July 11th Saturday’s Alright for Songwriting

Prompts are fun. I try not to take them too seriously. After a first impression, my thoughts veer into the different ways I might interpret a prompt. Could be a word be both a verb or a noun, like snake?

Having been raised (as a songwriter) on Pat Pattison’s object writing, I tend to seek the physical objects in a prompt and explore them. These days I skip the object writes do a quick  “word splatter.” (Lots of people call this brainstorming, or mind mapping, “word splatter is messier and I like it that way).

After I finish a word splatter I see if words on the edges of the splatter might be interesting together. If the word is “snake” I might find myself with words like apple and slither on the page. How might an apple slither? I don’t know but that’s a cool image. It may not lead to anything productive, yet I feel these sort of verbal calisthenics prime the writer in my brain with lots of fun playful ideas before I start. When I start writing, all those images which have been stirred up and may find their way into the lyrics.  

The Musical Idea:

Here’s a worksheet you can print up to try these ideas out, (or the ones from last week). The worksheet is meant to give you an opportunity to write out a bunch of different potential chord progressions and see what they sound like and what you like.