Advanced Songwriting Tips – Put Yourself In Songwriting Mode – Part 1
You’ve heard the story before. A popular recording artist recalls how he wrote his or her million seller by saying, “I dreamed I was barefoot in a field of daisies singing this unbelievably haunting, beautiful melody in front of three gypsies wearing purple bandannas, then I woke up with the song still in my head and I scrambled to write the lyrics.” We should all be so lucky.
Sting recalls how he woke up in the middle of the night with the line, “Every breath you take, every move you make dancing in his head, so he sat down at the piano and wrote the million-seller “Every Breath You Take” in 30 minutes. Countless other songwriters talk about a short phrase or melody suddenly and unexpectedly taking over their brains and hit songs literally “writing themselves” with little effort!
So how does this happen? It certainly doesn’t happen by accident to just anybody who has no interest in writing a song. It happens to songwriters who put themselves in what I call “Songwriting Mode,” which is the ability to train your brain to subconsciously create any of the following:
1. a great original song title
2. a catchy melody (usually a short musical phrase)
3. an interesting lyric
4. an infectious rhythm
5. a pleasing harmony
6. any other song component; and
to instantaneously translate that idea or ideas into the making of a great song by allowing your mind to literally take off in different musical directions! Usually, musical ideas from being in “songwriting mode” come in short phrases or spurts, and they can be any part or section of the song (i.e., the last line of a verse, the middle of a chorus, etc.)
On Thursday, August 14, 2008, Part 2 of this series will begin to disclose how to condition your mind to reach the stage of being in “songwriting mode.”
