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Written by Geoffrey Williams One of the hardest things about being a songwriter is being able to come up with enough good ideas. In fact, one of the biggest frustrations many of my songwriter friends have is when they work hard on a song, but end up hating what they’ve written! Have you ever wished that you could come up with far more inspirational song ideas? And also, come up with less boring ideas that you end up hating?! The reason for this article is to try and solve this problem. I’m going to give you a four step process that will allow you to come up with the most breathtaking song ideas imaginable. This is the process that ALL of the most gifted, creative songwriters in the world use, whether they know they are using it or not. It’s also a process that took me many years of research and trial and error to discover. So keep reading because what you’re about to learn is very valuable and will vastly increase your ability to write compelling songs. Ok, there are two things you must understand before we continue. Firstly, you must understand that you have the potential to create the most profound, inspirational song ideas. Your mind is far more gifted and creative than you could ever imagine. And the four step process you’re about to learn is designed specifically to extract this creativity from you. Secondly, you need to realize that having ideas is a creative task. Now that may sound obvious, but the fact is that most songwriters have no idea how the creative process actually works. In fact, the more I’ve discovered about songwriting, the more it’s become obvious that most people write music and lyrics in a way that completely shuts off any chance of being creative! And this is the reason so many people don’t like the songs they create. They are using only a tiny fraction of their creative powers, so their song ideas are very low quality as opposed to what they would write if they learned how to uncover their best creativity. Ok, now let’s get into the four step process that will allow you to discover many ideas of extremely high quality. As you’ve just learned, unleashing your best creativity is absolutely crucial if you want to have better song ideas. So it probably won’t surprise you that this four step formula I’m about to tell you relates to your creativity process! What I’ve discovered (which is extremely fascinating) is that it’s possible to “set up” the physical and mental conditions that will allow you to fully unleash the natural creativity that resides inside your mind. When you go through this process a large influx of high quality ideas will hit you. It's quite strange to go through this process for the first time, because when these ideas come, they arrive seemingly "out of the blue". Have you ever had the most brilliant idea flash into your mind when you weren't even thinking about the topic the idea was related to? Well, this is what will happen to you as a result of going through the process I'm about to tell you. Ok. Here are the steps. By the way, these four steps deserve much more explanation than I can fit into this short article. If you want to discover the full step-by-step instructions to making full use of your creativity as a musical artist, you need to check out my book The Songwriting Genius Within You. You can learn more about it here. Introducing the four steps that will ensure you LOVE every single song you write! Step One This first stage of the creativity process is called the “intention” stage. This is where you decide on what you would like to create. You do this by setting an intention to your unconscious mind, so it can begin creating and making this intention become a reality. The truth is that your mind is an incredibly powerful device. And when you choose a purpose for your mind, it will go about creating what’s needed to fulfil this purpose. Let me help you set an intention for your music... Firstly, take out a pen and piece of paper, and write out a few sentences about what you want to create. You can set an intention for anything songwriting related. Some things you might want to set an intention for are:
Also, as you write your intention, you need to be as specific as possible. For example, if you wanted to set an intention for the song you are working on at the moment you might write something like this... “I will create a beautiful ballad that has touching, emotional lyrics related to my friends fight with his illness. This song will have soaring melody lines, colourful guitar lines, and will erupt into an inspirational climax at the end.” By writing a paragraph like this one, you are setting a focus for your mind. Once this focus has been set your mind will begin to create what you've outlined in you intention. A way to make this intention more powerful is to sit quietly and picture in your mind what it will look like once this intention has been fulfilled. Also, feel the emotion of completing this intention. Do this now... Close your eyes. And allow your imagination to take you away... Now, when you are perfectly relaxed, picture yourself having completed the intention that you set minutes ago. See everything you would see, and feel the wonderful satisfaction of having completed this intention. Your unconscious mind sees the things you are emotional about as the most urgent, so doing this little exercise gets your mind very focussed on fulfilling your intention. Ok, once you’ve set your intention, you move into stage two of the creativity process. Step Two The second step in the creativity process is the information stage. This requires taking in information that will help your mind create the intention that you set in step one. There are a few different types of information that you can “take in” that will allow this creativity process to work at it’s best. For example, have you ever learned how to play a song created by your favourite artist, and then some of this persons “style” magically began showing up in your own music? This is just one way of “taking in information” that aids the creativity process. It’s like giving your mind the “meat” it needs to concoct the amazing musical ideas you want to generate. To take in the information required to fulfil your intention, choose a song that contains elements that you like, and learn to play this song on your instrument. Or if you're a lyricist, choose a set of lyrics that has qualities you wish to have in your lyrics, and write out these lyrics by hand. In doing this, you are feeding your mind information that it can use to create what you've set in your intention. Now, while this "taking in of information" is an ongoing thing, you can specifically choose music or lyrics that you feel relate to the intention you've just set. . For example, you may choose a song that has similar qualities or elements that your intention contains. As you learn this song, your brain begins to discover how the song works, why it sounds the way it does, why it evokes certain emotions, and many other subtle things that makes the song special. When you reach the stage of the inspiration process when you begin to have ideas, you will notice these ideas contain some of the qualities of the song you've just learned. Let's now take a look at step three in this process. Step Three The third stage of the creativity process is the “incubation” stage. This stage is about giving your mind the time it needs to create ideas that match up with the intention you set in step one of the process. In this step you actually take your focus off of the song you are working on. Instead, you must do something else and spend time away from the song. By “letting go” from the song you are entering into an “incubation period” where your unconscious mind goes about creating what you’ve set in your intention. Now this idea of “incubation” is a very misunderstood topic, but you can get a full explanation of how to effortlessly manage this aspect of the creativity process in my book, The Songwriting Genius Within You. In this you will actually find specific examples of how some of the “greats” such as Mozart and Thomas Newman (Composer of many award winning movie scores) use the incubation period as a massive advantage in their music creation processes. Ok, so finally we come to the step that counts! Step Four Step four is the inspiration stage. This is where the most fun happens, because when you do the three other steps correctly, amazing things begin to happen… Once you enter the “inspiration stage” of the creativity process, ideas will begin coming to you, seemingly out of thin air. For example, you’ll be doing something completely unrelated to music, and all of a sudden you’ll notice a musical idea playing in your head. And not just any idea… An inspired idea of excellent quality! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve scrambled to my instrument to document an amazing musical idea that “hit me” out of nowhere due to setting up this creativity process. And the best thing is, once you begin documenting these ideas that come to you, they will CONTINUE to come thick and fast! I feel that the most rewarding thing about being a musical artist is these moments of “inspiration” that you experience when you go through this process. And also, being able to deliberately “set up” the conditions so YOU control when and where this happens is SO valuable. Think about this. If you want to be a professional musician, you will NEED to be able to continually be able to come up with fresh material that is inspiring and interesting. Now, this may sound like a tough proposition. But the fact is that your brain is so incredibly powerful and creative, that once you know how to engage it in the right way, you will suddenly have access to UNLIMITED creativity. This means you will have the ability to write original, inspiring pieces of music over and over again! Once again, if you are interested in discovering this creativity within yourself, please check out my book which contains full instructions to this creativity process (as well as many other crucial songwriting concepts). So there’s a brief overview of the four stages of creativity. Try this out for yourself and be amazed as excellent ideas come to you thick and fast! The final thing to note is that the more you go through this process the better you will get at it. By doing this often you will get to a point where the “not enough good ideas” problem will never hassle you again!
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