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Get Started in Songwriting: General tips

by Sam Inglis

Here, in no particular order, are five tips to improve your songwriting:

1) Don't feel that you have to finish a song until you're ready. Put it away and come back to it later. If it takes six months or a year for inspiration to strike, so be it – sometimes the distance you create by leaving a song alone is exactly what you need to examine it objectively.

2) Try something different. It's easy to fall into the same patterns over and over again, and you can reinvigorate your writing by deliberately changing your approach.

3) Imagine you're writing a song for someone else: a famous artist, or someone you know. What words would you like to put into their mouths?

4) Got a lot of half-finished songs, or fragments of songs? Try welding them together. It's surprising how often an orphan verse and a lonely chorus turn out to be made for one another.

5) Other people's opinions count. If you have a song that always goes down well at gigs, no matter what you think of it, you've hit on something worthwhile. It's amazing how many songwriters dismiss their most popular material as lightweight or trivial.


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Get Started In Songwriting: Teach Yourself

Get Started In Songwriting: Teach Yourself
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