Auto-Generate Chord Progressions
One of the easiest ways to tune your ear into different sounds is to force the creation of variety in your chords. This gets you out of common patterns or melodies you might use and can be quite inspiring. Switch up what you normally use for a chord progression by...Song Vamp
Using someone else’s song to help you get started isn’t cheating, and it’s not copyright infringement unless you don’t change it significantly. So, for the Ghost Songs Lyrics exercise, make sure you change the song you started with to get...Ghost Songs: Lyrics First
Using someone else’s song to help you get started isn’t cheating, and it’s not copyright infringement unless you don’t change it significantly. So, for the Ghost Songs Lyrics exercise, make sure you change the song you started with to get...Song Exercise: Rhyme Pattern Proxy
This song exercise is great to use if you’re stuck on a song line and can’t seem to make the song work. It’s a great way to spur new ideas and something you can use whenever you need to get out of a rut. The goal is to force you to find new words or...Song Exercise: Follow Your Own Rules
This song exercise is meant to get you outside of your normal routine, and create some variety for you as you approach a song. TO START: Give yourself some rules, then write within them. Make up any you’d like and don’t think about the song itself....Song Prompt: The Life Of An Historic Character
There are great characters who create great stories throughout history. The best thing about those stories is that all you have to do is a little research, find the human side of all the facts, and bring it to life as a song. OK, so maybe it sounds a little harder now...Song Prompt: Picture Of Yourself
I recently got a song prompt at a songwriting workshop (yes – a virtual workshop), that initially I was going to pass on. The prompt? Find a picture of yourself and write a song about it. In the moment I thought, there’s nothing more self-aggrandizing...2 Hour Songwriting Exercise
Whether you aspire to write songs in Nashville, or just write great songs, the 2 Hour Songwriting Exercise could be one of the best ways to ramp up your “finished song” skills quickly and grow your songwriting catalogue. Yes, you’ll end up with some...SC Exercise: Write For An Artist
This exercise focuses on writing for another artist. You’ll work through some simple steps to (1) find an artist that works with your style of writing, and (2) write a song for that artist targeting the concept and lyrics as much as possible. There’s also...SC Exercise: Turning Poems Into Songs
Turning poems into songs sounds like something that’s pretty easy to do. After all, the words are there. The rhyme is there. The meter is there. All you have to do is add the music! But the challenge is in creating something accessible to a listener that comes...Song Sketching Exercise Using Story Arcs
If you’ve ever been in a high school English class, you’ve studied how drama is created in a play, a novel or short story. So you knows the “story arcs” that can occur and the sequence of how drama unfolds. You know, the introduction of...What’s Furniture In Lyrics?
You’ve probably gotten song critiques that suggest you need more furniture in lyrics to give the song a stronger sense of showing versus telling. To do that, you’ll use a combination of external detail and internal detail. But, how much is too much? And,...Point Of View (POV) Switch Exercise
One of the easiest ways to increase your understanding of point of view (POV) is to take a song you’ve completed and work through each of the POV alternatives. Changing up your point of view will help you see how the song’s message can shift simply by...Get A Second First Line Opinion!
A second first line opinion means just that. This songwriting exercise will focus on getting some second opinions about your first lines. Why bother getting a second first line opinion? Your first line is critical to your song, It’s probably more important...No More $900 For Pitchable Demos!
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