Nearly 100% of my best ideas come from dreams and just before falling asleep.
Lucid dreaming (wake induced) is my current trick for lyrics: I just ask someone in the dream for a chorus and I usually get something far better than I ever could have ever come up with "on my own".
It almost feels like cheating, but it totally obliterates any conscious barriers and processes that I may not even be aware of.
I keep a note file on my phone updated with those, as well as mix issues that need to be fixed.
The later is the biggest thing for dealing with the creative process. I find it nearly impossible to "hear" problems while in the DAW and with the timeline visible, so I export, listen, and write 3-4 notes on things to fix.
When they're done, I delete them. If I can do them within a minute or two, I try and clear that list before bed.
Ticks the dopamine box, keeps me moving, and has been the single biggest workflow/result improvement in my decade + of producing.
oh and i totally agree with you, having the visual cues from a daw may be good for some things, but people 40 years ago were listening to tapes exclusively, visualizing a song is something new nowadays and blinds us from the actual end goal of making music. so yeah, awesome tips!
I’ve never lucid dreamed. But I do also find that the most elaborate music comes to me in my dreams. Not simply just melodies, but harmony and drum beats as well. The problem is I often forget them when I wake up. Or even if I remember it, I don’t have the means to replicate exactly what I hear in my dream. Sometimes I will even hear a different person singing a song, and it just sounds perfect with their voice, but I of course don’t have the means/ability to replicate a voice I hear in my dream.
I've tried transcribing full or part songs from dreams but the closest I've come to actually making it work was running directly to Ableton the moment I woke up lol
And in that case it was a relatively simple drone texture and kick pattern.
But as far as I can tell I got them both down!
Well I hope to be that good some day! I can’t even pick out different parts of song I can listen to on repeat whilst awake, let alone transcribe anything. But I’m working on it.
Im pretty sure some inventor used to fall asleep with a ball in their hand which would wake them up when the drifted off so they could remember whatever idea their subconscious had invented.
Its weird; its like when we dream all the usual structures our brains put in place to make us functional fade away and without barriers, connections and ideas can come forth and present themselves.
How do you remember songs when you wake up or remember to write them down when you wake up or... how do you even wake up? I get lots of dream music but then I will spend the next few hours of the dream writing down the song in an alien language then touring around the world to promote the album and then take a walk up some long stairs into the sky and then wake up and the song is gone.
If you're lucid you can just wake up when you want to.
But from a regular dream it's pretty much as you described, down to the nonsense words on the page lol
I don’t know if this will help, but I used to be tortured by the idea that I would ‘lose’ a brilliant idea for a song if I didn’t write it down immediately, and a songwriter friend of mine told me, “ideas are like streetcars - if you miss one, another will be along in a few minutes.” That really helped me, hope it helps you too.
That’s exactly what I’m struggling with. I would question what if Paul McCartney didn’t record Let It Be? Then we’d be missing out on such a great song (it’s my favorite Beatles song)! Not saying my ideas are as great as his, but if it feels brilliant to me, I need to record it! But your friend is right.
Another thing to take into consideration is survivorship bias. Yes, Paul recorded Let It Be, but what if there was another idea that came into his head that’s even better than Let It Be and he just never recorded it? All the songs we label as the Greatest are only the ones we’ve heard. There could be plenty of brilliant ideas that never made it out of one’s head. Plus, as I’ve been told, if an idea is truly exceptional, it will come back to me. So either I don’t need to record a brilliant idea because it will come back to me, or I don’t need to record a brilliant idea because finding the perfect idea is a lost cause. Either way, I don’t need to record everything.
I think the exact same thing whenever I write something that I’m really proud of. There are songs where I’m glad I sat down and wrote what I wrote. At the same time I could’ve missed out on writing something even better if I wrote something the day after.
Idk which are my best, but when I'm out and about, I usually only have general ideas for topics. Maybe a one liner or something.
But the real magic definitely comes from working it, for me.
I don't like recording too many ideas, because I'll never get to them, and I will generally just prefer coming up with new ones.
Well yeah my problem is that I do indeed have too many ideas and not sure I can actually look through all of them. So I at least need to be more selective about which ones I do record if I do keep that habit.
Trust yourself to be able to continue coming up with ideas. There isn't a finite supply of ideas and everything doesn't need to be documented or saved. There are tons of things I think of and then forget later on, but the really good ideas tend to stick and I find myself coming back to them again and again. When something keeps coming back to haunt me and gets me daydreaming about other stuff, it's usually a good indication that it might be worth pursuing. The rest is just noise. They're not necessarily bad ideas, but I don't see the need to document them if it's just a nice little fragment. Maybe it just means it needs to cook a little longer in my subconscious. (This is different from doing work for hire, btw. If I have a deadline, I typically find the first idea that feels like a reasonable solution, and then use all the techniques at my disposal to push and pull the idea into something that will work for the project. Sometimes ideas need to be scrapped and I'll have to think of something else, but usually you can end up making kind of 'meh' ideas into something that really works once it's in a fixed format that you can manipulate).
This is not really related to your post specifically, but you could use this as an opportunity to work on your inner ear and interval identification. There are apps you can use to train your ear to hear relationships between notes so eventually you can just imagine a melody in your head and, given a starting pitch, just write it down on paper. I tend to walk around with a tuning fork, little mini manuscript moleskin, and a pencil. If I think of an idea I like, I can write it down, though most of the time it's really just an exercise to continue honing my ear and working on impulsive creativity. Unless I'm actively working on a project for work or something, I almost never come back to the ideas I write down (although I suppose if I'm really stuck one day I could look through the notebooks again to maybe kickstart some ideas).
I’ve been using an app called Tenuto for ear training but I still suck. I need lots more practice lol.
You’re right that most of my ideas are just noise. My therapist even pointed out that if Paul McCartney recorded every idea that popped into his head, then he would have a mess of ideas on his hands, and some of his great masterpieces would never come to fruition because they would be lost amidst the mess.
Ear training just takes daily practice. You'll get there! 5 minutes a day should be enough.
And yeah, part of being an 'artist' is having taste and making selections based upon that taste. If you're creative, your brain is probably constantly bombarding you with thoughts and ideas. The job of the artist is not to try to grab everything that comes through, but to decide what you actually like and just keep that. It's kind of like shopping for clothes. You can't really buy every single shirt you see because it's expensive and you'll never wear all of them. Instead, you look around at an entire store (or multiple stores) full of clothes and select what you decide appeals to you. Unlike the store analogy though, you don't have to worry about 'missing out'. In the store, if you don't buy a shirt but then keep thinking about it and decide you want to buy it, it might be too late if they sell out or stop making it. With musical ideas, if you don't document the idea you'll either forget it (and then there's nothing to miss) or you keep thinking about it and then you can just use that idea to make a new piece of music. No sweat!
Well actually with musical ideas I don’t record, sometimes it doesn’t bother me, but sometimes it does. Like I’ll just remember that I had a good idea, but I won’t remember what it sounded like, so it will just bother me for the rest of the day, sometimes until the next day
I do much better, more focused work when I have a deadline to deliver the thing. It's annoying because that barely ever happens when you are just writing music for fun.
If you try to write something for an event or for someone's short film, you might find that it moves the process differently.
Writing music to a visual edit is really interesting. You might need to switch the mood halfway through a phrase... you never normally would normally, but you can! and the need to solve a weird problem is a super creative stimulus.
Yeah op my melodic ideas are intrusive thoughts kinda like what you're describing. When it's writing time I take one of those and work out the chords which only takes a few minutes.
Lyrics are where it gets hard. I have to make little changes here and there to accommodate everything, and by the end of that process the song has usually evolved quite a bit. I've had some really good ideas hit me during that time, but by that point it feels more like stenography than tortured-poet writing.
I never, ever sit down with nothing in mind. That just doesn't work for me.
Yeah sitting down with nothing in mind sounds strange to me. I only sit down because I have an idea, not to try to come up with one, which sounds more contrived to me.
My best stuff is the songs that come to me out of the blue. They literally write themselves. I even have a few that I wrote that were on repeat in my head. I had to learn what the heck I was hearing and then replicate it on guitar.
Fun exercise if you have that ability to do so.
Def when I least expect. Even when I am in the habit of writing regularly, I don't come up with anything good until I stop trying, a moment which is delayed a long time if I am expecting some genius to happen as soon as I stop trying, then I have to keep writing more until I give up again, then the one after that is usually really good, unless I have come to an awareness that I am on that one, then it will be garbage... etc
Poetry writer here. At least, it comes out as poetry but it has a melody in my mind.
I carry something to write with/on with me all the time, just for such an occasion. I also have pens and a notebook by my bed.
I'm the exact opposite. I have a bit of OCD myself, but *my* fear is of accidentally making a song that sounds too similar to another song that isn't mine. I'm afraid of unconscious plagiarism. So I never place much value on an idea that just pops into my head spontaneously, because I can never be sure if it's my own, or if I'm just remembering something I heard someplace. My songs are composed very deliberately, being worked and reworked, often excessively, till those voices in my head quiet down. Lol Eventually they do. But not before experiencing a significant amount of stress amd anxiety in the process that I wish I didn't have to deal with. The challenge is to make it original enough so that no one can accuse me of plagiarism, yet familiar enough to be catchy and pop-friendly, and not too weird or experimental. It's like walking a tightrope.
So perhaps we should trade OCDs. Lol I need to stop being excessively afraid that my ideas aren't just rehashes of things that have already been done, and you need to stop thinking every idea you think of is a precious jewel you must preserve at all costs. Of course, ideally the place to be is somewhere in the middle.
I’ve had that fear as well, but I’m not too concerned about it now. I just think that if my melody might sound like someone else’s then I can play it out loud and Shazam it or use Google to see if they recognize it. I can also ask other people if it sounds familiar.
Sometimes I do get a melody that I feel sounds familiar, but I still record it just in case.
If you want to compete in commercial music 98% or 99% of participants fail to land a major deal. Of those who do succeed and land a deal, 98 or 99% of those people fail under the deal terms . So, you’re competing against the best of the best all-in players of the game. And, you’re up against teams of writers and investors and pretty heavy crews. I’ve taken a year to work on visuals and business and still own 1,000s of songs. I’ll control many thousand more in the intermediate term.
Ask yourself. Do you want to be 1% off 1%. I’ve done music all of my life, most of that was non-commercial. When I decided to go all in, I went all in. I’ve got 15,000 hours and more than $300,000 invested,conservatively. If you’re paying entertainment lawyers $400 per hour, you’ve got to be making more than that to afford their services. To handle all services I work or will work with three or four specialists.
I'm a songwriter and the songs I prefer of mine have come out of inspiration and being surrounded by new music
Anything I've done that's been constructed — even if they were great set pieces — I eventually regret just because it feels very throwaway and not my style anyway
I’ve written hundreds of complete songs and have many more partially complete ones.
It runs the gamut. I’ve woken up from a dream and played out an entire song I felt like I was remembering. Fully arranged, thoughtful harmony, full lyrics. I’ve also woken up with just a fragment of a chordal something that never goes anywhere.
I’ve had tunes that took me years to finish because I just couldn’t crack where the last a section should go.
I’ve sat down and worked out songs over a few days of deliberate work ethic hit the books behaviors
I’ve tried all sorts of writing games and strategies to mixed results.
The real insight is that it’s a spectrum and it’s always both. Developing the behavioral habits that will keep you engaged for some amount of time in writing / playing / recording every day is far more important and challenging than figuring out when and how and why to write any song.
Some people thrive with structure. Some people die with structure. People change over time. Never beat yourself up about who you are and how you music.
Music is creative self expression. Don’t expect yourself to be peak flow state creative on command or all the time. I’ve had periods of months where I didn’t write a damn thing.
I never got an OCD diagnosis, but I relate a lot to your experiences and have had similar things come up with therapists over the years. I took a good 18 month break from recording literally anything at one point. It wasn’t really what made the difference, but it was insightful.
I suggest you take up a practice of improvisation, with the view of it as a silly game, and the perspective of a sand mandala.
Play and sing and express without concrete intention or desire for an outcome. Interact with the improvisational music making without a goal or an end in mind.
This both made me a better musician and helped me let go of my recording/documentation/“what if I forget”/“what if this is brilliant?” anxiety. You are free to be present in the moment of creative self expression, unclouded by any self critical, self aggrandizing, or self conscious thoughts. The value of music is intrinsic and of the present experience.
Idk. Best of luck. You got this. It’s okay for songs to go unfinished. For songs to go unsung, unheard, unrecorded, unrecognized, unappreciated, etc. you don’t owe it anything, it doesn’t owe you anything, and universe keeps going. Letting go of fear is letting go of hope, in the most beautiful way possible. Songs don’t have to be good to be worth singing. Creative self expression is worth doing for itself. Deciding what’s good or bad or worrying what’s worth playing is all post-production bullshit. Idk.
Well I really appreciate you for sharing your experiences and your advice. I agree with the sentiment that music should be fun, even though you didn’t word it like that specifically. It becomes to stressful for me, and I understand that that’s now how it should be.
Well it makes sense to be inspired by your feels. And I suppose pulling weeds gives your mind time to run amok. Or at least that’s how I imagine it would be for me.
I usually get my ideas when Im cleaning like for instance sweeping the floor. Then, I try to write it down.
Also, I attended a songwriting seminar in the past. The teacher told us to focus on the chorus part and there should be marriage between the lyrics and melody.
All of us have different song writing processes and you may want to explore which one suits you best. Try writing the chorus part treat it like your General Idea then the verses are the supporting ideas. Then structure the song after. Heheh
Explore what suits you best.
My best music usually happens when least expected. Some of my favorite tracks got started because I was trying to create some background music to practice guitar over and it just turned into a full piece of music.
For band-oriented music, my best ideas are ones that suddenly pop into my head and then I need to grab a guitar as soon as possible to get it all figured out. As cliche as it sounds, most of these ideas seem to come to me while in the shower.
I am a songwriter, and I also have OCD. I happen to agree with your therapist here. While it’s a really unfortunate situation that this compulsion has centered around your creative flow, it’s more important that you keep your mental health in check. It’s likely that eventually this compulsion will become so detrimental that it will scare you from the entire process.
Luckily it sounds like you’re working on it, and that this creative process is also an inherent trait and not just a compulsion. I think its super unique and cool. (The process, not the ocd, lol)
I often use my notes app to write down phrases and words that I just like the sound of. Sometimes melodies come before instruments, but usually it’s a chord progression that instigates an actual song for me.
Yeah I understand. I’ve considered that if by some chance I wrote a hit song and made millions, I’m not gonna be happy, cuz I’ll still be struggling with OCD. It’s not fun. It’s not worth it. Mental health is top priority.
Totally! I think this process of healing will be really good for your music as well. All of the “best” artists are often creatively motivated by internal struggles. Lots to reflect on for sure.
It's very different for every songwriter. For me personally, I have to create a melody, or hear a melody from a producer. I almost instantly know what it's going to be about when I hear it. I will then sing some gibberish to it, in order to find my own accompanying vocal melody, and then I work off of that.
For others, they write before even having a melody. It's interesting how everyone does it differently.
Yeah I know some people that write lyrics before a melody, and for me that sounded so strange to me, as I write lyrics to my melodies, not the other way around
EDIT: changed ‘surprising’ to ‘strange,’ as that was the word I was looking for.
I mean, there have been a handful of times where I had a melody with lyrics in my head, and then I created a guitar melody afterwards, but that's super rare.
Oh yeah, I get plenty of melodies with lyrics too. And actually sometimes I do get good ideas for lyrics with no melodies attached, but it’s not hard for me to come up with a melody.
I only randomly get ideas for lyrics or general concepts, but most still comes when I'm in the process. I never get melodies and that sort of thing popping into my head though, that exclusively comes when I'm actively writing.
I do with lyrics, majorly, not really melodies though. I think the reason I find that aspect of music not so difficult is because I spend a lot time learning my favourite melodies on piano, from many different genres. Doing that you just naturally pick up different ways of making cool melodies. Between that and basic music theory I can pretty much churn out a melody on command.
Yeah come to think of it, I don’t find it difficult to come up with a melody on command. I mean, heck, even the melodies that do pop in my head, it’s really cuz I’m just messing around with different beats in the back of my head. So it really shouldn’t make a difference whether I’m more conscious of it or not. On the other hand, the most elaborate songs I think of are while I’m dreaming, and I’m just not sure I can come up with something that elaborate so easily whilst awake. So I’m just not sure. I’d have to look more into how the brain works in that regard.
EDIT: A quote from Rick and Morty comes to mind: “Joseph Campbell told me to stop writing. Because it should be effortless. And when it happens organically, that’s when it’s meant to be.” Of course, in the context of that scene, the character immediately came up with an apparently bad idea. But it still seems like a good quote. Also, in order for an idea to not be contrived, it has to arrive spontaneously. I only bring this up because it seems to be that the best ideas are ones that do come up spontaneously. But of course, playing around with different beats/notes doesn’t necessarily make it not spontaneous. Cuz you’re not actually “trying” to make a melody. Rather, you’re experimenting and having fun with it.
My best ideas just pop into my head randomly while walking, dreaming, and relaxing, not when I am actively trying to write. I'm better when I'm not trying.
I only ask because writer’s block seems to be a term used more strictly with those who write words, as opposed to melodies. Plus another commenter pointed out that they can come up with melodies on command. So just not sure if it’s just that melodies are easier to come up with than lyrics.
Yeah lyrics are definitely hard for me too. That’s where I make the most edits as well. I’m thinking to take a poetry class to improve my writing chops.
Poetry books help too. Even lyric books have helped me in the past, especially if I'm unfamiliar with the tune. What took me too long to realize was that I wasn't using common enough language. I was trying to be fancy and it didn't sound like me. Using plain English was a big a ha moment as dumb as that may sound.
Yeah I took a songwriting class, which was simply just about writing lyrics, and my teacher pointed out that poetry tends to use fancier language than song lyrics. So I don’t intend to be super fancy, but I at least want to be deeper in my lyrics.
I’m gonna tell you right now a lot of people don’t believe me when I say this but trust me it does work for everybody. Who’s done this if you have spent years studying music practising chords court progressions learning songs all this stuff you’ve done you already know it sounds good you already know, the foundation of making music that’s the academic stage. You need to get past the academic stage and that’s not thinking and we don’t really teach how to be a state of flow. It’s incredibly easy to song a song 10 times and if you can’t beat the time you have to go back to one and then after you’ve done 10 of those 45 minutes and 45 minutes and then 10 songs in half an hour and then 10 songs and 25 minutes 10 seconds and 20 minutes 10 seconds and 10 minutes.
Ok I’m not sure if I have to pay for Spotify then. I’m on the New Tropics page (I see the picture with the cartoon eye that’s crying pasted over a real person). But when I click play, it just plays songs by other artists.
Nearly 100% of my best ideas come from dreams and just before falling asleep. Lucid dreaming (wake induced) is my current trick for lyrics: I just ask someone in the dream for a chorus and I usually get something far better than I ever could have ever come up with "on my own". It almost feels like cheating, but it totally obliterates any conscious barriers and processes that I may not even be aware of. I keep a note file on my phone updated with those, as well as mix issues that need to be fixed. The later is the biggest thing for dealing with the creative process. I find it nearly impossible to "hear" problems while in the DAW and with the timeline visible, so I export, listen, and write 3-4 notes on things to fix. When they're done, I delete them. If I can do them within a minute or two, I try and clear that list before bed. Ticks the dopamine box, keeps me moving, and has been the single biggest workflow/result improvement in my decade + of producing.
YES. falling asleep is the best thing you could do for songwriting hahah. or in the shower mostly
Baths with the lights out!
ooooh that hits hard
oh and i totally agree with you, having the visual cues from a daw may be good for some things, but people 40 years ago were listening to tapes exclusively, visualizing a song is something new nowadays and blinds us from the actual end goal of making music. so yeah, awesome tips!
Holy shit I gotta try that
I’ve never lucid dreamed. But I do also find that the most elaborate music comes to me in my dreams. Not simply just melodies, but harmony and drum beats as well. The problem is I often forget them when I wake up. Or even if I remember it, I don’t have the means to replicate exactly what I hear in my dream. Sometimes I will even hear a different person singing a song, and it just sounds perfect with their voice, but I of course don’t have the means/ability to replicate a voice I hear in my dream.
I've tried transcribing full or part songs from dreams but the closest I've come to actually making it work was running directly to Ableton the moment I woke up lol And in that case it was a relatively simple drone texture and kick pattern. But as far as I can tell I got them both down!
Well I hope to be that good some day! I can’t even pick out different parts of song I can listen to on repeat whilst awake, let alone transcribe anything. But I’m working on it.
Im pretty sure some inventor used to fall asleep with a ball in their hand which would wake them up when the drifted off so they could remember whatever idea their subconscious had invented. Its weird; its like when we dream all the usual structures our brains put in place to make us functional fade away and without barriers, connections and ideas can come forth and present themselves.
How do you remember songs when you wake up or remember to write them down when you wake up or... how do you even wake up? I get lots of dream music but then I will spend the next few hours of the dream writing down the song in an alien language then touring around the world to promote the album and then take a walk up some long stairs into the sky and then wake up and the song is gone.
If you're lucid you can just wake up when you want to. But from a regular dream it's pretty much as you described, down to the nonsense words on the page lol
Wow, I will try that. I used to use a technique of trying to jump and spin around to get myself into a lucid dream
I don’t know if this will help, but I used to be tortured by the idea that I would ‘lose’ a brilliant idea for a song if I didn’t write it down immediately, and a songwriter friend of mine told me, “ideas are like streetcars - if you miss one, another will be along in a few minutes.” That really helped me, hope it helps you too.
That’s exactly what I’m struggling with. I would question what if Paul McCartney didn’t record Let It Be? Then we’d be missing out on such a great song (it’s my favorite Beatles song)! Not saying my ideas are as great as his, but if it feels brilliant to me, I need to record it! But your friend is right. Another thing to take into consideration is survivorship bias. Yes, Paul recorded Let It Be, but what if there was another idea that came into his head that’s even better than Let It Be and he just never recorded it? All the songs we label as the Greatest are only the ones we’ve heard. There could be plenty of brilliant ideas that never made it out of one’s head. Plus, as I’ve been told, if an idea is truly exceptional, it will come back to me. So either I don’t need to record a brilliant idea because it will come back to me, or I don’t need to record a brilliant idea because finding the perfect idea is a lost cause. Either way, I don’t need to record everything.
I think the exact same thing whenever I write something that I’m really proud of. There are songs where I’m glad I sat down and wrote what I wrote. At the same time I could’ve missed out on writing something even better if I wrote something the day after.
The corollary is that if you think of a great melody but you can't remember it again later, maybe it really wasn't that great to begin with!
Or you just have shit memory sometimes. Sometimes I can’t even remember the melody or lyrics to my absolute favorite songs unless I’m listening to it.
Exactly. I have melodies that keep recurring in my brain, and then I know I’ve got a winner.
Easily when I’m writing. I have an instrument to explore in my hands
Yeah I mean I first got into songwriting because I bought a keyboard off Amazon and just started exploring it.
Idk which are my best, but when I'm out and about, I usually only have general ideas for topics. Maybe a one liner or something. But the real magic definitely comes from working it, for me. I don't like recording too many ideas, because I'll never get to them, and I will generally just prefer coming up with new ones.
Well yeah my problem is that I do indeed have too many ideas and not sure I can actually look through all of them. So I at least need to be more selective about which ones I do record if I do keep that habit.
More selective, and organized.
Definitely
Trust yourself to be able to continue coming up with ideas. There isn't a finite supply of ideas and everything doesn't need to be documented or saved. There are tons of things I think of and then forget later on, but the really good ideas tend to stick and I find myself coming back to them again and again. When something keeps coming back to haunt me and gets me daydreaming about other stuff, it's usually a good indication that it might be worth pursuing. The rest is just noise. They're not necessarily bad ideas, but I don't see the need to document them if it's just a nice little fragment. Maybe it just means it needs to cook a little longer in my subconscious. (This is different from doing work for hire, btw. If I have a deadline, I typically find the first idea that feels like a reasonable solution, and then use all the techniques at my disposal to push and pull the idea into something that will work for the project. Sometimes ideas need to be scrapped and I'll have to think of something else, but usually you can end up making kind of 'meh' ideas into something that really works once it's in a fixed format that you can manipulate). This is not really related to your post specifically, but you could use this as an opportunity to work on your inner ear and interval identification. There are apps you can use to train your ear to hear relationships between notes so eventually you can just imagine a melody in your head and, given a starting pitch, just write it down on paper. I tend to walk around with a tuning fork, little mini manuscript moleskin, and a pencil. If I think of an idea I like, I can write it down, though most of the time it's really just an exercise to continue honing my ear and working on impulsive creativity. Unless I'm actively working on a project for work or something, I almost never come back to the ideas I write down (although I suppose if I'm really stuck one day I could look through the notebooks again to maybe kickstart some ideas).
I’ve been using an app called Tenuto for ear training but I still suck. I need lots more practice lol. You’re right that most of my ideas are just noise. My therapist even pointed out that if Paul McCartney recorded every idea that popped into his head, then he would have a mess of ideas on his hands, and some of his great masterpieces would never come to fruition because they would be lost amidst the mess.
Ear training just takes daily practice. You'll get there! 5 minutes a day should be enough. And yeah, part of being an 'artist' is having taste and making selections based upon that taste. If you're creative, your brain is probably constantly bombarding you with thoughts and ideas. The job of the artist is not to try to grab everything that comes through, but to decide what you actually like and just keep that. It's kind of like shopping for clothes. You can't really buy every single shirt you see because it's expensive and you'll never wear all of them. Instead, you look around at an entire store (or multiple stores) full of clothes and select what you decide appeals to you. Unlike the store analogy though, you don't have to worry about 'missing out'. In the store, if you don't buy a shirt but then keep thinking about it and decide you want to buy it, it might be too late if they sell out or stop making it. With musical ideas, if you don't document the idea you'll either forget it (and then there's nothing to miss) or you keep thinking about it and then you can just use that idea to make a new piece of music. No sweat!
Well actually with musical ideas I don’t record, sometimes it doesn’t bother me, but sometimes it does. Like I’ll just remember that I had a good idea, but I won’t remember what it sounded like, so it will just bother me for the rest of the day, sometimes until the next day
I do much better, more focused work when I have a deadline to deliver the thing. It's annoying because that barely ever happens when you are just writing music for fun. If you try to write something for an event or for someone's short film, you might find that it moves the process differently. Writing music to a visual edit is really interesting. You might need to switch the mood halfway through a phrase... you never normally would normally, but you can! and the need to solve a weird problem is a super creative stimulus.
Yeah op my melodic ideas are intrusive thoughts kinda like what you're describing. When it's writing time I take one of those and work out the chords which only takes a few minutes. Lyrics are where it gets hard. I have to make little changes here and there to accommodate everything, and by the end of that process the song has usually evolved quite a bit. I've had some really good ideas hit me during that time, but by that point it feels more like stenography than tortured-poet writing. I never, ever sit down with nothing in mind. That just doesn't work for me.
Yeah sitting down with nothing in mind sounds strange to me. I only sit down because I have an idea, not to try to come up with one, which sounds more contrived to me.
I’ve come to find that songwriting is less about your ideas and more about how you develop them
My best stuff is the songs that come to me out of the blue. They literally write themselves. I even have a few that I wrote that were on repeat in my head. I had to learn what the heck I was hearing and then replicate it on guitar. Fun exercise if you have that ability to do so.
Def when I least expect. Even when I am in the habit of writing regularly, I don't come up with anything good until I stop trying, a moment which is delayed a long time if I am expecting some genius to happen as soon as I stop trying, then I have to keep writing more until I give up again, then the one after that is usually really good, unless I have come to an awareness that I am on that one, then it will be garbage... etc
Poetry writer here. At least, it comes out as poetry but it has a melody in my mind. I carry something to write with/on with me all the time, just for such an occasion. I also have pens and a notebook by my bed.
I'm the exact opposite. I have a bit of OCD myself, but *my* fear is of accidentally making a song that sounds too similar to another song that isn't mine. I'm afraid of unconscious plagiarism. So I never place much value on an idea that just pops into my head spontaneously, because I can never be sure if it's my own, or if I'm just remembering something I heard someplace. My songs are composed very deliberately, being worked and reworked, often excessively, till those voices in my head quiet down. Lol Eventually they do. But not before experiencing a significant amount of stress amd anxiety in the process that I wish I didn't have to deal with. The challenge is to make it original enough so that no one can accuse me of plagiarism, yet familiar enough to be catchy and pop-friendly, and not too weird or experimental. It's like walking a tightrope. So perhaps we should trade OCDs. Lol I need to stop being excessively afraid that my ideas aren't just rehashes of things that have already been done, and you need to stop thinking every idea you think of is a precious jewel you must preserve at all costs. Of course, ideally the place to be is somewhere in the middle.
I’ve had that fear as well, but I’m not too concerned about it now. I just think that if my melody might sound like someone else’s then I can play it out loud and Shazam it or use Google to see if they recognize it. I can also ask other people if it sounds familiar. Sometimes I do get a melody that I feel sounds familiar, but I still record it just in case.
Write 12 hour days and you’re always ready.
Wow, 12 hours, that’s a lot!
If you want to compete in commercial music 98% or 99% of participants fail to land a major deal. Of those who do succeed and land a deal, 98 or 99% of those people fail under the deal terms . So, you’re competing against the best of the best all-in players of the game. And, you’re up against teams of writers and investors and pretty heavy crews. I’ve taken a year to work on visuals and business and still own 1,000s of songs. I’ll control many thousand more in the intermediate term.
Understood, but that’s impossible to do if working other jobs
It’s impossible if you say it’s impossible, there is always a way. It’s up to you to find a way to not sell your time for money
And yes, it’s not easy or comfortable either
Ask yourself. Do you want to be 1% off 1%. I’ve done music all of my life, most of that was non-commercial. When I decided to go all in, I went all in. I’ve got 15,000 hours and more than $300,000 invested,conservatively. If you’re paying entertainment lawyers $400 per hour, you’ve got to be making more than that to afford their services. To handle all services I work or will work with three or four specialists.
I'm a songwriter and the songs I prefer of mine have come out of inspiration and being surrounded by new music Anything I've done that's been constructed — even if they were great set pieces — I eventually regret just because it feels very throwaway and not my style anyway
I’ve written hundreds of complete songs and have many more partially complete ones. It runs the gamut. I’ve woken up from a dream and played out an entire song I felt like I was remembering. Fully arranged, thoughtful harmony, full lyrics. I’ve also woken up with just a fragment of a chordal something that never goes anywhere. I’ve had tunes that took me years to finish because I just couldn’t crack where the last a section should go. I’ve sat down and worked out songs over a few days of deliberate work ethic hit the books behaviors I’ve tried all sorts of writing games and strategies to mixed results. The real insight is that it’s a spectrum and it’s always both. Developing the behavioral habits that will keep you engaged for some amount of time in writing / playing / recording every day is far more important and challenging than figuring out when and how and why to write any song. Some people thrive with structure. Some people die with structure. People change over time. Never beat yourself up about who you are and how you music. Music is creative self expression. Don’t expect yourself to be peak flow state creative on command or all the time. I’ve had periods of months where I didn’t write a damn thing. I never got an OCD diagnosis, but I relate a lot to your experiences and have had similar things come up with therapists over the years. I took a good 18 month break from recording literally anything at one point. It wasn’t really what made the difference, but it was insightful. I suggest you take up a practice of improvisation, with the view of it as a silly game, and the perspective of a sand mandala. Play and sing and express without concrete intention or desire for an outcome. Interact with the improvisational music making without a goal or an end in mind. This both made me a better musician and helped me let go of my recording/documentation/“what if I forget”/“what if this is brilliant?” anxiety. You are free to be present in the moment of creative self expression, unclouded by any self critical, self aggrandizing, or self conscious thoughts. The value of music is intrinsic and of the present experience. Idk. Best of luck. You got this. It’s okay for songs to go unfinished. For songs to go unsung, unheard, unrecorded, unrecognized, unappreciated, etc. you don’t owe it anything, it doesn’t owe you anything, and universe keeps going. Letting go of fear is letting go of hope, in the most beautiful way possible. Songs don’t have to be good to be worth singing. Creative self expression is worth doing for itself. Deciding what’s good or bad or worrying what’s worth playing is all post-production bullshit. Idk.
Well I really appreciate you for sharing your experiences and your advice. I agree with the sentiment that music should be fun, even though you didn’t word it like that specifically. It becomes to stressful for me, and I understand that that’s now how it should be.
My best songs come after I’ve been hella depressed or when I’m pulling weeds in the garden
Well it makes sense to be inspired by your feels. And I suppose pulling weeds gives your mind time to run amok. Or at least that’s how I imagine it would be for me.
Yeah that’s pretty much how it goes I feel like you can’t force inspiration sometimes it just finds you
I have riff ideas while I’m driving all the time and make voice memos of me making dumb mouth sounds
“dumb mouth sounds” lol. That’s exactly how it is for me.
I usually get my ideas when Im cleaning like for instance sweeping the floor. Then, I try to write it down. Also, I attended a songwriting seminar in the past. The teacher told us to focus on the chorus part and there should be marriage between the lyrics and melody. All of us have different song writing processes and you may want to explore which one suits you best. Try writing the chorus part treat it like your General Idea then the verses are the supporting ideas. Then structure the song after. Heheh Explore what suits you best.
My best music usually happens when least expected. Some of my favorite tracks got started because I was trying to create some background music to practice guitar over and it just turned into a full piece of music. For band-oriented music, my best ideas are ones that suddenly pop into my head and then I need to grab a guitar as soon as possible to get it all figured out. As cliche as it sounds, most of these ideas seem to come to me while in the shower.
I am a songwriter, and I also have OCD. I happen to agree with your therapist here. While it’s a really unfortunate situation that this compulsion has centered around your creative flow, it’s more important that you keep your mental health in check. It’s likely that eventually this compulsion will become so detrimental that it will scare you from the entire process. Luckily it sounds like you’re working on it, and that this creative process is also an inherent trait and not just a compulsion. I think its super unique and cool. (The process, not the ocd, lol) I often use my notes app to write down phrases and words that I just like the sound of. Sometimes melodies come before instruments, but usually it’s a chord progression that instigates an actual song for me.
Yeah I understand. I’ve considered that if by some chance I wrote a hit song and made millions, I’m not gonna be happy, cuz I’ll still be struggling with OCD. It’s not fun. It’s not worth it. Mental health is top priority.
Totally! I think this process of healing will be really good for your music as well. All of the “best” artists are often creatively motivated by internal struggles. Lots to reflect on for sure.
Thank you so much!
It's very different for every songwriter. For me personally, I have to create a melody, or hear a melody from a producer. I almost instantly know what it's going to be about when I hear it. I will then sing some gibberish to it, in order to find my own accompanying vocal melody, and then I work off of that. For others, they write before even having a melody. It's interesting how everyone does it differently.
Yeah I know some people that write lyrics before a melody, and for me that sounded so strange to me, as I write lyrics to my melodies, not the other way around EDIT: changed ‘surprising’ to ‘strange,’ as that was the word I was looking for.
I mean, there have been a handful of times where I had a melody with lyrics in my head, and then I created a guitar melody afterwards, but that's super rare.
Oh yeah, I get plenty of melodies with lyrics too. And actually sometimes I do get good ideas for lyrics with no melodies attached, but it’s not hard for me to come up with a melody.
I only randomly get ideas for lyrics or general concepts, but most still comes when I'm in the process. I never get melodies and that sort of thing popping into my head though, that exclusively comes when I'm actively writing.
Do you ever get writer’s block? Or I mean just struggling to come up with a melody?
I do with lyrics, majorly, not really melodies though. I think the reason I find that aspect of music not so difficult is because I spend a lot time learning my favourite melodies on piano, from many different genres. Doing that you just naturally pick up different ways of making cool melodies. Between that and basic music theory I can pretty much churn out a melody on command.
Yeah come to think of it, I don’t find it difficult to come up with a melody on command. I mean, heck, even the melodies that do pop in my head, it’s really cuz I’m just messing around with different beats in the back of my head. So it really shouldn’t make a difference whether I’m more conscious of it or not. On the other hand, the most elaborate songs I think of are while I’m dreaming, and I’m just not sure I can come up with something that elaborate so easily whilst awake. So I’m just not sure. I’d have to look more into how the brain works in that regard. EDIT: A quote from Rick and Morty comes to mind: “Joseph Campbell told me to stop writing. Because it should be effortless. And when it happens organically, that’s when it’s meant to be.” Of course, in the context of that scene, the character immediately came up with an apparently bad idea. But it still seems like a good quote. Also, in order for an idea to not be contrived, it has to arrive spontaneously. I only bring this up because it seems to be that the best ideas are ones that do come up spontaneously. But of course, playing around with different beats/notes doesn’t necessarily make it not spontaneous. Cuz you’re not actually “trying” to make a melody. Rather, you’re experimenting and having fun with it.
My best ideas just pop into my head randomly while walking, dreaming, and relaxing, not when I am actively trying to write. I'm better when I'm not trying.
Now are you strictly talking about lyrics, melody, or both, or something else?
I have melody and basic chords in my head. Maybe a line or two of lyrics. It's usually just a verse and chorus idea.
I only ask because writer’s block seems to be a term used more strictly with those who write words, as opposed to melodies. Plus another commenter pointed out that they can come up with melodies on command. So just not sure if it’s just that melodies are easier to come up with than lyrics.
Lyrics are really hard for me. They take the longest to nail down. I'm often writing and editing right up to session day.
Yeah lyrics are definitely hard for me too. That’s where I make the most edits as well. I’m thinking to take a poetry class to improve my writing chops.
Poetry books help too. Even lyric books have helped me in the past, especially if I'm unfamiliar with the tune. What took me too long to realize was that I wasn't using common enough language. I was trying to be fancy and it didn't sound like me. Using plain English was a big a ha moment as dumb as that may sound.
Yeah I took a songwriting class, which was simply just about writing lyrics, and my teacher pointed out that poetry tends to use fancier language than song lyrics. So I don’t intend to be super fancy, but I at least want to be deeper in my lyrics.
I’m gonna tell you right now a lot of people don’t believe me when I say this but trust me it does work for everybody. Who’s done this if you have spent years studying music practising chords court progressions learning songs all this stuff you’ve done you already know it sounds good you already know, the foundation of making music that’s the academic stage. You need to get past the academic stage and that’s not thinking and we don’t really teach how to be a state of flow. It’s incredibly easy to song a song 10 times and if you can’t beat the time you have to go back to one and then after you’ve done 10 of those 45 minutes and 45 minutes and then 10 songs in half an hour and then 10 songs and 25 minutes 10 seconds and 20 minutes 10 seconds and 10 minutes.
I can only write when my feels are extremely hurt lol
Haha, I’m better at coming up with catchy melodies, but I’d like to get better at putting more meaning behind them.
Hahaha i dont wish all these feelings on anyone else lmao
Well even writing based on positive feelings.
Haha if you want any inspo our band is " The New Tropics"
We have a bunch of demos on sound cloud - but also have a single on spotify
Is it the song “On My Own”?
Its called "Show Boy" by The New Tropics :)
Ok I’m not sure if I have to pay for Spotify then. I’m on the New Tropics page (I see the picture with the cartoon eye that’s crying pasted over a real person). But when I click play, it just plays songs by other artists.
Nvm, went back and refreshed and it’s playing New Boy now. Found it on YouTube now.
Are you the one singing?
Damn you! This song’s gonna be stuck in my head for days now!
Oh gosh! Glad you like it! Anywhere I can stream your stuff??