You may be the kind of songwriter that works slowly, such that by the end of the year you’ve only written a small handful of songs. It may be your norm to take your time getting your initial ideas down, and then spend a lot of time honing and crafting what you’ve written.
Getting melodies and chords working well together is vital knowledge for any songwriter. “How to Harmonize a Melody” shows you, step by step, how that works, and gives you sound samples to follow.
If you find yourself worrying about the small number of songs you write compared to others who work in your genre, it’s worth reminding yourself of this important fact: No one will make note of how prolific you are if those songs aren’t good ones.
It’s like noting that a baseball player has played 3000 games in their career, but had only 200 runs batted in; the number of games becomes nothing more than an interesting but meaningless statistic.
But let’s say that your number of completed songs per year is bothering you, and you feel that you should be writing more. That can be a good objective. If the songs you’re writing seem to be good ones, popular with your fan base, and you simply wish you could write more, there may be things you can do to become more prolific. Here are some thoughts:
- Don’t overthink your songs. Sometimes you might find that you actually get a good number of songs written, but then it’s the editing stage where things get bogged down. Because for many, the editing stage becomes the “time to second-guess everything I’ve written” stage. If you find it easy to get into a flow, be more trusting that you’ve actually written something that works just as it is.
- Work on several songs at the same time. By this, I mean that you should hone your ability to keep several songs on the “front burner”, and switch to a different one as you feel ideas dwindle with the one you’re specifically working on. By doing this, you allow spontaneity to play a bigger role in your songwriting, rather than getting bogged down on one particular song.
- Work quickly. Historically we can see that songs that come together quickly have a level of excitement and raw musicality that serves as a kind of self-generating inspiration. Try to turn off your internal critic and get as much of a song written as you possibly can before putting the magnifying glass on what you’ve written. By doing this, you’ll probably find that you’re more pleased with what you’ve written, and songs become easier to edit.
- Work with others. Collaborations can be great ways to speed up the songwriting process, since the pool of ideas becomes larger and things can come together much quicker.
- Be more willing to explore non-conventions in your chosen genre. There’s a video of a Howard Stern interview of Billy Joel, in which Billy, in a way, pokes a bit of fun at how unconventional his hit “Piano Man” was: written in a 3/4 waltz time, with a lyric that’s actually a limerick. It’s the kind of thing that can make a songwriter worry and think that the song is weak. But as we know, “Piano Man” is a great song, and thankfully Billy didn’t overthink what he had written, and was willing to accept the song as being something unique, something actually powerful.
Most of the time, songwriters who worry about how much they’re writing are focussing on the wrong thing. You should be more focused on the quality of your writing. Once you feel that songwriting excellence is becoming more commonplace for you, you’ll probably find that the number of songs you write will naturally increase.
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter.
“The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 10-eBook bundle includes several chord progression eBooks, including “Chord Progression Formulas”. Learn how to create chord progressions within seconds using these formulas. Get the free deal!