A Songwriting Starter? (Here's an idea...)

A Songwriting Starter? 

Friday February 2nd 2024

I went to my first songwriting workshop this week. I had an expectation, fledgling songwriters with half a chorus, a beautiful riff, or a bad case of the dreaded writer’s block, looking for a bit of inspiration, maybe. I went because I’m aware I’ve developed a writing “method”, but it’s clearly not the only method, so I was interested to try and find out how everybody else works it all out.

As with so many things, it didn’t turn out how I expected. It never does. I’m not going to go into the full story, but what I found fascinating was discussing everybody’s backgrounds, and their motivations for attending. A lady called Akiko had friends and family who had been affected by the Noto Earthquake in Japan on New Year’s Day, and she was so upset, she wanted to write a song to comfort them. A classically trained vocalist, she sung what she had written so far to us, it was beautiful. I hope she finishes it. In her own words, what she had composed had required little thought, she just “did it” - she sat down at a piano, and the lyrics just flowed.

Being so emotionally inspired to write is brilliant, but clearly if you want to write more than a few songs, you probably need a method that’s thankfully a bit more everyday than a Shindo level 7 earthquake. So…. how do you write a song when you have no idea where to start?

One potential answer could lie in the homework suggestion of the workshop leader, Alex. Take an old folk song, (so as not to incur copyright) and to update or modernise the lyrics. So take the chords, and the melody, and make it your own. This might seem like somewhat of a cheat, but there’s a lot of sense in it if you don’t feel ready to create everything all at once.

Traditionally, folk songs and melodies were passed down through the ages by repetition. Somebody heard a performance and they tried to copy it, but probably didn’t quite manage it. Lyrics got twisted, regionalised, verses added and cut. All these variations didn’t get written down, and they certainly weren’t recorded to be regurgitated on command by a talking air freshener, (sorry Alexa). You trying this as a songwriting kickstarter isn’t really doing anything different.

Paul Simon didn’t essentially write ‘Scarborough Fair’, elements of the song can be heard in the Scottish ballad ‘The Elfin Knight’ which dates back to 1670. Try comparing it ‘The Girl From The North Country’ by Bob Dylan, the similarity is hard to deny. I hate to break it to you, but if it’s good enough for Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, it’s probably good enough for the rest of us. Give it a go, if only to say you

tried, but I guarantee you will have learnt something.