Songwriting Tips: How to Fight Writer’s Block
You spend all this time buying the HOTEST, ROCKING-EST, new gear, only to finally get some free time, sit down in front of your console and nothing. NOTHING!
During the hours spent online researching which DAW (digital audio workstation) best suits your style/budget, which software synth integrates with the afore mentioned DAW, what Microphone can handle those piercing vocals you belt out (the ones that send Fido whining cacophonous harmonies to your DIO renditions), your heart sings it’s love song to your soul; truly the impetus for your gear-fest quest. You make it home from the local music mega-mart, dolly in hand, carting your treasure, nay “Booty”, up stairs, past un-interested neighbors, into your pirate’s den, and the same haunting melodies rush past you like the cool air/salty song you hear while standing in line for “Pirates of the Caribbean” at one of the many Disney parks dotting the post-modern landscape. Then it happens.
You spend the next four hours making decisions. Where to put all this stuff? Do I need to buy a desk, or should I just mount this stuff in the breakfast nook? (I don’t really have a breakfast nook.) Why did I forget to buy more cables? It starts to get frustrating, but some how you manage to figure it out and get started setting up.
The whole thing begins to come together. Everything, miraculously, finds a place and you turn everything onâÂ?¦now the trouble-shooting begins. Another hour goes by and finally you are at the moment I mentioned at the top of this rambling introduction. NOTHING! Nothing makes its way past your now addled brain. The beautiful music that used to be in your head has somehow escape like the “farting” sound of a balloon exhaling through its nozzle when your 6yr old nephew tries to flex his lungs on one of those head-rush variety packs of “fun-time” party favors!
Whew! That was a rough intro. Now that I got all of it out of my system, let me cut to the chase. Life gets in the way of creativity. We end up spending the majority of our time trying to get to the point of being prepared to take advantage of the minor epiphanies that wake us from our dreams, keep us awake at four a.m. recording basic tracks, and basically leave our bosses wondering if the whole office is suffering from A.D.D.
The worst case scenario for a creative genius like you, is trying to force a brilliant new song into your computer/recording rig’s hard drive. I personally have a whole discography’s worth of mediocre tracks that sit, whining at me to be made something of, all because I felt like I “had to”. We all want to be diligent and prolific. We hope to use our big, fat, brains to squeeze out gold; like our heads are some kinda cheese-whiz dispenser!
Over the years I’ve come to understand that the best songs, the ones that truly have “it” (whatever “it” is), can’t be forced. Inspiration has to be happened upon. That same song you heard driving to the music store, the one that made you spend upwards of six grand on gear, needs to be made of public record. All the gear in the world, all the time spent “playing” with ideas, can’t force a song into existence. Don’t get me wrong. Many hit songs may have come from a moment of forced eureka, but the majority comes from paying close attention to your dreams.
Dreams mostly come in the form of nocturnal musings, but it is possible to enter into moments of “waking dreams”. Throughout human history, medicine men, psychologists, even philosophers, have spent quality time studying ways to bring their “dream mind” into the realm of their conscious mind. WOOOO! Getting all mystical on ya there huh? Well before you start thinking you need to don a head-dress and get busy vision-questing, maybe I can give you a few more modern “rituals” to tap into your infinite subconscious mind, and start hearing your song; the same one you keep drowning out with the rituals of the mundane.
Here’s an idea that’s worked for me many times. Start learning about dreams! Pick up a book on dreaming, just to wrap your mind around how your mind wraps itself aroundâÂ?¦itself. There are so many books out there, but just about any will do. Pick the one that seems to “jump out at you”. Every book I’ve ever read on dreaming says that the most important exercise to do concerning dreaming is to keep a dream journal.
Buy a cheep little spiral notebook and some kinda writing utensil. Set it on your night-stand. Before you go to sleep say a little prayer of sorts (I’m not trying to offend any of you atheists out there), “I want to remember my dreams”. Start slow, wake up in the morning and write a journal entry of anything you remember. At first it won’t be much, but slowly your entries will grow. I personally got to the point where I was able to tell myself “I’m gonna wake up after each of my dreams” to write down as much as I can. Believe it or not I was waking up an average of five times each night and writing for a few minutes each time. “But Dave weren’t you exhausted in the morning”? If you have problems sleeping, this might not be for you, but if you feel adventurous (and maybe you only do this while on vacation!) give it a try. Now, after a few months of practice, I am able to hear whole songs in my dreams! When I say whole songs, I mean the full composition (drums/melodies/vocals/guitars/pianos), as if I was listening to some future radio station, playing my hits!
Another idea I kinda stole from Zen, is an interesting technique. I sometimes practice meditation, just for my own psyche (mainly to keep from going crazy fighting the rat-race). I was a bit “blocked” one day in the studio, and I thought “why not meditate for 10 minutes or so and see if I can hear a track the same way I had in my dreams”. I gave it a try. I sat in my chair, behind the console and stopped anything I was listening to. In complete silence, I began to breathe, slowly and steadily. I closed my eyes and tried to rid my mind of errant thoughts (why can’t I figure this out/did I forget to turn off the stove/ why is the sky blue). After a few minutes I was able to calm down some and focus my thoughts on “hearing” my song. Slowly, a rhythm started in my head, then a bit of a melody. After a few more moments I had an intro, a verse and an idea of where to take the chorus! I pushed record and started humming my ides into the microphone. A little work later (rerecording my humming as actual instruments) and I had the majority of the basic tracks finished and a pretty nice song to boot.
If all this mind-game stuff is a little too “new-age” for some of you, then I have one other suggestion that might help. Give up! Not really. But the truth is, sometimes it’s best to set a new idea aside for a while and move on to something else. If you were to continue fighting yourself to force a song into being, you might do more damage than simply writing a bad song. Friends of mine, with much more talent than I, have thrown away their dreams of making music, because they had too many set-backs in a row and it was too much for their Egos to handle. Basically what happens is they force an idea into being, feel great at how brilliant they are for being able to do so, then have someone come along and rip their ideas to shreds; leading to a repeat of the above in attempts to somehow “fix” the problems on the next song. It can become a vicious cycle, getting caught up in your own machinations of the mind. When I used to fall into those ruts (I probably should have given up too, but my head is extremely HARD!) I found over time that taking a break from one difficult idea, made room for another easy/brilliant idea to take it’s place for the time being. Later I was able to go back to the song that drove me crazy, maybe weeks later, and bring fresh new ideas to my palette.
If you get anything from this, my hope is that you at least find solace in the fact that, your mind may get stuck from time to time but eventually by working together with yourself, you will find the “right” note/melody/riff. Always keep trying and never give up. Your dreams are there to keep your mind working, while your body sleeps.
