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By
Elise Malmberg
illustration by Elise Malmberg
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Inspiration is one of the most elusive and misunderstood aspects of creative work. It's essential for great music or brilliant lyrics, but it can come and go like an erratic lover. When you're inspired, ideas seem to cascade effortlessly from your imagination through the tips of your fingers. And once the flow stops, it often feels impossible to find the source again.
Some musicians believe that inspiration is a force entirely outside their control. The good news is, they're wrong. It may be impossible to command inspiration to appear on cue, but there are many tricks to coax it out of hiding.
The Habit of Creativity
"If I'm not inspired, I can't work." I've heard variations of this pronouncement from far too many musicians. The proper response is, "Bullshit!" Most professional songwriters agree that the only way to come up with consistently good ideas is to keep hacking away until something clicks.
Sometimes just playing with different sounds can spark an idea. Scroll through a bank of synthesizer presets, stopping to play a few notes or chords with each sound. Grab your guitar and some effects and create fresh flavors of distortion, or experiment with delays. Play a percussion loop or drum machine pattern and lay a new bass line over it. You may not come up with a great song every time, but adding to your sonic vocabulary can inspire exciting new structures.
If your riffs seem stale, break out of your usual patterns. Say, for example, that you generally assemble piano or guitar chords first, then come up with melodies that fit on top. Try reversing the process: Write a melody first, then add the chords to support it. If you always use the same chord changes, force yourself to alter the harmonies. The same goes for rhythm: If you usually gravitate toward the same style of beats, try working with a different groove. Again, the initial results may not be keepers, but they might inspire other, better ideas.
Collaboration: Inspiration Squared
There's a reason why so many people co-write songs with one or more partners: It can make the process way easier! Just hearing someone else's crazy guitar noise might trigger a complementary musical idea in your own mind. Bouncing sounds and words off someone else can lead to glorious results that neither of you would have come up with solo.
Adding to your
sonic vocabulary
can inspire
exciting new
structures. |
I personally have a horror of "jamming," partly due to my own substandard instrument skills and partly because so many jams seem to devolve into a clot of wankish blues licks. But even I have to acknowledge that many great songs have originated through jams. If you find that this technique helps you generate ideas, by all means do it.
Baiting the Idea Trap
Sometimes coming up with melodies and chords isn't the problem — your lack of inspiration is far more general and pervasive. All your ideas feel used-up. Nothing seems important or interesting enough to inspire a good song.
When this happens, it may help to turn away from music and search for inspiration elsewhere. Go to a museum, or look at a book of paintings or photography. But don't just passively look at the pretty pictures — jot down notes about how they make you feel. If you see something that moves you, pay attention to the subject matter, the artist's technique, and the overall tone of the piece. Note how these aspects influence your response. Think about what prompted the artist to create the work in the first place. Does it tell a story, or capture a mood? You may find yourself inspired to express something similar with music. Also take note if you have a strong negative reaction — ask yourself why you hate this particular piece. Use your responses to other people's art to fuel your own creativity.
If art doesn't do the trick, go to the park, or take a hike. If nature isn't your thing, watch a movie or read a story. Whatever you do, pay attention to the details. Find the germ of an idea in the world around you, steal it, and transform it into sound.
When Words Fail
Some of the best songs are about universal human experiences or sentiments: love, hate, despair, hope. Seeing your soulmate for the first time, or watching her walk away for the last time. Love songs aside, most lyrics still revolve around human behavior and perceptions. We're narcissistic creatures — it's all about us!
The power of many of the greatest pop songs lies not in their lyric originality, but in a sense that the emotions or experiences they represent are fresh, new, and urgent. The lyrics speak truths that need saying, share visions that must be seen, or embody feelings too big to be kept inside.
Use your responses
to other people's art
to fuel your own creativity. |
Channeling this spirit of immediacy and newness is a special form of inspiration. If your lyrics feel flat or contrived, or you can't think what to write about in the first place, take a step back and think about the underlying emotion you'd like to tap into. Go to a café or an airport and watch people. Eavesdrop on their conversations and try to imagine what's going on in their lives. Deep, universal truths may lie beneath the most mundane interactions.
It doesn't matter whether or not similar words have been used before to describe a situation. What does matter is the ability to capture that emotion and express it simply and directly, in a way that makes your listeners respond.
Beyond the Blank Page
Sometimes you're really and truly stuck. All your musical ideas seem tired and trite. In fact, you're quite certain you'll never write a decent song again.
How do you jog loose the good ideas when you feel this helpless? One way is to trick yourself into being creative again.
This isn't about being original — that can come later. What you need to do now is simply get the ideas flowing.
Start by playing a song you like by someone else, preferably something you're not too familiar with. As you play, begin introducing variations into the music: different harmonies, a new countermelody, an alternate bass line, another chord progression. Try changing the rhythm or time signature. Gradually transform the song until it sounds distinct from the original.
Then take that new bass line, melody, or chord progression and use it as the basis for a new piece. Throw away the original song and see if you can come up with other new parts that work with your variations. Before you know it, you'll be halfway through a new composition that bears little or no resemblance to the song you started out with. Voilá! You're writing again.
Got any good tricks for summoning inspiration? Share them here!
Posted August 2006
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