Songwriting & Beyond…

Songwriting Tip 4: Use Your Most Powerful Emotions/Desires To Drive Your Songwriting Process…

I’d like to share with you a songwriting technique that is incredibly powerful. In fact, it’s as close to magic as it gets. Use this and you will write FAR better music and lyrics.

In one of the best selling "success" books of all time, Napoleon Hill revealed a secret that can unlock the doors to "genius".

And this secret is very easy to integrate into your songwriting process.

Here’s the main jest of the secret.

You need to use your most powerful emotions or desires as a "gateway" to your best creativity.

Napoleon Hill spent over 20 years interviewing and learning from the most successful and powerful people on the planet, and he found something that all the so called "geniuses" of the world had in common.

These people were using powerful emotions or desires to "tap into" the ulta-creative faculties in their mind. And because of this they were having ingenious ideas that ended in bringing massive success and acclaim.

You can do the same thing in your songwriting.

Firstly, let me give you a few of the most powerful human emotions.

1) The desire to have sex…

2) Wanting to love, loss of love, frustrated TO love…

3) Any burning desire you may have…(money, greed, power, world domination)

OK, so here’s how you can use this today to become far more creative in your songwriting.

Just before you begin to create, bring up a picture in your mind of one of the above topics. For example, bring to mind a love affair you have had or fantasized about. Keep this image in your mind until you feel a powerful swell of love flow through your mind and body.

Once you reach this stage, begin to create on your instrument or start writing lyric ideas.

Try and maintain and ride this wave of emotion as you do this. (And remember to record every moment).

In doing this you are using your most powerful human emotions to drive your creating process.

Try this songwriting idea. In the end you will end up with a highly emotional and creative session.

And it’s incredibly fun too!

-Article written by Geoff Williams from Genius Songwriting

OK folks, it’s the 3rd tip in the series, and here we have it.

Now an important concept to understand is that to create magnificent song ideas, your mind requires the right information… the right knowledge.

An easy technique to help you acquire knowledge that will increase your creativity is to learn how to play songs created by musicians you respect and enjoy listening to.

This is so much more effective than trying to memorize chord progressions or scales. (A common but counter-productive technique taught by many songwriting teachers)

The reason is, by mimicking what your favorite musicians are playing, you are learning valuable information about the way this music you love was created.

As you do this, you will both consciously and unconsciously take in many insights as to how the piece was constructed, why it’s played the way it is, and all the subtle nuances that make the piece of music work.

And even better…

If you use this strategy for many of your favorite musicians, you will notice that when you have your own creating sessions, elements of your favorite musicians will magically weave itself into your style.

You don’t even need to think about it. By simply learning a few of your favorite songs, you will adopt some of the "magic" into your own songwriting.

One more tip…

You will get FAR MORE benefit from this idea if you transcribe the piece of music yourself. This means that instead of tracking down the music in sheet form, you listen to the song and make an attempt to work it out yourself.

Now, if this is beyond your reach, don’t worry. It’s still VERY effective to find the sheet music and learn it that way.But if you are able to transpose it yourself (even if it will take a long time) I highly recommend you do so.

So to take action on this song writing tip, here’s what you need to do.

1. Write down three songs that you LOVE that also contain stylistic elements that you would like in your music.

2. Choose the song you want to learn first. Listen very closely to it and see if you can work out how to play it on your instrument.

As you do this, listen for more than just the notes. Listen for the way the notes are played. The way the sounds are formed. And the way the different instruments sound in the piece. Try and re-create all these elements on your instrument as closely as possible.

3. Once you’ve used this strategy on song number one, work your way though song 2 and song 3.

Once you’ve done this with 3 different songs, you’ll be surprised how much insight you’ve had into how these pieces were constructed.

And as I mentioned earlier, when YOU go to create music yourself, this new knowledge you have will seamlessly weave it’s way into your creations, making them FAR more compelling and inspirational.

-Article written by Geoff Williams from Genius Songwriting

As you’ll remember, the first songwriting tip was to record every moment of your creative songwriting sessions. If you haven’t yet read this article, click here .

NOW …the second piece of advice I have for you is to listen back to your creative sessions .

It’s best to wait a little while after the creative sessions has finished, and then relax into a comfortable couch and play back what you have just created.

The great thing about this is it’s very enjoyable to hear the ideas you have created, and if you followed the advice above and didn’t edit yourself as you were creating, you will be very pleased with the results.

More important though, as you listen back to the recording you will be taking in very important information .

As you listen you will notice ideas you like … ideas you don’t like and everything in between.

This information is CRUCIAL

For example, let’s just say that you hear a passage of music you created that you really don’t like.

No problems. Because you are listening back to your recording and learning about this, the next time you sit down to create, it’s unlikely you’ll fall into a similar pattern.

Even better, when you hear an idea that is very pleasing to your ears, you will learn from this. And in your next creative session, you’ll find it easy to create similar pleasing themes, only this time they will be even higher in quality.

This is magic and you have to try it…

Recording all of your creating and then listening back to it sends you on an upwards spiral to better and more inspiring song ideas.

The more you do this, the more you learn about what you like, what you don’t like, and your ideas will magically improve as a result.

The reason for this occurrence is very obvious when you know a few basics about human psychology.

To give you a basic overview, humans learn much more from monitoring FEEDBACK after attempting a task then they do cramming information into their heads.

For example, can you remember being in school, and having a teacher shove loads of information down your throat, and then expect you to remember it?

As opposed to this, a much more effective way to learn is to actually ATTEMPT SOLVING a problem, and then monitor the information that comes back at you after this attempt…

When you do this, even if you initially fail you will learn much quicker. And because of this you will gain a much deeper understanding of how to solve the problem.

Learning from a feedback loop allows you to "get" a concept at a much deeper level

This is the reason that recording all of your creative sessions and then listening back is so effective. It creates a massive "feedback loop" and as you continue, the flow of ideas that you create will begin automatically mold itself to the quality and style that you want.

So follow these tips for songwriting, and next time you sit down to write something, have a recorder handy. Record every moment as you create.

Then, after leaving the recording sit for an hour or so… listen back to it. Make a few notes as to where the good ideas in the session are.

As you do this, you will notice that every time you create, your ideas will be more compelling, more creative, and simply better than the previous session!

-Article written by Geoff Williams from Genius Songwriting

What I’m about to teach you now are six songwriting tips you can make to your songwriting approach that will cause immediate improvements in your songwriting ability. The first in the series is here below (don’t read it just yet)… and I will send you the following next week, then the week after that, etc.

Don’t mistake the simplicity of these ideas for a solution that’s "too easy". Because if you actually try these ideas, you will find they are incredibly powerful.

With that said, let’s get into the seven small changes you can make to your songwriting approach that will have you writing in the flow of creativity, and send the quality of your songs sky high…

Tip 1: Tweak To Success

Tweak number one is to record every second of your creative sessions.

Now there are two important elements to this, so bare with me for a moment.

The first element to this is to use a simple recording device to record yourself as you play your instrument.

When you are searching for ideas, you need to document them, and recording every moment is the easiest way to do this.More importantly though, by recording every second you are eliminating a process that can savagely block your best creativity.

Here’s the thing.

The vast majority of musicians will be creating ideas with their instrument and also TRYING TO REMEMBER what they are playing at the same time.

The problem with this is they are engaging the critical side of their mind, which blocks their creative facilities. The psychology behind this is quite fascinating, but instead of spending extra time going into it, just give this idea a shot and see for yourself as you suddenly become more creative!

Set a recorder running, and then play freely without trying to edit yourself, or trying to remember what you are playing.It’s amazing how freeing this can be, and creating becomes much more fun and effortless.

Ok, so the second part to this tip is to do with lyrics. And here’s what you need to do…

As you are writing a page of lyrics, you are actually documenting them automatically because you are writing them on paper!

But here’s something you can do to increase your creativity and get into a "flow" really easily.

Instead of internally editing yourself… (Have you ever sat there trying to craft the "perfect" phrase, and because of this don’t end up writing a thing?)… write freely with no concern for the quality of what your writing.

Write down EVERYTHING that comes to mind. Even if in the back of your mind you hear a voice saying, "that’s absolute rubbish"!

Writing down every idea that comes to you, just like with the sound recorder technique above gets your creative juices going.

Instead of feeling "stuck", ideas will flow out of you.And you’ll find that the longer you write, the better the quality of your ideas will be.

If you’ve ever been in a "brainstorming session" you will understand what I mean.

In a brainstorming session for a company or some other group, a team will sit around and say out loud or write on paper EVERY SINGLE IDEA that comes to mind.

There is something magical about this process. Because as the team gets deeper and deeper into the session, they begin connecting with their more powerful creative resources and their ideas become more sophisticated, more insightful…… And in some cases, pure genius.

If you’ve ever been involved in a session such as this, you will know that on most occasions the best ideas seem to always pop up right at the end of the session.

It’s the same with writing a page of lyrics. As long as you keep writing every thing that comes to mind onto your page, you can experience this same "building of creative momentum". And then all of a sudden something miraculous will pop into your head, and onto the page it goes!

The key here is to write every single little thing. Don’t edit yourself for a second. Instead of thinking "that idea isn’t worth writing down", simply write it down anyway with the knowledge that it will bring you to something much more profound and inspiring.

Stay tune for Tip number 2 next week.

-Article written by Geoff Williams from Genius Songwriting

Would you like to learn to write lyrics that incorporate the same magic and flair of your all time favorite songwriters?

If so, here’s an article I wrote on the topic that got an amazing reaction from the 1000’s of songwriters subscribed to my newsletter.

The article is titled:

Discover The Strange “Trick” That Instantly Makes Writing “Emotion Packed” Lyrics As Easy As Tying A Shoelace…

I talk to songwriters all the time. And one of the problems that comes up frequently is:

How can I write powerful, emotion packed lyrics?

This is a great question, and right now I’d like to give you two tips that will make it impossible for you to NOT write great lyrics.

For a long time I’ve been putting a lot of time in improving my writing skills.

And I don’t just mean lyrics.

Books… articles… you name it.

I really enjoy writing… it’s never been something I want to do full time or anything. It’s sort of like playing music for me.

It’s therapeutic and is a way for me to express myself.

Anyway, when I do anything at all I want to do it well.

So because of this interest in writing I went out and bought many books on how to write well.

As I combed these books for useful advice, I stumbled across something very interesting.

There was a strange practice that many of the “great” writers used to undertake. And it’s something I would have never thought of unless someone told me.

I practiced this new exercise, and magically my writing instantly improved. After a few weeks of this, people reading my works did not even recognize it as my writing.

After this incredible transformation, an idea suddenly occurred to me…

What if I could use this new exercise to improve my lyrics?

So I tested it, and wouldn’t you know it…

… it worked amazingly well!

I bet you’re wondering what this exercise is, right?

Well, let me tell you.

It’s actually so blindingly obvious that you’ll wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself!

Here’s the exercise:

1. Take a page of lyrics that you love.
2. Write out the lyrics in your own handwriting.
3. That’s it!

This is the one exercise that is practiced by thousands of writers all around the world.

And if you practice this exercise, your lyrics will instantly improve.

I can hear you now…

“Why will this help me to improve my lyrics?”

“It’s too simple”!

I know. I know.

I mean, how could such a simple exercise allow you to make such large improvements?

Well, let me explain why your transformation to “Lyric Master” is going to happen as you do this.

As you write out your favorite lyrics by hand (And it HAS to be by hand – I’ll tell you why in a second) you will notice something quite strange…

… As you write, you will notice yourself going through a similar thought process as the person who wrote the lyrics.

You will understand why the lyrics were written in this way. You will feel the rhythm of the lyrics… The emotions the author was feeling… The flow of the lyrics…

You will be taken on the same journey as the writer went on as he wrote the piece. And as this happens, you will learn to write lyrics in this same inspiring way.

It’s simply amazing, and you HAVE to try it!

There’s something else going on as well. And this “other” thing is the reason you MUST write out the lyrics by hand, and not on a computer or some other way….

Here’s why…

There’s a strange phenomenon that occurs when you write out someone else’s lyrics or poetry…

It’s like there is a link between your hand and your unconscious mind… and as you write out the lyrics, information about the way the lyrics have been written is being inputted and stored in your unconscious…

Ok, that last paragraph may have sounded like a mouthful!Let me make this clear by telling you the effect of doing this exercise.

When you do the exercise for long enough, you unconsciously absorb information and gain a deep understanding of how the lyrics were created.

When it comes to writing your own lyrics, this new understanding begins to “seep out” in your writing, and you notice that your lyrics contain some of the qualities of the lyrics that you copied out.

That’s why this technique is so effective. It allows you to learn to write lyrics in a way that incorporates all the magic of the artist whose lyrics you’re writing out.

What Should You Do Right Now To Learn To Write Lyrics?

Ok, let me give you a rock solid plan for you to follow.Please at least give this a go, even if you are skeptical that it may not work.

I promise you will be delighted if you just give this a shot.On a side note: as I went through years of research learning about how to write great music, something hit me hard.Sometimes the things that work the best are the things that you think would never work.

And sometimes when you think something’s “bound to work” it fails miserably!

So with that in mind, put any reservations you have aside and follow this action plan…

1. Think of three songs whose lyrics you absolutely LOVE.
2. Print out copies of these lyrics.
3. Over the next three days, write out these lyrics, one song per day.

After these three days, make an attempt to write some original lyrics. Do your best to simply let them flow out, and don’t think to much about what you think should be happening.

You’ll be pleasantly surprised when you realize you’ve inherited some of the qualities of your favorite lyricists!

After you’ve gone through this process and proven that it works, you will no doubt go out and begin writing out many more lyrics, transforming your own lyrics in the process.

Be sure to use this technique. It’s one of the easiest ways to make instant improvements in your lyrics.

-Article written by Geoff Williams from Genius Songwriting