that 80% of the income in Italy (and every country he subsequently studied) was received by 20% of the population. Over the years, many noticed that the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, could be applied to just about everything: 80% of the world’s money is in the hands of 20% of the people, 80% of the nurturing support and satisfaction you receive comes from about 20% of the people you know, 80% of your success comes from 20% of the things you do.

As a musician, you’re self-employed. You don’t get paid for every hour you work. You are paid on outcomes. The 80/20 rule applies to you, your money, and your songwriting. By applying more of your time to the 20% of musical activities that really makes a difference, you have the potential to double your income and double your time off. If you can double your value, then you can double your income. How? By identifying the things you do that contribute the greatest value to yourself and your songwriting.

A perfect hint to what should be important to you as a songwriter lies in copyright law. When it comes to a song, what’s essentially protected is the lyrics and the melody. That riff you just wrote is pretty cool, but it’s not in the top 20%. That snare drum you just mixed is slammin’, but is it really a priority? It might be if you’re an engineer. But not if you’re a songwriter. And definitely not if you’re mixing a snare that doesn’t yet have a song!

If you just apply the 80/20 Rule to your songwriting, you can resolve to spend more of your time doing more of the things that contribute the greatest value to you. Write more lyrics and melodies. Even the chord progression isn’t the most important thing you should be focusing on. Of course it helps to write melodies to a chord progression, so spend only 5 minutes writing one or better yet, go steal one like every other great songwriter has. Then spend an hour writing a melody and an hour writing lyrics. For every 5 minutes you spend on the sound of your demo, spend at least an hour on the lyrics and melody.

Chord progressions can be reharmonized. The production can be remixed. The drums can be programmed by 10 different great programmers and the guitar riff can have 10 different iterations. But what’s going to get you closer to finishing a song isn’t the snare or guitar, it’s the lyrics and the melody.

I get a lot of demos from people with stellar production and crappy songs. But once in a while I get a demo that doesn’t sound like it was recorded within 30 light years of the Record Plant but the song still stands on its own two feet. That’s the great songwriter.

You can even use the 80/20 rule to figure out what songs you should be working on. If you’re like most songwriters, you’re working on more than one song at a time. Pick two out of the 10 songs you have that are the best and finish them. Pick two out of the 10 that have been sitting on your list for over 6 months, finish writing them, and get them off your list. Pick two out of 10 that have no chance of being made into anything memorable and ditch them.

The 80/20 rule is fractal. You can apply it to your entire song catalog and you can apply it to a single song. You can apply it to what you should be doing and what you shouldn’t be doing. The point is this. If you’re having trouble finish songs, then maybe it’s time to take a good look at where you spend most of your time and make some adjustments. After all, you would like double the quantity AND the quality of your songs, wouldn’t you?

Start with a single note or single word

Play a single random note and just listen to your imagination. Does a second note enter the picture? Does a chord or harmony enter the picture? If so, then add what you hear to the mix and keep listening like that. Don’t think about it or edit what you hear in your mind, just dictate.

If you don’t hear anything in your imagination, then force it. Play a single interval up or down. Does that spark another idea? If so, then dictate. If not, play a different interval. If after a number of tries your imagination doesn’t take over, then force it even more. Play a pattern or a sequence that you are familiar with and build a melody around that.

The important thing to remember here is that your melody is not going to be perfect. It’s just a first pass. You can edit after you have 32 bars or so of material to work with. The point is you can’t have a melody to edit if you don’t start writing one.

You can apply the same technique to lyric writing. Write a single word. Use a random word generator or just pick a word from a book. What does your imagination tell you to write next? If nothing comes to you (which would mean that you really just aren’t paying attention) force it by just making stuff up. Rhyme comes later. Prosody comes later. Form comes later. Same as with music, you can’t edit a lyric until you have a lot of lyrics to edit.

An exercise like this should open your mind to the constant stream of ideas that is always occurring beneath the surface of your conscious mind. Just practice opening the aperture until you always have music and lyrics to write.

There’s a quick and easy way to do this. All you need is iTunes and a couple of AppleScripts. If you’re a Windows user, it’s not as simple, but it is still possible.

Get Lyrical is an AppleScript that will grab lyrics for the current or selected track and store them in the lyrics meta tag. If it can’t find the lyrics, then Google Lyric Search is a quick little script to help you find and store the lyrics manually.

Windows users can download iArt ($10) which will also fetch album art for you.

Now that you’ve got lyrics for your MP3 collection, it’s time to do some active listening. There’s something different about listening to a lyric in real time and seeing an entire lyric laid out in front of you. You can see how rhymes connect, how the verses progress, and see the lyric’s big picture when you read the entire lyric at once.

Pay close attention to beginnings and endings. Opening lines and rhyming positions are natural spotlights. Notice what words your favorite artists put in these places. Count lines and syllables. Get a feel for the flow. Watch the point of view and look for unique metaphors.

There’s a lot to pay attention to so narrow down your first scan of the lyric and look for a single lyric writing technique. Then move on to another. Finally, see how you can use what you’ve learned in your next song.

The bottom line is to find the time to study lyrics. Having lyrics stored in your music library or iPod makes it much easier to do.

Update: Part 2 is up.

And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

Imagine getting death threats just for having an opinion about a subject that needs to be debated continuously. They won the hearts and sympathy of every single Recording Academy member.

For me, the most tense part of the night isn’t waiting to see who will win the Grammy, it’s watching all of those brave women walk up and down steps in high heels and long dresses!

Table of contents for 2006 Celebrations and Reflections

1. Top Ear Training Articles for 2006
2. Top Songwriting Articles for 2006
3. Top Music Theory Articles for 2006
4. Top Music Hacks for 2006
5. Top Peak Performance Articles for 2006
6. Top Music Business Articles of 2006
7. Top Music Technology Articles for 2006
8. The Best of The Graham English Blog 2006

I’m celebrating quite a few good songs written in the past year. And I’m reflecting on how I can make 2007 an even better year for songwriting. Look for some fresh songwriting ideas in the new year and enjoy the best songwriting articles of 2006.

• The Perfect Song Title – 5 Things To Remember
• 4 Things That Will Make Or Break Your Song
• Find New Music With Musicovery – And Songwriting Ideas Too
• List of Opensource Music Software
• Seed Your Creative Process With…
• Why I Write For The Garbage Can
• Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 10-13-06
• Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 09-29-06
• Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-22-06
• Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-09-06
• Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-03-06
• Vernon Reid Songwriting Tips Interview
• Jesse Harris Songwriting Tips Interview
• Random Word Generator
• If Leonardo da Vinci Was a Songwriter
• Perfect Rhyme and Family Rhyme
• Sexy Object Writing Word Generator
• Get Your Creative Juices Flowing
• Don’t Forget Square One…
• How To Find The Head-Turning Hook That Reels ‘Em In
• Can Hit Songs Really Be Reduced To Science? I Mean, Really?
• Songwriting For Busy People
• How Do You Develop New And Interesting Chord Changes?
• Top 10 Lyric Writing Insights
• The Astonishing Hit-Making Magic of Song Titles
• The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll
• Get My Hit Song Cheat Sheet
• MasterWriter Review

Use these five rock solid songwriting techniques to make your next song title more memorable.

You don’t even have to hit play to find ideas for your next song. Just take a look at the moods or genres to give you some direction. But when this website starts playing the music, that’s the coolest part. The interface is amazing!

Musicovery creates an on-the-fly mind map of musical connection, a complex neural network of music. Pretty cool stuff. It even has a special radio for dancing so you can set the mood at your next party. Check it out.

The only thing I haven’t been able to figure out is how to make it stop playing.

It’s all about enthusiasm and perseverance — Not perfection. It’s about silencing your inner critic for thirty days in order to be inspired and get things done. Your album won’t be perfect. The main point is to just do it!

Link: NaSoAlMo: National Solo Album Month

The First 10 Seconds

Imagine being inside the mind of a busy A&R guy or in-demand producer. It’s running over important decisions to make, artists to direct and develop, managers to call back, record execs to please, and they probably have a personal life to take care of on top of everything else. Let’s say that all the stars are lined up for you and your demo is in their hands. They pop it in the CD player and press play.

This is the crucial moment. As they say, “you only get once chance to make a first impression.” What first impression do you give?

Give your listener a musical and rhythmic hook to grab onto right away. Head over to the billboard charts and play the first 10 seconds of the top 10. Notice the elements that pull you in. Is it the beat? Is it a melody or the harmony? Notice where they fail to pull you in. After all, just because the song is on the charts does not mean it’s a great song!

Now, knowing that you don’t have the clout of a currently charting artist, don’t make your listener wait 30 seconds to get to the meat of your song. Mix an extended version for you and your friends if you must, but keep only what’s absolutely necessary for everyone else. You will gain serious points for considering the busy schedule of someone who listens to songs for a living.

The Chorus

The chorus is the emotional high point of your song. Therefore, it must feel like it lifts. A simple way to do this is to write a melody that reaches it’s highest note during the chorus — preferably the very first note, a natural spotlight — and write the melody of the verse to lead into the chorus from below. One of the biggest mistakes I hear is a melody that peaks at the end of the verse and then drops into the chorus where it gives the listener a sense of falling energy, the exact opposite of what we want to do.

You chorus, if it is to be memorable, should be easy to sing along with and contrast the other sections. A strong chorus needs different elements than what came before, both musically and lyrically. Give your chorus a different melody, different harmony, different lyric, and a different form than the other sections of your song. Make your chorus stand out.

The Collaboration

I grew up in the age of Prince, the wonder-kid who played every instrument, wrote all the songs, sang all the vocals, and on top of all that, he danced his butt off. Me, I’m a mere mortal. I’m good at a number of things, bad at even more, and I excel at maybe a few diverse skills. I continually improve my weaknesses, strengthen my strengths, and for everything else that I’m not good at, I enlist the help of someone better than me.

In the process of collaboration, I get commitments and agreements in writing, I pick and choose my battles, and I still take responsibility for the end result. Do the same and hopefully you won’t end up getting screwed.

Confusing Mystery with Obscurity

Riddles are great… as long as you get permission. But if I don’t know you and you start a conversation with me as if I’m your personal cryptographer, then you had better pay me for my time. Don’t test your listener’s patience right from the start or assume that they care to do the preliminary scholarly or autobiographical research to find out what the hell you’re talking about.

Show, don’t tell is an admonition given to beginning writers who use too much exposition instead of using action and dialogue. If the writer uses action and dialogue to reveal a character, the story should be more interesting to the reader. The reader should feel like he is seeing the scene unfold before him. As a result, the reader can interpret the meaning of the story on his own.

Use the five senses to keep your listener involved and avoid writing about an experience, write from the experience. Write as if you are inside the emotion of your song. Then show us what it looks like, feels like, sounds like, smells like, and tastes like.

Understand and master these 4 elements of your songwriting and watch your listener appeal skyrocket.

Table of contents for Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast

1. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-03-06
2. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-09-06
3. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-22-06
4. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 09-29-06
5. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 10-13-06
6. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 04-17-07
7. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 05-20-07
8. Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 06-21-07

Topics covered:
Hooks, song titles, song ideas, lyrical insights, melodic insights, hook placement, and much more…

Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 10-13-06

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