Object Writing: Songwriting Exercise
An object writing exercise is one of the easiest ways to keep song ideas flowing and find new ideas. Inspiration is sometimes a hard thing to come by. This…
Build Skills
-
-
Ghost Song Songwriting Exercise
Stuck with a blank page and nothing is really inspiring you? Use the ghost song process. Start with a song you like and build a new one! Ghost song…
-
Suzanne Vega ‘Small Blue Thing’
Master of Becoming the Other! Becoming the other is a true form of transformation. Not only is Suzanne Vega’s ‘Small Blue Thing’ one of my favorite songs, it is…
-
Create A New Song: Put A Twist On Cliche Phrases
Cliche phrases can be a great song prompt starter. Whether you’re using in a song, or as your hook line, they can help you create interesting new songs that…
-
What Is A Song Prompt?
A song prompt is a starter. It’s a way to get to a song by assigning yourself a specific focus. The benefit of a prompt is that you’ve got…
-
Song Prompt: Eleven More Things
What’s better than a song prompts list of “more things” to get your brain working and go somewhere you didn’t imagine? These prompts can help generate some song or…
-
Song Prompt: Eleven Things
This “Eleven Things” song prompt focuses on selecting from a variety of items to provide you with a large, outside-the-box array of objects to spur your imagination. It’s a…
-
Song Prompt: Use a Book as a Starter
Write a Song About Some Aspect of a Book It can be: Questions To Ask Yourself Prompt Chord Progression Key = D Verse: D – Em – G –…
-
Rhyme Pattern Proxy
This one is great to use if you’re stuck on a song and works pretty quickly. The goal is to force you to find new words or ways to phrase…
-
Create Your Own Rules
Create your own rules to govern how you’ll write the song. You can create rules that defy conventional rules, or just put a twist on a direction you would…
-
Songwriting Exercise: Write For An Artist
This songwriting exercise focuses on writing for an artist. You’ll work through some simple steps to: (1) find an artist that works with your style of writing, and (2)…
-
Joni Mitchell ‘The Magdalene Laundries’
On her 1994 album Turbulent Indigo Joni Mitchell has one of the most descriptive, powerful songs you’ll ever hear. She crafts a first person story about a young girl incarcerated in one…
-
Rhyme Mastery: Lori McKenna ‘The Bird & The Rifle’
Lori McKenna’s “The Bird & The Rifle” is a masterclass in song craft. Not only is the rhyme pattern brilliant, but she illustrates how to use a metaphor to…
-
Kacey Musgraves ‘Merry Go Round’
Kacey Musgraves, along with Josh Osborne and Shane McAnally, uses the play on words in ‘Merry Go Round’ bring the images and the story of “a life” from a…
-
Adele ‘Chasing Pavements’
A recent comment on the blog got me thinking. The comment was downplaying the songwriter’s lyrics, mentioning they sounded as if they were written by a 17 year-old, because,…