[PaulyX]

Hey amigos, happy new year, hope you had a great one.

I've not been very productive musically last year, so I'm trying an experiment - the Hanover Reading List project... it's been quite interesting as a tool to kick my @ss back into songwriting, so I thought I'd share it.
The  problem was I was finding when confronted with a 'blank page' at the start of a song, I was tending to write the same song over and over... similar lyrical concepts, hands gravitating to the same chords on the guitar, etc.
So I decided to impose some constraints on myself.  I took a photo of a row of second hand books from a recycling centre near my house in Hanover, Brighton, and set myself the task of writing a song to match the title of each book.  Plus, the first letter of the book title determines the chord the song has to start in (I made a list mapping chords to the whole alphabet).  I thought about going further, e.g. number of letters in the title determines the tempo or something, but didn't go that far in the end.

You know what... I found it really helped me break out of writer's block.  It was as if having a few rules I couldn't break was enough to get me started.  Plus, I found that working on 11 songs at once meant I could usually find a home for lyrical snippets or chord changes that occurred to me... if they didn't fit the specific song I was working on right then, they'd normally fit in one of the other songs, so it has been a more 'efficient' way to work.  And I've found myself forced into some chords I'd barely ventured before.

On the downside, I suppose the songs could end up 'contrived'... people say write about what you know / personal experience, right?  This isn't that... I've having to imagine someone else's story for each song.  But then again I've never really subscribed to the personal experience thing... it has always felt a bit too revealing to me (!).

Now I just need to record 'em... that's gonna be the harder part.  Only got 2 down so far to a respectable standard.

I was wondering if any of you also set rules on your songwriting sometime, and how you find it?

Pauly

PS, if you're interested the books are below - I haven't actually read any of them:
- 1001 Country Household Hints
- Simply Delicious
- The Aspirin Age
- Fear
- The Chamber
- The Liar
- My Brain is Open
- Dutch Dictionary
- An Unfinished Woman
- The Litigators
- A House in the High Hills

[CaliaMoko]

I use songwriting challenges with specific requirements for constraints. Sometimes I'll try other things, like find a loop and try to write to it. Or co-write with someone who has a different style than I do. Otherwise, I do find my stuff all tending to sound similar.

[PaulAds]

I think they can be great motivation.

I do FAWM regularly…and although it always terrifies me…I’ve got some, if not most, of my best songs that way.

The challenges we often do around here are another example.

Maybe it’s time for another Forum Challenge?

[pompeyjazz]

Yes, another forum challenge would be great @PaulAds Does anybody have any ideas as to what form it would take and who would be interested? It would be great to give the forum a huge kick and launch into something that had a lot of participation and got the creative juices flowing

[MichaelA]

Nice to see the forum is still here! I’ve been writing a novel instead of songwriting last year, so haven’t been around. Today I had a twiddle on a guitar for the first time in ages, and quite enjoyed it - so thought I would look in.

A little challenge might be just the thing to inspire a song out of me, so yes I’d be interested.

I quite like the idea of having to write something based on a book cover of a book you haven’t read, a bit like @PaulyX has been doing. It’s just getting the spark in the first place that might help my rusty music skills.

But I’m open to other ideas too if somebody has something else to offer. 👍

[pompeyjazz]

A quick suggestion - The challenge is to write a song with the title or theme of "22"

I will see how much interest there is in any type of challenge and if so, start a new thread

Cheers

John

[PaulAds]

I’d love to take part…whatever the subject!