Writing Songs

I've been part of a songwriting challenge lately and find it's a great way to spark the ole juices up again. Even if the songs are terrible, it's a good way to write something. It doesn't matter what it is, it's the writing that makes a difference.

There's nothing like a deadline to get one going...sometimes beautiful fully formed songs show up and it's a gift. But most of the time, and I'm speaking just for me, the songs are wrestled out of me to be written on a page.

I'm bored. I bore easily. I can't keep playing the same chords over and over again and feel inspired. Sometimes, something new comes out, but lately it's been the same old same old. So....instead of banging my head against the wall or retiring my guitar, I'm trying to write good words. If a tune shows up, great. But I'm not sweating it.

This week's challenge is to write for a specific artist. Pick a name artist and listen to their music, then write something like what they would sing. It sounds relatively simple, but beleive me, it's not. I'm not a commercial writer, I don't write hit songs. Or at least I haven't so far. But it's the challenge of listening to something I wouldn't write and trying to emulate it.

I might use the meter, I might take the subject matter, I might take the chords. It doesn't really matter, it's the doing that seems to work.

I've written a lot of songs over the years. I still play a lot of them, but in looking back, I find that the ones with staying power are not the ones I slaved over. They're the ones that fell out. What does that tell me? When I stopped thinking about the process and let it happen, albeit unintentionally, the songs were good. At least in my eyes.

So spring arriving and the thought of getting back on the road has got the juices flowing again and it's a good thing.