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Other than a short jazzy instrumental, I haven't written a song since 2006. Before that, I would write 6 to 12 songs a year (with one crazy creative patch when I wrote about 25). Of those, I can listen to about a third without cringing. I never tried to sit down and write, something would just set me off and then I'd get into songwriter mode and write, revise, and arrange until I at least had a servicable demo.

The well has dried up. Maybe it's parenting duties, maybe law school just chased away my muse. Too old to rock'n'roll? The rare times I start to feel a spark, it fades like a mirage.

Have you ever had an extended dry period? Any suggestions?

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Every interest comes and goes with some staying at the forefront more often than others. Song ideas pop into my head enough to have something to work with, but without a band the ideas go nowhere. Projects away from music get started and finished when they feel right. The creation of objects with leathercraft has been a matter of having to finish out an idea before it gets away.

Dry spells may not be "dry." Your motivation to focus on songwriting might just not be as high at one point as it is another. Unless you are a professional songwriter do not worry about it.

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I'm pretty prolific (not gonna say it's the highest QUALITY) in writing. Have a couple hundred songs recorded and probably a couple hundred riffs and ideas and half-finished demos recorded too. When I was single several years back I'd write and demo a song every weekday night.

I think it's like a lot of authors or the Nashville pros: you sit down with a set time block to write and you work it out. You can't count on inspiration. You basically decide you're gonna a do a (choose one: party, breakup, love, political, drinkin') song in the vein of (AC/DC, Sugarland, The xxx, Sigur Ros) and the hook or chorus will be (a punny one-liner, a mysterious phrase, the thing you overheard at the grocery store that day) and you...

just.

do.

it.

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I agree that one must hollow out some time and space for writing. That said, I know I've had times walking down the street when a riff just came to me and I had to get home as fast as possible to articulate it on a guitar.

I think, even if you have no "ideas" you can get the ball rolling by picking up your guitar, or maybe just doing some recording. Work on harmonies, or learn some cover songs, etc. Just entering into "dialogue" with your instrument can lead you into unexpected places that you might not have premeditated.

The last couple years my writing process has changed a lot. I tend to write using my little loop pedal, so instead of just riffs I now usually have harmonies, or at least counterpointal stuff for each "section" of a song. I also solo over chord changes with my looper and record it right onto my phone. I listen later while riding the bus or whatever and often hear cool melodic ideas that can be turned into songs or the themes of songs.

I say, just play as much as possible. If "writing" seems to hard then don't stress about it, just let your guitar speak. You might be surprised by what it has to say and end up entering into composition.

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It's simply a matter of time for me to work things out.

Then comes the ability to play my own stuff. Never mind some one like to listen.

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I pick up a different instrument when I hit a dry spell and it often gets some new ideas churning.

I also find I get more ideas popping into my head on long drives with the radio on in background, when I'm not really thinking about anything.

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I've been writing for a while, first there were short stories, then poems, then songs, then short stories again.

It has been cyclical, because it has been linked to my own living. First big me"batch" was when i was 15, it lasted 2 years, i won some awards at the time, my vocabulary was just the richest it has ever been, my ideas were linguisticly luscious for once.

Change of life and scenario, lots of new things to discover, 10 years later started again, this time there were songs, and stories, in new languages, not as rich as the first batch. It lasted almost 10 years. It produced around 50 good texts that i have yet to arrange and record.

New changes, new scenario, lots of ideas in my mind, but i don't have any more the imperative urge to write.

As others have suggested, writing is an exercise, and you need to exercise systematically. Then, as my French teacher used to say: "a writing is like a wine, you need to let it rest in the drawer, and take it out from time to time to turn it"

I also like the contextual method: write something and that's it, no rework, leave it as is...

But start by writing, brainstorming ideas, once is all working good, then, start Writing :) it'll come.

Never throw out anything, an old phrase can be your new inspiration...

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Other than a short jazzy instrumental, I haven't written a song since 2006. Before that, I would write 6 to 12 songs a year (with one crazy creative patch when I wrote about 25). Of those, I can listen to about a third without cringing. I never tried to sit down and write, something would just set me off and then I'd get into songwriter mode and write, revise, and arrange until I at least had a servicable demo.

So, are you saying that which "set you off" doesn't set you off any more? Maybe the things which once inspired you to write aren't worth the emotional and intellectual effort to you now. Everything changes - especially our passions. If nothing you're doing right now inspires you to write, maybe try some new non-musical hobby or something. I'm stuck in this same uninspired kind of a rut myself, so I (sort of) know how you feel. For me, I'm either too busy or too tired from being too busy...

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So, are you saying that which "set you off" doesn't set you off any more? Maybe the things which once inspired you to write aren't worth the emotional and intellectual effort to you now. Everything changes - especially our passions. If nothing you're doing right now inspires you to write, maybe try some new non-musical hobby or something.

Part of the problem is I never really understood what sparked a song even when I was writing. If I sat down and said "I'm gonna write a song," I ended up with crap.

There was no consistancy to my writing. Sometimes I'd be playing guitar and a progression or riff would come. Sometimes a melody. Sometimes a lyric phrase. A drum loop. I even woke up one morning with a new song in my head, more or less fully formed. One song came to me when I was driving.

Part of the problem may be knowing so much music. Now when a melody comes to me, I associate it with a known song, rather than trying ot make it my own.

For me, I'm either too busy or too tired from being too busy...

You said it, brother!

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Sometimes I am creative and sometimes I am not. Part of it is wanting to be creative. Not that you can turn it on or off, but wanting to write can sometimes make it easier. ( sometimes harder) Picking up a different guitar can help. Hearing different songs can help. but thinking about life in general rather than your specific life can also help.

Sometimes when things are going good for you, you have to not think about your life but think about a fantasy, or daydream. Something other than your everyday existence.

Anger and frustration have always helped me but I tend to be sorta blues based.

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What's your process like? Lyrics first, music second, or t'other way round?

Personally, I can come up with almost endless musical ideas - mostly simple riffs and/or chord progressions I can monkey around with, add on to, and can come up with many quality basic structures. When I go to apply the lyrical "meat" to my musical "bones", I get bogged down, lost or otherwise lose interest out of sheer boredom or frustration. As such, I pretty much have to resort to writing some lyrics first and then whipping something up to fit, which is much more likely to get me to my end goal.

Early mornings seem to bring the freshest ideas for lyric writing to me, especially Sunday mornings for some strange reason...

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I've recently gone back to the boxes of tapes of songs that I never finished. Some are crap but some parts are pretty good. You can find some odd riffs or melodies that you would never write in your current headspace and use them to jump start your muse.

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Tapes? Haha! I just recently digitally recorded 20 hours of song ideas/riffs that were on tape...down to just a couple hours or so. I then burned all the tapes on the driveway to dispose of the evidence! It was kind of cathartic.

I usually am most prolific when life is tough...suffering through things. Hard life = good songs...for me anyway...and most blues players!

Here's a free songwriting course from Boston College of Music. I did it and it was fun and makes you work like Polara said.

https://www.coursera.org/course/songwriting?from_restricted_preview=1&course_id=970262&r=https%3A%2F%2Fclass.coursera.org%2Fsongwriting-001%2Fauth%2Fauth_redirector%3Ftype%3Dlogin%26subtype%3Dnormal%26visiting%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fclass.coursera.org%252Fsongwriting-001%252Fwiki%252Fview%253Fpage%253Dcourseschedule

Hope this helps! Good luck!

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I started creating my own music because I really didn't have an ear or the patience to figure out how to play mainstream music. I had a Roland TR626 that I used to create patterns, chained them together, created breaks or bridges and then forced myself to come up with something that would fit the framework. This is how I started to write. Lyrics came easier for me once I had background. I produced two 'albums' of material on my trusty Tascam four track.. 6 originals on the first, 2 of which were instrumental with a couple of covers, and ten originals on the second, with one instrumental.

Over the next ten years, I wrote infrequently, producing a couple of new songs a year. Then I joined a cover band that worked on average about every other week for almost four years. Didn't even think about writing, but managed to put together a handful of progressions that were essentially complete sans lyrical content. I did get a better drum machine.. a Roland R5 that still works on its original battery :)

After the cover band folded, I naturally got back into writing, only now, I don't have a job where I can allow my mind to wander for 6 hours a day. A friend gave me the book: 'How Music Really Works', by Wayne Chase. Well, I taught myself theory and chord circles, so relearning something I already knew and trying to apply Wayne's vernacular and proper names to something that is abstract to me, was counterproductive. I put the book away for a couple of years before I found myself committed to sit in two hours in a waiting room for a family member. I brought the book along to keep myself occupied. Turning to the back of the book, I found several chapters on songwriting that changed my approach completely, and refined my style.

One thing that stuck with me was the fact that writing is difficult for everyone. Anyone who claims they wrote a song in ten minutes and that it just 'came together' isn't being truthful. Songwriting is hard work if your end result is going to be a really good song.. and your end result should be just that. Anyone can write a song, but writing a good song that reaches people is a needle in a haystack. Don't be discouraged by taking six months to develop a really good song. There is a reason that pro bands spend so much time recording.

Give your lyrics energy by choosing compelling words. Avoid using the word 'we', instead make it about yourself or a specific subject or proper name. The words you choose should be interesting.

There was a lot of specific information about rhyming and applying emPHASis properly. What I found to be a necessary toolbox for me, is the creation of seed lists:

Roget's is not an alphabetically organized Thesaurus – words are organized descriptively under headings such as: Space, Matter, Abstract Relations, Intellect, Volition, Affection, etc. Buy it. Make yourself a spreadsheet – column headings Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives. Nouns are broken into three categories – characters, places, and things. I have a column for characters and places, two columns for things, three columns for verbs and two for adjectives. Using Roget's, the book suggests collecting a few words from each category. Spend fifteen minutes a day, or three times week, adding to your list. Over the course of a month or six weeks, your list will fill out nicely. The cool thing about this collection, is that if you pulled them from the categories equally, the words cover a cross section of the language.

This was all I really needed to get me over any dry spell. The book goes on to suggest that you should pair words together from the list, making still another list of 'phrases' from which you get your ideas. I have plenty of ideas, just need some options.

An underlying message throughout was that there can be no hurry in creating good songs. Don't put a time limit on anything. If you are having trouble, put it down and sleep on it. One should have faith in their sub-conscious to solve some, if not all of the problems you are having with a particular piece.

You have to forgive me if I didn't explain this properly. It wasn't easy to condense a couple of big chapters into a post. I am by no means an expert, so any direction or teaching moments I spout about, are directives from what I read. It helped me focus on the power of individual words. Of the thirty or so songs I wrote before I read the book, when I revisited them, I found that the best ones actually exhibited characteristics described in the book. And of the thirty or so I wrote before, objectively I think four of them are pretty good.. which probably means only one is barely above water.. hehehe..

This idea that you shouldn't just write songs, you should try to write good songs, wasn't even part of my thought process. I used to write for the sole purpose of entertaining myself. I ended up with a catalog of songs that no one is really interested in hearing. I find them interesting and unique, but try playing one of your songs back to back with “Life in the Fast Lane”, or “Black Dog” and you wonder, what was I thinking? Of course now, nothing gets finished because I am constantly trying to improve it.. hehehe.. not actually true, but I do see improvement.

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