Why You Struggle To Think Of Cool Ideas For Writing Songs

Why You Struggle To Think Of Cool Ideas For Writing Songs

By Ryan Buckner

Do you have a hard time thinking of new ideas for writing songs? Wish you could quickly write new music that clearly expresses whatever thoughts, feelings and emotions you want to express? First, you must change your general approach(es) to songwriting and replace it with one that will make you much more creative.

Here are the two steps to take now in order to quickly think of great ideas for writing a song:

Step One – Instantly improve your songwriting by downloading and studying this free guide to creating good music. By studying this songwriting resource, you will learn how to fix many issues that currently hold you back in your songwriting.

Step Two – After you have downloaded the guide from step one, continue reading through the ‘songwriting mistakes’ in this article and use it (along with the advice I offer) to significantly improve your songwriting.

Here are four common songwriting mistakes that will keep you from thinking of a lot of new ideas for writing a song:

Mistake One – Writing Exclusively For One Instrument

When you are trying to think of new songwriting ideas, are you accustomed to only using a single instrument? Most musicians are, however this approach is actually quite limiting. Why? When you only use one exclusive instrument to write your songs, you limit your creativity because you gravitate toward the usual licks/scales/phrases/etc. that you play. Additionally, your songwriting is limited based on the fundamental limitations of the instrument itself (the specific sounds a particular instrument can make).

Rather than using ‘only’ a single instrument to come up with ideas for writing a song, use a minimum of 3 at any given time (this may require some research on your part). This will help you not only build your skills and write more high quality music, but it will give you an even greater pool to draw from in terms of creative songwriting possibilities.

Mistake Two – Not Saying Anything Through Your Music

Part of what makes music so powerful is its ability to express specific ideas and emotions that the listener can connect to. It is for this reason that you are severely limiting yourself as a songwriter when you do not take the time to think about what you want to ‘express’ BEFORE you get started coming up with ideas for a song. It is common for musicians to ‘only’ focus on writing cool sounding chord progressions or melodies. However, this approach almost always causes them to quickly run out of ideas because they have no true ‘foundation’ for what they are writing. Of course you can write cool ideas here and there by only focusing on the musical aspects, but you can create endless ideas for songwriting once you know ‘what’ you want to express in the first place.

Of course, you can think of ‘some’ good ideas for songwriting by thinking only from the ‘musical’ side of things. However, when you take the time to think critically about what it is that you truly want to express in your music, you will come up with countless ideas and directions to take in your songs.

Whenever you are about to begin a songwriting session, invest the time into thinking of what you really want to express. Make sure NOT to skip this important step! You will find that you can quickly gain inspiration by simply knowing what you want to write about – this in itself will help you generate many new songwriting ideas.

Mistake Three – Underestimating (Or Ignoring) The Power Of Practice And Progress Measurement

Countless songwriters take a very long time to improve their music and develop a large pool of ideas for writing songs because they never actually ‘practice’. Unlike practicing an instrument, many musicians believe that you only get better at songwriting slowly over time after you have written enough songs. However, this mindset is deeply flawed. Truth is, the best way to become a great songwriter (fast) is to continually practice to improve your songwriting in many different areas while tracking your progress along the way. You do not ‘have to’ write entire songs in order to become a great songwriter. Of course you do want to write songs, however you can quickly build up the quality of your songs and ability to think of creative musical ideas by working to improve on individual aspects of songwriting such as writing melodies, using rhythm more creatively, using harmony to enhance a vocal line, etc. The bottom line is, you must continually ‘practice’ these things with intense focus and not just ‘expect to get better’ after writing an unknown amount of songs.

Mistake Four – Making Your Music Too Complex

Songwriters who have a hard time thinking of new ideas for writing a song continually ‘overcomplicate’ their music. For these musicians, their main method for thinking of new ideas is simply adding on more notes until something finally ‘sounds cool’. The problem is, using this approach frequently takes them a very long time to think of cool songwriting ideas and more often than not results in a big complicated mess. The reason this happens is the songwriter just tries to improvise ideas until something finally ‘sticks’.

Don’t underestimate the power of writing simple musical parts (you do not have to write things like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” of course – I don’t mean ‘that’ kind of simple). Write your music beginning with a very basic idea that sounds pretty cool without worrying about how complicated it sounds. For instance, a short, but cool sounding chord progression or ‘motif’. Later on, you can add onto this idea to make it more complex if you like, but at very least if you start off with an idea that sounds good you can always go back to it if you start to dislike the direction it is going in. Additionally, taking a more simple approach will give you a major boost in momentum that will help you along in your quest to come up with tons of great ideas for songwriting. Discover how to write complex and creative musical ideas by getting this free guide to creating good songs.

Now that you know what mistakes will limit your musical creativity and reduce your ability to think of new ideas for writing songs, get loads of creative songwriting ideas and learn how to make music that sounds exactly how you intended it to by downloading this innovative resource about creating good music(it’s totally free).