5 tips to get over songwriting writer's block

This happens to the best of us - you sit down to write some music and the well is dry. All of your ideas seem to not be good ones, and it’s hard to get into the flow of things. Or, maybe you’re the kind of songwriter that doesn’t like to have designated “sit down and write” writing sessions, but you wait until a moment of inspiration strikes, and then develop the idea, and you haven’t been struck in quite some time. Writer’s block is something that plagues a broad part of our population, across all creative industries. In today’s blog post, I’m gonna talk about some strategies to get the juices flowing when nothing is coming to you.

And here’s how:

Stealing

There’s a probably misquoted quote floating around, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal” which has been attributed to many people (Igor Stravinsky, being one of the most notable musicians of the group). And I’m not suggesting a simple copy and pasting, but by looking at artists and songs that you really love, you might be able to find some fresh new ideas. There’s a few ways we can go about this.

1. Form

If you’re unsure about what is considered form, it’s really just the structure of the song. In jazz and classical, it’s usually marked by “A, B, C” sections, if you’re a songwriter or pop musician it’s: “verse, chorus, bridge,” and so on. One exercise I give almost all of my production students is to copy the form of some favorite songs. 

For example, let’s take Phoebe Bridger’s song, Savior Complex. The form is:

Verse (instrumental), verse, chorus, verse (instrumental), verse, chorus, interlude, verse (instrumental), chorus 

This song also features a really cool cliffhanger ending, where the song is in the key of E and ends on an Am - the minor iv borrowed chord (if this makes absolutely no sense, you may want to read this blog post where I define this and give an example of how The Beatles use it). But anyway, steal the form of the song. This can be as micro or macro as you want, but the idea is now you’ve got a structure and you can fill in the blanks, almost like a musical coloring book. You can get super specific and count the number of measures, but you can also just write a verse you really dig and just copy and paste the form (although I generally advise not to copy and paste when tracking and suggest recording it multiple times, to avoid this robotic feeling - unless you want that stylistically). Even if you don’t end up using the song, this is a great exercise on how to utilize form.

 Sean and I (co-dude of Terranaut Recordings) were watching Cobra Kai the other day, and as we steamrolled through several episodes, I noted that the show is an excellent example of how to use form to captivate audiences. The show is being watched across all demographics and for me personally, each episode makes me want to pull to the next one. That being said, I don’t think this is a particularly good show, in fact I’d say the contents are pretty terrible, in my opinion. The acting isn’t very great, and the plot is a bunch of grown men with a karate feud who are literally destroying the lives of teenagers - to the point where one character eventually gets a spinal injury. But the thing is, the form of it is so on point that it keeps you watching. And like Phoebe, this show uses cliffhanger endings to keep the audience wanting more. 

P.S. If you like Phoebe Bridgers as much as we do, you can check out our podcast episode talking over her album Punisher.

2. Harmony (chords)

This is something jazz musicians did a ton to avoid paying copyrights: contrafacts. It’s when you attach a new melody to pre-existing chord changes (because chord progressions aren’t subject to copyright laws, not that I’m encouraging plagiarism). This is another great exercise that you can get a ton of mileage out of. If you’re a theory nerd like me, you can analyze the progressions and I guarantee you’ll find some patterns between all the chord progressions. “Wow, this song also does the vi V IV thing but in a different key!” And I personally think this is a great thing to experience as a creator who is creating, because if almost every single song you like utilizes the same technique, that means you just found out a cheat code to achieve a sound you’ll like and is something you can integrate as a part of your style or voice.

3. Rearranging 

This one is actually one that can be easily described as words.

One can easily describe this with words.

With words, one can describe this with ease.  

Easily, one can describe this using words.

Describing this is pretty easy using words.

5 sentences, exact same meaning, however worded pretty differently. You can do this with other peoples melodies, chords, or really anything you think of, and it becomes your melody now and it’s a great jumping off point. And this actually connects with the next point: theme and variation

4. Theme and variation

Once you’ve soft stolen a theme by rearranging it, you can now develop it over time. This is a classical composition toolbox that’s used on a really smaller scale in a lot of rock and pop (and probably a subconscious use) but the idea is you take an idea, change it little by little as the song progresses. Let’s take our second sentence, or variation 2:

One can easily describe this with words. (idea)

With those words making it easier, we can move forward (development)

Once we moved forward with the words as the example, we found something (development) 

And then with our new found help, we found what we needed to finish the song (development)

We finished the song by taking the idea, thanks to our easy word analogy (final development)

One sentence easily turns into five. It’s kind of like that “Yes, and” thing in improv comedy, which is also a big part of jazz improvisation, but it’s taking one idea and slowly developing it. This can be applied to the lyrics, but melody as well. Let’s say we take the first few notes Phoebe sings in Savior Complex: E B G# B D#. Our variation can be E G# B D# B. We can develop it like this

E G# B D# B (idea)

E G# B C# D# B (development)

E G# B C# D# C# (development)

E G# B C# (development)

Changing one note at a time is a great way to slowly unfold ideas in a way that the audience can digest and follow along. It’s also a sort of methodical approach, and these methodical approaches can get juices flowing and can shut off the overly analytical/judgemental side of your brain that may be blocking you. Typically, in rock and pop, the thing I hear a lot is: melody, melody with slight variation, melody one more time, a melody that answers the original melody. Get creative with this, as there’s so many possibilities.

5. Tell a story from another character's perspective

You can take from songs, but you can also take from books and movies. Let’s take a song by The Beatles called “For No One” 

Your day breaks, your mind aches

You find that all her words of kindness linger on

When she no longer needs you

To my interpretation, this is Paul McCartney telling the listener: you’ve been left by this girl who doesn’t need you any more. You messed up. What if we make some lyrics from her perspective, and we’re the narrator? 

You left him, he’s hurting

You gave him one too many chances to make up

But you no longer need him

Again, this can be used as an exercise, but you might find some gems while going through this that can eventually turn into your best song. Keep in mind, I’m far from a wordsmith, so whatever you come up with will be much better than what I just came up with. 

6. Bonus:

Once you’re out of songwriter writing block, you can come to us and we’ll get your demo of this new masterpiece you’ve creative and make it into a stream-ready single (or project, depending on how much the juices were flowing)

Obviously this is me being silly because this isn’t a songwriting tip, but Sean and I are the music production duo being Terranaut Recordings, the site you’ve somehow found yourself on! We are musicians that like to make music with other musicians, and we work from our home studio getting your demos fully fleshed out. From drum programming/tracking, acoustic/electric guitars, upright/electric bass, synths/keyboards/pianos/ambient sounds, we can help get whatever’s in your head out into the world. Check out some of our past work here.

If you want to ask us about how it all works, what we can do to your song, and any questions you may have for us, feel free to email us at terranautrecordings@gmail.com, fill out a contact form, or even send us a DM on Instagram or TikTok (@terranautrecordings) if you feel the others are too formal for you. And if you mention that you found us through this blog post, we’ll give you a special price for the first song/project. 

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading and I hope you’ve found this helpful! 

——— Nick