Lack of inspiration

[a.miller]

if you drive to work, take a different route. Or better yet walk. If you like your peanut butter creamy, buy chunky. if you write on guitar, try plunking some notes on the piano. call up someone you've lost touch with. get up and hour earlier. grow a moustache. listen to chinese traditional music. cross the tracks. go buy a short you don't like and then wear it. change your level of personal hygeine. perform random acts of kindness to complete strangers. experiment with paper clips. buy a goldfish. play games with salt. seek and destroy your routines. establish new ones and then destroy them too.

Well if that's not a song right there....

[Moss]

Listen to a bunch of different Guided by Voices.

[ZeroCharlie]

if you drive to work, take a different route. Or better yet walk. If you like your peanut butter creamy, buy chunky. if you write on guitar, try plunking some notes on the piano. call up someone you've lost touch with. get up and hour earlier. grow a moustache. listen to chinese traditional music. cross the tracks. go buy a short you don't like and then wear it. change your level of personal hygeine. perform random acts of kindness to complete strangers. experiment with paper clips. buy a goldfish. play games with salt. seek and destroy your routines. establish new ones and then destroy them too.

 

 

Well if that's not a song right there....

 

This and some other posts on this thread are great. You can already sense inspiration in the paragraph. When you actually do it, more will soon follow. If I may add, everything you have been doing has brought you here. Now you know where that has taken you. You feel stuck, like at the end of something. Changing things up just like the above is it. You want different ideas? Live different ideas.

 

Also, I was e-mailing Mark Amft a little while ago (of Drink Me...well, I wish I could say fame. They deserved it). And some of the best advice I've been given was he told me to not be afraid of doing something somebody else has done. This is great advice given you are sensible. Don't go singing a the words to an REM song to the chords of a Leo Kottke tune (cool as it may be). But at the other end don't throw away something because It is a G C D'er. And sometimes I've found I throw something away because it is just like something else. Then a friend hears it, and I play them the other song that I thought I was stealing and I can't get anyone to find a similarity. Sometimes It is all in your head.

 

I would love to hear what you've written, whenever you're ready. I mean hey, Wilco fans can't do no harm

[Moss]

This and some other posts on this thread are great. You can already sense inspiration in the paragraph. When you actually do it, more will soon follow. If I may add, everything you have been doing has brought you here. Now you know where that has taken you. You feel stuck, like at the end of something. Changing things up just like the above is it. You want different ideas? Live different ideas.

 

Also, I was e-mailing Mark Amft a little while ago (of Drink Me...well, I wish I could say fame. They deserved it). And some of the best advice I've been given was he told me to not be afraid of doing something somebody else has done. This is great advice given you are sensible. Don't go singing a the words to an REM song to the chords of a Leo Kottke tune (cool as it may be). But at the other end don't throw away something because It is a G C D'er. And sometimes I've found I throw something away because it is just like something else. Then a friend hears it, and I play them the other song that I thought I was stealing and I can't get anyone to find a similarity. Sometimes It is all in your head.

 

I would love to hear what you've written, whenever you're ready. I mean hey, Wilco fans can't do no harm

 

Great advice Zero. So many musicians throw away something because they think it's too simple or an overdone chord progression. If you listen to "Sky Blue Sky, several songs are just your common A, C, D chords with a Capo on the 4th fret. The brilliance is in the lyrics and melodies Jeff Lays down.

 

The reason I mentioned listening to Guided by voices (or any Pollard for that matter) earlier is that the guy is just fearless about music. Yeah, it does not always work but he comes up with some jewels. That total freedom is tough though.

[ZeroCharlie]

Great advice Zero. So many musicians throw away something because they think it's too simple or an overdone chord progression. If you listen to "Sky Blue Sky, several songs are just your common A, C, D chords with a Capo on the 4th fret. The brilliance is in the lyrics and melodies Jeff Lays down.

 

The reason I mentioned listening to Guided by voices (or any Pollard for that matter) earlier is that the guy is just fearless about music. Yeah, it does not always work but he comes up with some jewels. That total freedom is tough though.

 

Thanks! Same to you!

 

And I have found myself thankful for listening to wilco so much. I had a guitar when I was little, a toy one. But I didn't start playing until I came home from a wilco concert. I knew I wanted to be a musician all my life but never knew how, it was fuzzy. Some kid dream. But that day everything made sense. I listened to all the songs on my way home (Long drive home from phily) and picked up a guitar the next day and started learning everything I could. (Handshake Drugs was the first. D, G, F) a lot of wilco songs are great for beginners because they are a few basic chords but also fun to play. I know what you're thinking. CharlieZero you just told us a pointless story about himself.

 

I had a point kind of. I meant that a lot of those songs are so simple. But that is half of the genius. Anybody can write a 3 chord song. Most people throw them away. It's keeping it that is genius. I have always thought that half of music is not what you put out, It's believing what you put out. I used to write a song a day. I know now they were terrible, because I was writing just to write. I had nothing to say. This is necessary to find your voice, and I'm not saying I have. Maybe I never will. But "It's the search. Not the find" right? But eventually I stopped living in song and just listened. Then everything came back. I had something to say and I said it.

 

Somebody said to find a hobby, which is great. Because there will be downtime. I feel useless when I'm not writing, and some days I will have nothing to say but will want to write so badly. At least for myself, this is the WORST time to write. I try to let it be natural. Like I found a drummer who will just hit a beat that moves me, and 3 minutes later I just channeled 3 minutes worth of words. I just blackout and he helps me piece together what I was singing. I am inspired by other people. It comes differently for everyone, but just saying to expect it from anywhere. You might find a picture and every time you look at it you will be moved so much where everything flows. I say this is the purest form of writing. When you don't even know what is happening, it's almost a (dare I say it) spiritual experience. Shows the core of you. When you not only write a 3 chord song, but have the gravitas to put it out saying you have something to add to it, people really respond to that. and eventually that song becomes part of the block of "songs that already used it" and thus you mark your place. (look up "cannon in A"). Wilco does it all the time, but they believe in what they are doing, and people respect that, and listen for what it is they're doing.

 

So I say not to worry. Your simple songs are possibly those songs that are genius in their simplicity. Your inspiration will come. It is a balance of you seeking it and it seeking you. It will come, but not from sitting in a blank room forever. Time alone does not do it. Surround yourself with a multitude of different things. All those songs you hated? Keep them. Scrap the lyrics if they aren't what you mean, or vise versa. If it came from you it means something. Hold onto them until they do. Some artists find that to ascend to a higher plane of self, they must embrace what it is they hate or fear most (think bruce wayne with the bats). For some, the hurdle of songwriting is really themselves; They hate what they've written. Some can overcome this by embracing the songs they once hated and merely tweak them for relevance sake. A little twist to make it the new you, and to maybe rough the edges of a less mindful self.

 

Now, I am just like you. Maybe. I don't know actually. You like wilco, that's a start. hmmm. Like Peanut Lovers Chex mix? Arizona Sweet tea? Nevermind

I mean I feel like I am in the same place. Everything I just said was both trying to help you, and actually a little of myself. I have 3 notebooks full of stuff I wrote when I was 12. (I hated the oldest ones so much I tore up the note books and threw them away. You are stronger than you think when you're mad) Anyway, I learned to try to embrace what I hate about me, and make it a strength. I have not started playing those songs for people, but I keep them in the back of my head. Hey one of them I am actually coming around to. I might use it soon. They're like little premonitions. Some you live in the next day. Some you are in already. Others you don't know. You have to grow into them. Like the one I now kind of like. It represents a part of me I only recently discovered, like years ago, I knew I would be. Kind of spooky. But it doesn't have to be. Other ones you just don't like. That's fine. But don't let the words ruin the chords for you or vise versa. There is always something to be salvaged.

 

Alright now that I've talked your head off I wish you the best of luck with all your songwriting endeavors. And everything above take with a grain of salt, I am no authority on songwriting, the closest I've come to being a public songwriter is burning ep's I recorded with the built in macbook mic. in my dorm for some friends. And you know that made me happier than ever so I am going to keep on going, and you should too. Who knows. We could be trying to help the next most listened to artist on our last.fm's.

Anyway, Cheers!

[Moss]

Wow, I love your enthusiasm. Good advice. You inspired me to go write a song!

[a.miller]

I like what you have brought here Charlie. I like it very, very much. Please stick around the SST.

[ZeroCharlie]

Wow, I love your enthusiasm. Good advice. You inspired me to go write a song!

 

 

I like what you have brought here Charlie. I like it very, very much. Please stick around the SST.

 

Wow thank you very much! I will try to join a discussion but usually I am intimidated by the SST seeing as how I don't have a clue about equipment. I was reading a thread about home recording and everyone was in agreement about the best whats and so's so they didn't mention them. I was like "Oh yeah I prefer the 64jq model the spf90000" and I ran away haha.

[Golden Smoghead]

I'll randomly add in here that I took about a 2-month hiatus from songwriting -- not totally by choice, kinda fizzled a bit -- and have come back pretty strong. Four songs in three weeks including my first boy-girl duet, w00t!

 

What triggered the new inspiration for me was a new instrument. A fairly-cheapo 12-string guitar given to me for Christmas; should note that I hate 12-string guitars for the most part. But I just think different instruments have different songs inside of them asking to be let out, because none sound exactly the same. You hear that new instrument's voice and it sings to you differently.

 

Best line from the new batch of songs: "they call me Big John cause I'm 6 foot 3, and girl you ain't never met a boy like me"

[a.miller]

"they call me Big John cause I'm 6 foot 3, and girl you ain't never met a boy like me"

Fucking nice line.