Break out of a creative rut, find new songwriting strategies, and improve your writing process with this collection of songwriting articles from Flypaper. For more in-depth help, check out Soundfly’s course The New Songwriter’s Workshop.
Entrepreneurship in Music Series: 003 Hum Co-founder and Designer Aaron Shekey Hum is the simple-to-use, intuitive, and aesthetically brilliant app that is currently taking the entire songwriting (or “song-jotting”) world by storm. If you’re an urban-dwelling songwriter, perpetually on the go, and can’t sit still on your commute without those inspiration…
By Rowen Bridler The privilege of being a songwriter is that I never know when I’m going to be inspired with a new idea for a song, nor if I will have to push for that inspiration to show up in the first place. Some songs come about easily and others take lots of cajoling.…
By Alan Semerdjian There’s this idea out in the world that unless we’re working as songwriters and doing music full-time — music solely — we’ve somehow failed or compromised our integrity as artists. I’ve come to understand this notion as flawed thinking. Let me explain. I have been writing, releasing, and performing music since the drummer in…
I remember the first time I tried writing a song — it was a mess. I had no idea where to start, no idea how to come up with melodies (let alone match them with lyrics), and no idea what to write about. Songwriting can be an extremely daunting mountain to tackle if you’ve never written…
Need a boost of inspiration? Try any of these fool-proof chord progressions to jumpstart your writing process.
If you’ve seen Easy A, you probably remember the scene where Emma Stone receives a card that plays Natasha Bedingfield’s “Pocketful of Sunshine” and how Stone’s character hates the song — at first. Flash forward to a few days later, and she can’t stop singing it. There are songs that we can’t stand, yet can’t get out…
Songwriting is a cathartic, stimulating, and back-and-forth process. When inspiration really sinks in, it’s incredible what we’re capable of creating. And after channeling that inspiration into a new song, there’s a strong feeling of purpose and secure creative identity. We can, however, often sit around waiting for that moment to happen. Writer’s block is one…
This is part 3 of a series on how to write a musical. Start from the beginning with a brief history of musicals and explore the role of the music in telling the story. The basic question we’re looking at today is: when writing a musical, where do you begin? First of all, it’s important to know the purpose that…
William Ryan Fritch is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter who has been making music for film and releasing records professionally for about 7 years. I only came across his music recently but was immediately taken aback by his wide range of sounds and compositional tactics, that despite their different origins, all feel distinctly and familiarly…
Anyone who knows me at all knows how much I love Pixar films. The Incredibles is still one of my favorite all-time movies. Ratatouille made me see the world differently. Up had me balling like a child within the first ten minutes. And no small part of that was the music. I only recently found out…
