1. Take unusual pictures

Grab a camera and head out into the world.  Instead of taking pictures of peoples faces or pictures of buildings or landmarks, look for creative ways to look at the world.  Take a picture of someone’s shoe from an angle above their head.  Take a picture of a piece of litter in a park from ground level.  Take a close-up picture of a screw that holds the bench together at the bus stop.

The idea is to train your mind to look at things in different ways.  You can exercise your brain just like you exercise your muscles.  If you can teach yourself to do this when doing activities like taking pictures, it’ll be easier to look at musical ideas from different angles as well.

2. Read a random sentence, then try to come up with several different outside-the-box explanations for that sentence.

Pick a random sentence from a book or a magazine, or use a random sentence generator from the internet such as http://www.manythings.org/rs/  Once you have your sentence, create several short reasons or explanations for that sentence.  For example, using the random sentence generator, I got “Those bartenders brought her a small present.”  In trying to come up with some reasons why the bartenders might have bought her a small present, I might think of…

-She is so hot that men are constantly drinking from depression that they can’t be with her.
-Her witty comebacks caused the local hot-shot tough guy to run out of the bar crying.
-The bar makes a killing on macho guys that try (unsuccessfully) to outdrink her every night

Again, you’re training your mind to think about things a little differently.  This is a great exercise, because you can do it anywhere at any time.  Waiting at the doctors office?  Grab a magazine, turn to a random page, point to a random sentence, and do this exercise.  Driving on a long road trip?  Pick a sentence from a billboard that you pass.  Not only will this activity train you to look at things differently (like the first exercise), but it will specifically help you become more creative when writing lyrics.  Often times the catchiest lyrics are the ones that play on words in an unusual way, or describe things in ways that we wouldn’t normally think of them.

3. Draw a picture with lots and lots of things going on.

It can be detailed and impressive art, or it can be stick figures… it really just depends on how much time you want to put into it.  Just make sure there is a lot going on in the picture.  If you’re drawing a nature scene, maybe you could include things like two people hiking together, a family taking a picnic, two squirrels chasing each other, a flock of birds flying overhead, a guy in the distance falling off his bike, etc, etc, etc.  Or maybe you’re going to draw a city scene.  Fill it with lots of people, and be sure you know what each of them is doing when you draw them.  Perhaps someone is late for work and trying to walk fast.  Maybe someone else is waiting for a cab.  Maybe a group of kids are playing stick-ball, and an old man is taking out his trash.  Whatever it is you draw, add lots and lots of activity in it.

In real life there are very rarely isolated incidents… times where there is only one thing going on in the area.  Even if you’re out in the middle of nowhere, there are animals, birds, bugs, and plants that all make up the “scene” that you’re in.  By forcing yourself to think of all the little things in the background while you draw, it exercises your attention to detail.  While it’s true that a creative song could be performed by one instrument and one singer, a lot of times the things we view as creative have a lot of little details going on… things that a casual listener might not pick up on specifically, but things that still impact the overall sound of the song.

4. Watch your favorite movie or TV show.  Spot an extra that really isn’t part of the story at all.  Make up a background story for that character.

Maybe it’s someone that doesn’t even have a speaking part.  Someone that passes by one of the main characters and glances at them briefly.  Pick one of those people and create a back story for them.  What is their name.  Where do they work?  Who do they live with?  What kind of car do they drive?  Education? Religion? Political stance? Favorite types of books? Movies? What do they do for fun?  What are their talents? Why were they in the scene?  Where were they headed?

Lots of music is based on telling a story, whether it tells the story lyrically, or it expresses the story musically.  The more practice you get at making up stories, the easier it will become.  The nice thing is this is an exercise that can be done at any time.  Obviously if you’ve never seen the movie or TV show before you probably don’t want to think up the back story as your watching it (unless you’re good at multitasking), but you can easily pick a character to think about later, and you can make up the story as soon as the show is over.  Or maybe if there’s nothing on TV you can just flip through the channels and do this with random shows for a while.   It’s entertaining, and it’s a good creative thinking exercise.

5. Write constantly for a certain amount of time without stopping.

Grab a notebook and a pen.  Start with a sentence like “Once upon a time their was a girl with a dog”.  Then start writing about it.  Don’t stop writing.  If you start thinking about the girl, write about the girl.  Describe her.  Describe what happens to her.  If you start thinking about the dog, then write about the dog.  Maybe the first thing you think of is something like “The girl had a neighbor that was a rockstar”… then write about the rockstar.  It doesn’t matter if it flows well.  It doesn’t matter if it’s separated into chronological thoughts.  Formatting doesn’t matter.  Grammar doesn’t matter.  Just write.  And keep writing.  Don’t stop to read what you’ve written.  Just keep writing.  Give yourself a time limit.  Start small.  Maybe 5 minutes the first time you do it.  If you’re really ambitious, write for 10 minutes.  The more often you do it, the more you can increase the amount of time you write.  When the time is up you can either read it and decide to edit it into a real story, or you can discard it and never think about that particular writing again.  Either way, if you complete your allotted time, it’s a successful exercise.

The goal behind this exercise is training your mind to let ideas flow.  Often times it’s our nature to become critical of ourselves when we are in the creation phase, and that can be counter productive in the long run.  This will train you to turn off your inner criticism while you’re trying to get your ideas out.  It will teach you that being creative and fine-tuning your creativity should happen at two separate times.

Related posts:

1. Writing Exercise: Random Sentence Generators
2. 10 Ways For Coming Up With Song Parts (Part 3 of 5)
3. Mental Exercise: Brush Up On Your Metaphors
4. Writing Exercise: More Work With Metaphors
5. Random Inspiration: Off The Wall Musical Ideas