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Old 01-25-2020, 09:09 PM
Laughingboy68 Laughingboy68 is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Stratford, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1,037
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Try these suggestions:

1. Give yourself permission to write imperfect songs. Make them as good as you can right now, but perfect can be the enemy of good.

2. I will sometimes use something that I’ve recently learned in music theory as a starting point. For instance, I learned what chromatic mediants are and then tried to write a song using that idea. Another topic could be using various secondary dominant chords or other borrowed chords to spice up familiar progressions. The added melodic motion often inspires.

3. Sometimes I will shamelessly steal one part of a song that I love. Nothing too obvious, but maybe a rhyme scheme, a melodic contour (maybe inverted or played in a minor key), or a rhythmic syncopation. It gives you a starting framework rather than a blank page.

4. Keep a notebook to write down phrases you hear that grab your ear. Record new things that you play on your phone. These things accumulate and then might be the spark that drives creative momentum.

5. First thing in the morning, write a full page of stream of consciousness expression in a journal. Don’t think, don’t worry about spelling, grammar or sentence structure; just let it flow. It works as a creative exercise to get your brain to stop listening to your internal editor - who can be the killer of good ideas. Sometimes looking back on your journal sheets, you’ll find a gem of an idea; a rhyme, a metaphor, a phrase, some alliteration - something that will inspire creativity. The more you do this the better you’ll get at it.

6. I’ve found that a great source of original inspiration for melody and harmony is to sing into a device like a TC Helicon Harmony G-XT pedal .
Sorry Sean, just kidding.
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