Where do I start?

The short answer is: anywhere you like. Especially with something as broad and emotional as music, any starting point is fine. You might be inspired by a book, or a movie, or what someone said to you in that conversation, or by the singing of the birds.

There are two important parts here:

• Allow yourself to be inspired. (That’s the priming I mentioned last chapter.)
• But also know how to force it, if needed.

It’s nice if ideas just come to you. But if they don’t, and you feel stuck, you also need tools to handle that.

Songwriting mode

How do you get your head in songwriting mode? The same way you’d get it in any other mode.

If you actively engage with music on a daily basis, your brain will keep thinking about that the rest of the day.

This doesn’t necessarily mean songwriting. You might just listen to music or play some yourself.

By doing this, your brain will be musically inspired by anything. If you see a movie later that day, you might suddenly notice the background music more. Because you primed your brain. Because you told it to grow the “music area” and pay attention to that.

Applying this in practice is as simple as just doing it. At least once every few days, try to do something related to music. Keep your mind in that mode. Ideas will present themselves, usually at unexpected moments when you’re not doing anything musically related.

Songwriting is emotion

I can’t help but chuckle sometimes when I read songwriting advice. It says something like:

• “Write a song about your cat!”
• “Pick a topic that interests you. Write a song about it!”
• “Create a mind map about everything you associate with the topic of love!”

We’re not trying to give a Powerpoint presentation here.

Music is emotion. Rhythm is feeling.

If you want to think about songs this way, phrase the question in terms of emotion. Pick topics that create the largest emotional response.

• What am I feeling right now, and why?
• What’s a topic that makes me emotional? Either in a good way (I love that) or a bad way (it makes me angry or sad).
• If you “pick a topic”, make it something you care about deeply. Your partner, your best friend, a treasured memory, and so forth.

Writing a song about your cat can work, if that lovely cat is absolutely the shining star in your life. It won’t work if your cat is just nice, but nothing special. Or if you don’t think anything of it at all.

Soft inspiration

Let’s say this isn’t working for you. Or you need another song for your next album, but it’s just not coming. How do we start then? What else can we do?

I suggest you learn how to improvise on any musical instrument.

I often just sit behind a piano and … play for an hour. No fixed songs. No sheet music—which I can barely read anyway. Just play.

Usually, there are one or two parts I improvised that make me go: “huh, that sounds kinda neat”

Sometimes I switch immediately from improvising to “improving” that tiny idea. But I don’t really recommend that. I like letting an idea “simmer” for a few days before really trying to finish it or build it into something.

Why? If you immediately record an idea, it is “fixed”, and out of your head. This makes it less likely your brain continues thinking about it. And it makes you more hesitant to change or improve the idea afterwards. You wrote it down—now the idea is on paper and done. At least, that’s what our brain thinks by default.

Just improvise. If you find something nice, quickly record a sketch of it (or write it down), then continue improvising.

Pull that idea out of your pile of ideas at some later stage and actually finish it.

How do you improvise? I can’t teach that in this guide. Also because it can’t really be taught.

Improvising = a mindset of experimentation and being okay with hitting the wrong notes.

I learned to improvise by hitting random notes. Some sounded bad, some sounded great. I remembered that. The next time, I hit more good notes than bad notes. Repeat this for years and you suddenly know exactly which notes and chords sound great together—and which certainly do not.

At least 80% of my knowledge of “music theory” came just from doing that.

Music theory

Ah, music theory. The endless debate about whether you need it or not. Let’s add a few paragraphs to it.

You don’t need it. It will be helpful in many cases.

Most people don’t regret the time spent on learning music theory. I’m in the same boat.

But how you learn it, is up to you. As stated, I learned most through improvising. I amended that with some research, reading a book or two, studying songs I liked and what they did right.

Others might prefer taking lessons, or following complete courses on the topic, or watching videos about it. You do you!

I can at least say that you probably won’t regret it. The rest of this guide will regularly mention something about music theory that will help you or be applicable.

Hard inspiration

Alright, all of that fails. No inspiration when standing underneath the shower (or cycling again), improvising is tough for you, and music theory isn’t your best topic yet.

What then? Then you do something I call “getting hard inspired” :p

On purpose, you chase after specific, concrete, real-life things that can be your starting point (for the song). This is where the saying “steal like an artist” comes in.

You might …

• Steal the chords from a song you like.
• Pick two existing songs and try to mesh them together.
• Take the melody of an existing song and modify it. (For example, turn it upside down. When the notes go up in the real song, they go down for you by the same amount. And vice versa.)
• Take a few seconds from a song, throw it in your DAW, and start messing around until it sounds cool and different.
• Retune your guitar randomly and try to play. (Though have some spare strings on hand, in that case.)
• Listen to the sounds or rhythms that many electrical appliances make.
• Ask somebody else to tap a random rhythm for you (with fingers on the table).
• Drop marbles randomly on piano keys and record that. Maybe it randomly produces something wonderful!
• Write a piece of code that randomly assembles chords / notes for you, see if it produces something you like

The general idea is to look at things that do exist (or things you can do), and steal what you can from it.

I didn’t do this for the longest time. Like most, I thought even the idea of copying an existing song or idea was enough to send me to jail. It just feels bad, and we tell each other it is so.

Obviously, I don’t advocate copying or stealing entirely. I advocate picking parts you like or that help you get started, then modifying it. That’s not stealing—that is the definition of inspiration and creativity. If you do this consciously, you’re supercharging that.

You can test this. Write a song that is clearly inspired by a popular song. Let others listen to it, and see how many will call you out on it. I’m guessing that number will be zero, even if you prompt them by explaining you “stole” the song.

As you do more songwriting, you’ll invent your own ways to solve this issue. Your own silly ideas that will get you unstuck. That get you started.

Because that is the hardest part. Once you have some lyrics, some chords, a not blank page, it’s smoother sailing from there.

Let’s talk about that now.