Hello everyone!
Today, I’m going to tell you how I write songs when I don’t have a lot of inspiration.
Sometimes people ask me to make a song, or I want to make one myself, but it just doesn’t come up into my mind. If that happens, these tricks work quite well for me.
The whole idea is basically to get inspiration again.
The first one is to sit back, and listen to some random songs. Especially songs from a genre which you wouldn’t normally listen to. Even in those songs are really great things to find sometimes. It helps me get some inspiration to merge it into my own ideas, and thenmake a totally new thing with it. Sometimes I find myself listening to rap or hip hop for example, and I hear things which would suit in my own music in a way I would’ve never have thought of myself.
Merging, merging, and some more merging. Blending styles is the way to get inspiration, for me at least.
The second thing I do is to just sit in front of my piano, keyboard, or dulcimer and just start playing random notes. Chances are I will start hearing a pattern in it which can become part of a new song.
Once the first half is there, when it's a minute or so, the rest of the song usually flows into my mind naturally.
Then there are the lyrics. There are two ways for that to become a song too for me.
The first option is when there are existing lyrics already. What I do in that situation is just to read them, and start singing them out loud. Repeating them over and over again, until I feel a real song starts to form. If that happens, I just roughly record it, put chords underneath it 'et voila’ the new song is born!
So if you have a song, and it needs lyrics, what I do usually is check: what is the song about, what feeling does it give me when I hear it? Does it have a theme already?
So I put it on repeat, and just sing 'jibbrish’ on it. just… non existing words, or random words in the language I want the lyrics to be in. After a while, I will start to hear sentences that go well with the notes, and write them down. Slowly but surely I continue this process, until there is a full story built out.
If the song needs lyrics that are about a certain subject, i do the same thing, but with words that I connect specifically to that subject. It is also a good idea to make a moodboard with images, words, and other similar songs prior to starting to give you some guidelines.
A bonus tip that has so much value to me personally: WRITE DOWN YOUR DREAMS!!! Most often, you will dream very complex, interesting things. There is so much inspiration to be put from dreams. Start a dream diary. As soon as you wake up, and you still remember a dream, write it down! Within 10 minutes you will have forgotten most of the details already. So do it fast!
That’s about it, now you know how I make songs when there is some time pressure or when a song is to be finished for a project.
I hope it helped you too, and you can use a few tips to get inspiration and make some new songs yourself!
How many of you are musicians yourselves? Show me some of your work!
Love and hugs,
Elvya