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Transcript:

Something I think songwriters don't talk about enough are songwriting sessions, because not every songwriting session looks the same or should look the same. In fact, I think there are a lot of different types of songwriting sessions, and most of the time a successful songwriting session is one with a pretty specific goal, not just something like, "I'm going to work on song X." I don't think that is specific enough. So in this episode of the Songwriting Theory Podcast, we are going to talk about five different songwriting sessions that will change everything. Let's talk about it.

Hello, friend. Welcome to another episode of the Songwriting Theory Podcast. I'm your host, as always, Joseph Adala. I'm honored that you take some time out of your busy day, your busy week, to talk songwriting with me. It's coming out a bit later than usual, but I was sick with the flu for a week, so that's why this got delayed. And my apologies in advance for any coughing. I will be sure to try to do it not into the mic or anything, but still recovering from that. If you haven't already, be sure to grab my free guide, "20 Different Ways to Start Writing a Song," because a great way to make sure you don't get creatively stuck is simply by starting in different spots, starting with different things, not always starting with a chord progression, not always starting with a bass line, not always starting with lyrics, not always starting with music. Sometimes changing it up is a great way to stay creatively fresh and get some different results with your songs. There's something I don't talk about probably as much as I should, but these aren't just 20 ways to start a song, but they can be 20 different ways to start any given song section. So if you wrote your first verse, and that first verse is built off of a sweet bass line, that's how you started your song, and now you're sort of stuck on the chorus, or you're trying to figure out where the chorus needs to go, you can again go to 20 different ways to start writing a song, but in this case you're actually starting a song section, because just because you started the verse with the bass line doesn't mean that you can't start your chorus with something different, like your melody or with the piano riff or something else.

So let's talk about these five different song... so be sure to check that out. It's at songwritingtheory.com slash free guide. So let's talk about these different songwriting sessions. We'll start with the beginning, and that is simply an idea gathering session. And the beauty of these is, first of all, they're fun, and it's just a great way to get really excited about songwriting. If you're stuck on songs, just going back to basics and sitting down with only the intent of gathering ideas. There's something beautiful about the lack of pressure that you have when you know that you are sitting down just to come up with ideas. You don't need to care whether they're good ideas, you're just trying to get as many ideas as possible. And also the lack of pressure that you know you're not trying to come up with an idea so that you can write a song 10 minutes later off of that idea. It just frees you up to think of more ideas, to possibly think outside the box a little bit more.

So be sure to check that out at songwritingtheory.com slash free guide. So let's dive into the songwriting sessions that we are talking about. The first one is right at the beginning. It's an idea gathering songwriting session. And you can even argue this isn't really even a songwriting session because it's sort of a pre-songwriting session or as sometimes I like to think of it a song developing session.

And really that wording comes from a lot of times in movies they'll say like a movie is in development and what that means, what that usually refers to is the process before you actually start making the movie in the way that most of us think of making a movie. So principal photography is when they actually start to film the movie. It's really getting made. But development is sort of that stage where they're kicking around ideas, they're trying to figure out maybe casting, they're trying to figure out what's the right budget for this movie, is this something that we can do with the budget that we have, all those sorts of things. It's really the pre-movie making stage if you will. So in the same way there's no reason that we as songwriters can't have essentially a pre-songwriting stage. In fact I think it's a great idea. Authors do the same thing. Most of the time an author doesn't just sit and start writing a book. Some do, but a lot plan beforehand. They'll do exercises to really flesh out their characters and make sure they understand their characters before they start writing for them. They don't discover their characters as they write the book. They already know their characters before they write the book.

Or they know the general plot points. They try to outline the book, make sure that the story arc makes sense and it resonates with the characters and it makes sense. All the characters' decisions make sense before you actually put the proverbial pen to paper.

So this is something that I think we should do more often in songwriting. I don't think we need to do as much of it because a book is a pretty big endeavor. There's a lot when it comes to characters and story. And songs have less. So there's no reason to spend months developing a song before you actually write it in the way that maybe it does make sense to do for a book. But there's something glorious just about having no pressure to come up with a song idea and immediately execute on it. There's something just great about that. Because in an idea gathering songwriting session, you're not actually trying to write a song. You're really not even trying to figure out what is a good idea for a song. You are simply, you have one job, gather ideas. You're not worried about whether the ideas are rotten or great. You're not worried about anything like that.

That's for later in the process. For now, you just want to go find ideas and find as many ideas as you can. And really we're trying to maximize the pool of ideas we have that we actually go execute on. Because I think another mistake that is pretty common to songwriters is really, I could call it just impatience. I think impatience is something that negatively affects many songwriters where they're too impatient to actually edit lyrics. They're too impatient to actually craft a song. They just want to get a song done so every song takes an hour. And it's like, well, I can tell. It's not that you can't write a great song in an hour. Of course you can. But just like a book, can you write a book in a month? Yeah. But on average, if you took a million authors and said, okay, write a book in a month, and took those same million authors and said, okay, now write a book in a year, of course on average the yearbooks are going to be way better. That's why authors take a year to write a book. Right? You know, this is the whole process, not just the writing part, editing, all that sort of thing. But usually it's, you know, an author comes out with a book something like once every six months if they're pretty fast, or a year on this lower side.

And I think sometimes songwriters struggle with impatience. Whether impatient to start writing a song, they're impatient to finish a song, they're impatient to just, you know, put out there whether the lyrics make sense or not, whether the lyrics are really something powerful or not. They're just like, oh, it's done. It's done.

We think too improvisationally, I think, sometimes when it comes to songwriting, which we'll talk about a little bit more for songwriting session too. But a part of the beauty of this is it forces us to come up with more ideas, and then we can choose the best ideas for ourselves.

Because the pressure of I'm going to come up with a great idea and immediately execute on it, probably the idea sucks. Right? If you and I, right now, were to try to think through a song idea, and we were to go write a song off of the first idea that we have that's halfway decent, by tomorrow we might think that was a stupid idea. Why do we even make a song off of that? But when you have a giant pool of ideas, it allows you to pull from the best ideas you have, and it also allows you to pull from the ideas that most resonate with you at the moment. Because, you know, if you got laid off two months ago and you were ticked at your boss because you feel like you were not the right person to get laid off, blah blah blah, so you're ticked about it, now two months later when you have a better job and maybe you're not bitter about it anymore, maybe right now is not the time to write that song. Right? Maybe in two months when you have a new boss and they're kind of annoying you too or something, then maybe that brings back the emotions that you had when you were laid off and maybe now that's the time to write the song. So there's an element of that too, right? Where some nights or some days writing a sweet love song might be something that makes sense based on how you're feeling. In other days you couldn't do that if you tried, but you can write a bitter angry song. So when you have a giant pool of ideas to work off of, it allows you the luxury of sort of working on a song that best fits where you are at right now mentally, emotionally, etc. and it also allows you to be more picky, where if you have 30 ideas and you're only writing one song off of one of those ideas, you get to pick the best idea of 30, which is probably a much better idea than just coming up with an idea and immediately executing on it, because now it's one of one idea. That idea might have sucked