It’s no surprise that artists get inspiration from other artists, both in their field and in other fields, as well as from life itself. If I love a song, I’ve found some ways to dig more deeply into it. Many times this leads me to write a song of my own
Some little thing the songwriter does excites me so much that I not only want to appreciate it – or be in awe of it – I want to use it. It excites my imagination to the point where I want to make use of the particular device myself. For me this has become a tried and true way to kickstart a new song – or (less common for me) to add something special to one I’ve already got going.
Some ways I do this:
Play the melody of the section of the song I particularly like. I play it one note at a time on an instrument – I use the guitar, but which instrument one uses doesn’t matter. I pay particular attention to the turns of phrase that move me. What’s going on? Usually there’s a twist or turn in the melody that connected with me. I start fooling around with variations on that phrase. I’ve done this with songs that range from Rodgers & Hart to Lennon & McCartney to Pharrell Williams.
Learn and play through the chord changes. One of the all-time most common methods of writing a new song is to base it on the chord changes of another song. It’s been done tens of thousands of times. Personally I don’t usually use a song’s whole chord progression. I find a chord change or two that really sticks out to me and start messing with them until it turns into something that feels right for me.
Slowly play, or sing and play, the chords and melody together. There’s usually a place in the song where I’m especially moved by the way the melody rubs against the chords. I work with that. I also remember to look at what sets that moment up. Powerful effects in songs don’t come out of the blue. They’re set up by things that happen before, things that are in themselves maybe not so distinguished, but are preparing you for the big (or at least more significant) moment.
Ask – Where is the Title placed in the song? Why is it so effective where it is (or not)? Sometimes the answer to this will be straightforward – it’s a big Chorus; the Title is in the ‘obvious’ place. But writers do this a lot of different – and interesting – ways.
Type or write out the lyrics. If you tend to write your own lyrics longhand, do it that way. If you type your lyrics, go with that.
Ask – How is the writer telling the story? Look at the lyric as if the writer had outlined it (and they very well may have): “This will happen in Verse 1, this in Verse 2… I’ll set up the Chorus or Title this way…” Etc. What problems did they solve by sequencing the words the way they did? What can I learn from that?
Pay particular attention to where the lyric rhymes. Pay even closer attention to where it doesn’t rhyme – where the writer could have easily put in a rhyme and but chose to leave it out – or where they could have left it out and chose to rhyme instead. Are they rhyming the Title or Title phrase. Why? Why not?
Never forget about the importance of the sound of the words – the writer who wrote the song probably didn’t. As I’ve said before, in a song It’s All Sound. Even though you’ve put their words on a page, that’ll only tell you as much as a script will tell you about a movie. It’s how words sound when they’re sung that’s more than half the battle. You don’t learn much about that by looking at them on a page. You’ve got to sing them.
Finally, put all the pieces together. I actually find that focusing on small sections of music or words is what most inspires me to write something new. It’s a fragment I can build from. But it can be a very exciting experience to listen to the whole thing after doing some or all of the things I’ve described above – listening with the knowledge and awareness I’ve gained from examining the moving parts.