Inspiration and Craft

Reproduced from the Songwriters E-Tip, 4/17/09. SongConnection@aol.com

My composition teacher in college once told a story about a woman who approached him at a party. She was very taken with the idea of his being a composer, and asked if he liked to walk in the woods before he wrote music. He laughed and responded, what for? "For inspiration," she answered, and he laughed again even as he told the story.

The notion of the artist that creates only when the spirit moves them is about as far removed as you can get from the ethos of professional songwriting. My teacher's response to the woman's question was that every day he sat down at the piano to work at 9 AM, broke for lunch at noon, and returned to work through the afternoon. This is the work ethic and method of many a professional songwriter today, not to mention most of the great composers and writers throughout the history of both classical and popular music. It's unquestionably a good method for developing craft and discipline as a writer. But how DO you cultivate inspiration, and is it even important to writing good pop music?

We should take a moment to define "inspiration". It can be in the melody that's playing in your head when you wake up one morning (as once happened to Paul McCartney....the tune became "Yesterday"). It can be in the "aha!" moment when you find the one word that ties the entire song together. Or it can be in the phrase that you hear in a passing conversation that starts the gears spinning. In all of these cases the writer is looking, asking, or reaching for the raw materials that feed the process of songcraft. Perhaps they aren't consciously looking at all....but many writers will tell you, a songwriter is always looking.

I was told once by a musician I have been a fan of for years that he found it important to make time to step away from working on his music. That it was sometimes more valuable to get out of your writers room into the world to gather those raw nuggets of inspiration, the seeds that with care and discipline can be cultivated into fully realized songs. I think he made an important point: that to write with a truthful voice about the world we do need to live in it. Sometimes we need to stop trying to create and just take time to quietly observe and to listen. Given the intensity with which so many of us pursue our career goals, this can be a real challenge....but if your ideas start to feel stale or forced it's probably time for a change in perspective or a change of scenery. It's also worth considering that a lack of inspiration may be a sign that some other element of your life has become stagnant: that the flow of ideas has ceased because something else is blocking it.

From a musical perspective, finding inspiration can be as simple as listening to some new sounds. A composer/producer friend of mine would unwind from a session by putting on ambient music that was so subtle as to almost be white noise. He said it was like a palate-cleansing for his ears, a way to step away from the music he had been working with and then return to it with a fresh perspective. If you play a musical instrument, use one of the myriad of resources available on the internet to learn something new today. Or take a lesson with someone, even if it's just one, to stimulate another way of thinking about your work. If you don't play an instrument, vocalize and just listen to the sound of your voice. In a safe environment where you can make all kinds of noise without being self-conscious, explore what your voice naturally likes to do. Even if you don't consider yourself a singer you can learn a lot by tuning in and listening to both the sound and feeling of your voice as you allow it to simply make sounds. This becomes a great tool for writing melodies: you don't have to be a strong singer to learn to use your voice to express up and down or low and high.

To answer the original question: inspiration IS important, but not in the sense that the woman who approached my teacher meant it. Inspiration is the spark that keeps us excited about what we do, and motivated enough to apply our craft to the ideas it gives rise to. Seek it in its absence, and celebrate its arrival. And even if there are no woods to walk in, there are many ways to find it....and when you do, take what you've found and get to work!