ideas for songs

Subject: ideas for songs
From: Red and White Rabbit
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 02:42 PM

usually I write songs with a story behind them but I am having a mental block at the moment - people have asked me to write songs about things but theyare not working - I need something new anyone any ideas?

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 03:12 PM

Just write. Write about your day, your job, your family, your hobby, your imaginary alternate life. Just write. Your writing doesn't have to rhyme, doesn't have to make sense, doesn't have to have a story, doesn't have to be real, doesn't have to follow any rules. Just write.

Once you have written 10 pages of misc. thoughts and rambling prose, you will have at least a dozen ideas for new songs. Separate out the individual lines or parts of lines that really grabbed you or made you chuckle or made you think. You now have some specific starting points for your songs.

Use your imagination and try to come up with at least one verse or chorus using each of the separate ideas you came up with. By this time you will certainly have found at least one good start to a song. Take this beginning and work with it until it becomes the song you want it to be. Don't stop tweeking it until it sounds great.

I have used this technique to write songs when I've thought I was mentally blocked. It works for me, hope it works for you.

Best wishes,
Mike

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 03:35 PM

Supposing you were wanting to write jokes, someone would be sure to tell you that there are no new jokes; there is some finite number of jokes that have been around for a long time, which are endlessly retold, recast, turned inside out, modernized, tied to the tail of some political figure, and so on.

The same thing might be said of songs. Just about every theme that might be imagined has been treated in song after song after song. Murder. Bastardy. Victorious love. Failed love. Indignation about war. Glorification of war. Love of food. Love of alcoholic beverages. Love of God. Rebellion against God. Seduction. (and lots more) You are not going to make up a NEW basic theme, so relax and pick one.

The same may pretty much be said of story lines, and I won't try to go through a listing process like the above.

So pick some subject or theme that interests you--say for the moment seduction or maybe a maiden's clever escape therefrom. Look at some of the many songs that exist dealing with that. Use one or two as starting points, and figure different ways that might be used to treat the theme or to tell the underlying story with perhaps a different payoff, or from the perspective of a different character in the story.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: GUEST, Mikefule
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 03:46 PM

"Bastardy"? Nice word. And 14 points in Scrabble. ;0)

What about a song about a young man who has been roving for many years, unwisely spending all his original funds on spirits and ale, but who, finally making good, returns home a wealthy man, determined to settle down.

I can imagine a scene in which our hero goes to one of his old drinking haunts and, as a joke, asks the Landlady whether he can start a slate. She would initially be sceptical about his ability to pay and be quite unpleasant to him.

The young man could then defuse the situation by producing a few gold coins and the Landlady could cover her embarrassment by pretending she had only been joking. She would then offer him a selection of the finest whiskeys and beers.

After that, the protagonist could determine to go home to his parents and make a full confesion of his misdeeds. Being a lovable rogue, he would no doubt be reasonably confident of their forgiveness - they might even have forgiven him on several previous occasions.

The song would finish with a rousing chorus in which the protagonist reasserts his determination not to go travelling again.

Just an idea.

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: Peace
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 04:19 PM

. . . as he boards a train.

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From:
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 04:25 PM

How about a historic event in your vicinity?

Something which isn't really well known, but taken for granted?

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: Jeri
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 04:34 PM

I have problems finding things that inspire me enough to write a song abou. Sometimes I think it's because I'm trying to write about something too big and I don't quite know how to get started. The right answer probably involves making 'it' smaller.

Another idea: find a topic that is dead boring to you, and find a way to make it means something. If you're the sort of person who enjoys being somewhat contrary, be devious. It can make the songwriting fun and it definitely makes it original. I went to a songwriting workshop at a festival once, and my assignment was to write a song about my trip to the festival. Gag. Boring. I thought about this that evening and the next day, up until about an hour before the workshop finale.

I didn't want to write about driving for five ^#*$ing hours! I hate being stuck on the road. (Now, my mind starts to wander.) Driving's boring. Not like trying to find the Northwest Passage, and yet...all those guys died... but Stan Roger's song about THAT trip sure wasn't boring! And suddenly, I had a song topic I could care about: me whining about driving a mere 5 hours compared to a trip that people never came home from.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that sometimes it helps to look a little sideways at a subject, and make the subject smaller and more meaningful to YOU. Write about the love of a couple of people? Why not write about one event that demonstrates that love. Write about an instrument player winning a competition? Why not express the instrument's point of view? The 'what if' angle is pretty good for getting you interested in writing a song.

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 06:42 PM

Mikefule, you just described the story line of a famous sea song, which I have somewhere on record in my collection, and can neither lay my hands on nor think of the name.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 06:44 PM

I mentioned about there being no new jokes.

That reminds me that you might look at every joke that passes your way to see if the joke would make the story line of a song. A number of fine songs have been written just that way.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: CraigS
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 06:45 PM

Sometimes we play a game - we put items of miscellaneous bric- a - brac on a table and someone picks one and gives it to someone else. The recipient has to sing a song pertinent to that item, or make up a pertinent story. THe connection is invariably loose, but the story could become a song later - a source of ideas

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 07:07 PM

If you've got something to say, and writing songs is the way you say things, you write a song. And if you don't have anything you want to say you wait until you do.

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: Dreadnought
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 07:23 PM

One old pro's trick is to select a girl (or guys) name at random and see what develops from there.

Just a thought...

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: Cap't Bob
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 08:19 PM

Mikefule ~ I think that one has already been taken. Check out "The Wild Rover"
Bob

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 10:09 PM

One of the best ways to write songs is to stop and listen to what is happening around you. Listen to the way people talk about their lives, the cadence of their phrases. If you want to write about something that happened in the past, read as much as you can about it, and then let it become a part of you. Don't rush to get words on paper. Many of sngs come unbidden.

Jerry

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Nov 03 - 12:52 PM

More often than not a song can start from a phrase you might overhear in the street - some way of putting something that sets you imagining where it might fit into a story or a mood or whatever. And a song builds itself around that.

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: Sam L
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 09:43 AM

I'm not very prolific, but lately I've had luck starting with a little bit of a musical phrase, and then finding a verbal phrase that seems to hold up to repetition. Something simple. Then verses seem to unfold from it. I'm working on one about a situation in a Bertol Brecht play my wife was in years ago, another about holding onto things you can't throw out, and one I'm not sure what it's about yet--the central line changed after the chords and tune came together.

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: GUEST,KB
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 10:03 AM

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: GUEST,KB
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 10:09 AM

Try this for a while maybe?
Guitar Noise Online Forum : Sunday Songwriters

At first glance it looks like a crap idea - but I gave it a go a while back and got one decent song out of it. I was quite surprised to find that a method of writing a song would work - normally they emerge through my conciousness.

Might be a useful thing to do to get over temporary block, even if its not something you want to do on an ongoing basis (I gave up after a couple of goes due to lack of time....).
Plus all the advice given above seems pretty sensible too.

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 01:23 PM

Cap'n Bob wrote:
<>

Help! Have we fallen into an irony vortex here? =:0O

Subject: RE: ideas for songs
From: GLoux
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 01:36 PM

Cornbread. Write a song about cornbread.

-Greg