Get to work!
Oct 07 '04
The Bottom Line The hell with inspiration!
I have been "writing" songs (the earliest were not written down, thus the scare quotes) most of my life (about 23 of my 28 years). Like everybody else, I have gone through dry spells - in fact, I am currently in the middle of one. The most common prognostication for any type of writer's block is "lack of inspiration", by which people really mean "lack of motivation", or "laziness". I don't view my current hiatus as a result of any of those quoted terms...I've simply got other things on my plate. Hell, "inspiration", by which I will mean "ideas for songs," pops up all the time. Here, I'll prove it:
Duhn, duhn, DAAAA da
Duhn, duhn, DAAAA
I'm a Fart Machine!
Duhn, duhn, DAAAA da
Duhn, duhn, DAAAA
Sniff my @ss!
And
Mandy Lou
You are my everything
Mandy Lou
Won't ya be mine tonight?
And
The moon is pushing all the clouds away
The cat is choking on splintered glass
The operator had a busy day
His spine is crackin like the mizzen mast
See? Now granted, none of those may be any good, but I only took a minute to write them(except the first one: that is one of my and Emily's creations). I'm sure you could do just as well if you wanted to. Okay then, you're not happy with that, you want something good. Well, geez, give yourself more than a minute and something might actually come of it!
So maybe your actual trouble is cowardice. The romantic vision of the composer as some sort of genius who is attuned to the music of the heavens still haunts us and daunts us from giving songwriting a go ourselves. It must be replaced by the more realistic scenario that songwriting is actually something you have to work at! Okay, there were composers like Mozart and Bach who wrote at lightning speed, but those old dudes lived and breathed music. Mozart was thrust into music making at a very young age, same with Bach. They both put a hell of a lot of work in to reach the stage they did. And for every Mozart there is a Beethoven, whose sketch books show just how much he labored to give birth to his creations. Does that make Beethoven the worse composer? Come now...
Okay now say your real trouble is laziness. You realize that writing music is "work", which means you will have to spend time at it in order to write something you are satisfied with, and you will have to use your brain. You really want to write a song, you say, but you don't want to work at it. It sounds like your real "problem" is that you don't actually want to do it very much. In my experience the real root of any perceived laziness is being engaged in something you don't really want (even if you "should" want it.)
So, say you realize it will take work but try to do it anyway and end up writing a piece of crap. Did you lack inspiration? Probably not...you just did not work at it hard enough or think about it clear enough. Try eating healthy and exercising, doing crossword puzzles, getting the juices flowing man! That's part of the work too. Listen to lots of other songwriters, see how they put songs together. Take a songwriting class. Keep a musical sketch book. Go to a conservatory. Perform your songs for other people to see if they have the desired effect. Brainstorm. Record yourself improvising (lyrics, melody, rhythm, all at the same time, whatever) and pick out parts you like then develop them. How to develop? however you want! Come on, get up and do something if you want to write a song so bad. Don't make me come over there.
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Epinions.com ID:
fartzarellah
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Member: Tomatzio
Location: Ol Virginny
Reviews written: 91
Trusted by: 53 members
About Me:
He always walks with his hands in time.
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