A while back me and Jim (James Blair who has some articles published on this site) came up with a huge list of random ideas to provide inspiration for new songs, riffs, etc. We ended up with 50 of these random ideas, so I thought I’d share them with you. I’m going to break them up into 5 different groups of 10.
You can find the other parts here:
50 Ideas For Coming Up With Musical Song Parts (Part 1 of 5)
50 Ways For Coming Up With Song Parts (Part 2 of 5)
50 Ways For Coming Up With Song Parts (Part 3 of 5)
50 Ways For Coming Up With Song Parts (Part 4 of 5)
50 Ideas For Coming Up With New Musical Ideas (41 – 50)
41. Use a guitar VST, played by your keyboard, ran through some guitar amp simulators to create a guitar rock song (to get a different sound than real guitar).
42. Spin a globe and stop it by placing your finger in a random spot. Write a song in the style of the country or region you’re finger is pointing at, or closest to.
43. Write a holiday song for a holiday that usually doesn’t have it’s own music. (That means, no Christmas, no Easter)
44. Turn on the TV. Close your eyes and start flipping channels. After 30 seconds or so of random surfing, stop changing channels on the TV. Is it a commercial? If not, do the process again until you get a commercial. When you get a commercial, write a radio ad campaign (commercials and jingles) for a new product you’re going to invent to compete with the one on the commercial you saw.
45. Pick up a random book from your bookshelf. Close your eyes, flip to any random page in the book, and point to a random spot on that page. Write down whatever sentence your finger was on. That’s going to be the idea for your song. You don’t have to quote the sentence word for word, but write the song so that the sentence sums up what it’s about. Try to think outside the box with it, though. You don’t have to follow the theme of the book, just the sentence. Try to take the sentence as far outside the context of the book as you can, and make it about something completely different.
46. Write a song based on one or more quotes from a weird cartoon character, like Ralph Wiggum from the Simpsons or Homsar from Homestar Runner.
47. Play a riff on the guitar and make a loop out of it. Then take that loop and reverse it. Write a song around the reversed loop
48. Write a guitar riff, then tab it out in a program like Guitar Pro. Export it as a MIDI, then play it through a crazy VSTi. Write a song around that new sound.
49. Pick a drum loop and drop it in a new song. Write a new riff where you can only hit a note when you hear the bass drum or the snare drum in the loop. The notes have to cut off quick, making them sound very percussive. Write a song around that riff.
50. Listen to a stand up comic. Pick one of his punch lines or jokes. Write a song about that as if it were not only a real event, but a “serious” one (as in, make the song sound like you’re trying to be serious, even though it’s funny)
