Tuesday 11 October 2011

Songwriter's block


Creative block is a thing of the past for me. This book got rid of it. I can heartily recommend it to all songwriters and composers.

In a nutshell, it advocates spending an entire day trying to write as many songs or compositions as possible (you shoot for 20, but it's understood that you won't manage that many). Because speed is of the essence, you have no choice but to write whatever comes into your head, with as little self-editing as possible.

There's more info about this method at Wikipedia but to fully understand it, you need to read Karl Coryat and Nicholas Dobson's The Frustrated Songwriter's Handbook. I used this method to write my second album "By Hook Or By Crook" and to write about 40% of my instrumental work so far.

The book advocates getting together with other songwriters and comparing notes at the end of your mammoth songwriting session. I've never done this, but if any songwriters local to Yorkshire would like to give it a try, let me know.

www.holliesheard.co.uk

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