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Enter The Beatles

The Beatles had a tremendous impact on songwriting. I know they had a tremendous impact on me. I would not be a songwriter today had there been no Beatles. There were artists prior to the Beatles who wrote their own material but none had the overall impact that they did.

They not only changed the art and the craft of songwriting, but they changed the business itself. Virtually overnight the music publishing industry had to change its business strategy. It started moving away from pure non-performing songwriters to signing Artist Development deals, and trying to tie up the publishing of the stars of tomorrow. This is a trend that continues to this day.

They also changed the musical instrument business. Prior to the Beatles, it was a relatively small industry that held it’s annual trade show in a single hotel in Chicago. Today that same trade show known as the NAMM Show is held every year in Anaheim in their huge convention center.

Idea Collection

One technique that’s used by many songwriters is ‘Idea Collection’. Although there are numerous approached the basic premise is always the same.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say you were going to work on a song about jealousy. You’d start by writing down whatever popped into your head about the subject: hate, broken heart, loss, other man, ring, alone, loneliness, anger, trust, insecurity, no answer on the phone, broken promises, unfair, juvenile, lover, etc. Try to list as many ideas as possible. They can be a word, a phrase, a concept, whatever.

It’s important that you’re non-judgmental during this process. Be sure not to be critical of any of your ideas. Just keep jotting them down. Quantity is more important than quality for this to work.

Now start writing your jealousy song. If you’re like most songwriters there will be times when you can’t come up with anything. That would be the time to review your ‘Idea Collection’. You’ll find that often there’s a better word or concept that you can use or perhaps a direction to go in for the bridge.

I think that this approach can be helpful because of the freedom you allow during the creative process of compiling the Collection. When you’re actually writing the song your brain is multi-tasking. It’s thinking about the song form or the rhyming scheme or the meter. If you can free it up a bit with the ‘Idea Collection’ it can work much more effectively.

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