5 tools every songwriter needs
There ARE others, but these are ✨
Hi, me again!
This week, I have a very practical kind of note: a list of tools I’ve found essential as a songwriter. Julia Cameron writes about the need for periods of ‘doing the mending’ — attending to the maintenance of the systems and resources that enable your work.
January has been a month of mending for me. A moment of refinement and reset and setting myself up for the future. As I’ve done this, I’ve paid attention to the tools I have and still do find invaluable as a songwriter. It’s an unusual list, but I’m pleased to share it.
Keep on making stuff,
~ Lucy
5 TOOLS EVERY SONGWRITER NEEDS
A well-organized voice memos app
Most of my ideas are first recorded in my voice memos app (I know, imagine that?!). I do a couple of things to prevent it from become a space of chaos and recordings under location names I don’t recognize.
I use a ‘Promising Ideas’ folder, where I keep the stuff I’m really digging
I make sure all those ideas (at least) have names
I also include info like capo position and chords in the file name
I listen to everything in there (not just Promising Ideas) about twice a year and sort
A second instrument to fuck around on
Guitar is my main instrument, but I don’t always enjoy it. We have on occasionally hostile relationship to one another. But I digress. Regardless of your relationship to your primary instrument, there are times when it’s more fruitful to write on an instrument you are less intimate with. I find it lightens things up, keeps me humble, and results in more inventive songs (at least a lot of the time).
A bookshelf that contains the following books
Each of these has nuggets inside I’ve kept with me on my music-making journey. Pattison’s daily Object Writing exercise is one I swear by, even if I don’t do it daily. I’m also obsessed with Jeffy Tweedy’s Word Ladder. The chapter ‘How To Make A Scene’ in How Music Works blew my mind the first time I read it, and the chapter ‘Syntax’ in Writing Down The Bones is still something I think about every month. (FYI, links below are not affiliate links or anything.)
Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattison
How To Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy
How Music Works by David Byrne
Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg
A jar of objects or topics
Sitting on my desk is a glass jar filled with tiny, scrunched up piece of paper. On each piece is a word, usually a tangible object. Oftentimes, I start a writing session by grabbing a word and doing ten minutes or object writing or free-writing around it. The words are a mundane as ‘strawberry’ or ‘old carpet’, and where I end up is usually pretty far from where I start, but it’s a reliable way in, anytime you’re stuck for ideas.
An occasionally rebellious mindset
Music-making has no rules, but it also has so. many. rules. You really don’t have to follow them, though, is the things and a rebellious mindset can help with that. I like to think of this as engaging the parts of us that are good at saying ‘NO’ or ‘TO HELL WITH YOU’ or ‘I DON’T CARE IF YOU THINK IT’S A BAD IDEA I’M DOING IT ANYWAY’ and letting them write our music for a while. It’s particularly useful when I find myself trapped by perfectionism or a desire to be brilliant.
Here are a few other things I’d like to tell you about this week …
Song Club. I know I keep banging on about it, but it’s going to be really fun. Join!
My free download ‘7 Ways To Write A Song A Week’ is still free to good homes.
The album Ghosts by Hania Rani, which sounds just so close to perfect.