4 Tips to Improve Your Songwriting
As songwriters we’ve all wondered, "Are we doing the most important things to make progress every day with our songwriting craft and our industry aspirations?".
By using the following tools regularly, you will inevitably start to see progress in your songwriting.
1. Write every day
Writing every day is essential to your growth as a songwriter. You don’t have to sit down for 2 hours, even just 10 minutes a day can go a long way. It can be as simple as sensory writing, destination writing, stream of consciousness writing, or deciding to write a chorus around a cool title that you've got. Maybe it’s just the lyrics or some melodies with chords underneath and that's all you can do for that day, but writing every day is essential to improving as a songwriter.
2. Remember not every writing will be your best
When you write every day, 90% of what you write is not going to be your best. Try not to be too judgmental of your own writing but rather just try to enjoy the process. In fact, the 90% that is not your best can help lead you to the 10% of your writing that contains your biggest ideas. This attitude is good to carry into your entire songwriting process.
3. Write through writer’s block
Sometimes we can get into a rut with our writing and don’t know when or how to get out of it. When you feel stalled, when you feel like you're not writing your best stuff, or when you have no new ideas, just keep going. Write through those plateaus. Just write the stuff that comes out, and eventually, you will emerge on the other side.
4. Play your song for friends and family
As great as it is to be able to listen critically to our own songs, in order to keep growing as a writer, it’s really important to get out of our own head and play our songs for other people. By playing our songs for others, they provide us (sometimes in an unspoken manner) the feedback we need to more clearly see the areas that aren't working so well and move forward with adjusting them.
I hope these tools are useful for you.
Stay creative,
