Starting Songs from Words

Season 2 Episode 10 “Do you find yourself starting more from music or words?” This is a pretty common question that people ask songwriters. And it's a question that I'm not really sure how to answer. I remember right around the time when I first started sharing my solo tunes, one of my friends (also a songwriter) and I met up to get some coffee. By the way, if you're not into coffee, you're probably not going to be a good songwriter, just saying. I kid, I kid Anyways he opened with this question when we got to talking about my new songs, and it took me a while to answer. Because in reality, I start from both on a regular basis. Recently I've been on a guitar kick and find myself starting a lot of tunes on guitar riffs. But if I were to look at all the songs I've ever written, went through, and averaged out the starting points, I think it would be pretty evenly split. When you start from the words: There's songwriters out there that won't start a song until they have the title figured out. I tend to be a bit more off the cuff than that. I definitely like leaving some room for improvisation throughout the writing and recording process, both in the musical elements and in the words. There have been times when I've scrapped all the lyrics I previously wrote during recording when I thought something new needed to happen. But even with my tendency towards improvisation, I start tunes from words plenty of times. So words or music? It doesn't really matter. I mean it does (to that individual song), and it was really sweet of my friend to be genuinely interested in my process and what I was experiencing it at that time. Starting as song can be a difficult process, sure. Words and music are both great places to begin a new tune. But at the end of the day, what matters more that your actually writing, and you keep writing. Today's episode In today's episode, we're diving into what starting a tune from words looks like. How it differs from starting with musical elements or riffs. And how it's actually really similar. Over the past couple of episodes we've been having this conversation about finding those starting points and what to do from there. You might see a similar pattern emerge between those conversations and this one. For these conversations, we've been using the model of two different types of “motions” for finding starting points: “Encounters” and “Generative Structures.” Encounters are those brilliant moments when something hits you out of the blue and you want to start a new piece because of it. Generative structures are things like exercises, prompts, games, rules, boundaries, etc. that you set up for yourself to help guide decision making. You “encounter” the first type. The second type is a “structure” that you create which helps you “generate” new material. Makes sense right? In our episode today, we go through some ideas of what those look in like in the realm of words. Encountering words in everyday interactions. Other people. Dialogue in TV or movies. Stealing words and phrases from books. All sorts of fun places for encounters with words. We discuss the importance of having some sort of system in place for capturing these encounters. We also talk about some resources for finding good generative structures with words and how to use these as part of your regular writing practice. The Honest Songwriter is a podcast with 15-20 minute episodes of open, honest conversations about what it's like to be writing and creating on a regular basis. New episodes out every 3 weeks!