I thought it might be interesting to have discussion on songwriting. I didn't find one on a forum search, so I though I'd try. There's an intersting article in the Feb. 1998 issue of "Acoustic Guitar" magazine on how the instrument one uses affects the song. I'm not a professional musician, but I enjoy trying my hand at writing songs. I've tried writing songs on different styles: country blues, delta blues, country, folk ballads, etc. Generally I write using the guitar and most often write the music before the lyrics, although not always.

I can usually tell pretty quickly whether a song is going to work. Those that do often seem to "write themselves". If I find I have to labour at it, the song usually was never meant to be. This doesn't mean I don't spend time editing and polishing the lyrics or search for the right variation on the standard chords; but the basic skeleton of the song takes shape very quicky.

I'd be very interested in knowing how do some of you approach songwriting both lyrically and musically (although I find it hard to separate the two).

Dave T