I like to pay attention to the Google search terms that bring people to this site.  Because I write a lot about creative inspiration and songwriting, one of the common themes in the terms that Google associates with this blog is the idea of how to write a song if you’re a beginner.  I see a lot of search phrases in my web stats that look something like this:

How to write your first song
How do you get started writing music
How can you write a song if you can’t play music
How can you write a song if you’ve never done it

When I was surfing through some music sites recently, I came across an article called “How To Write A Song When You Are A Beginner”.

Here’s a little piece of the article:

For many learning how to write song is not so much the issue. However, learning how to find the problems in the songs they do write, is a valuable tool. To start with, new songwriters should just write lots of songs. The best goal is to write 100 songs. Sometimes beginning songwriters need to write a lot of songs to find what isn’t working and figure out how to get them working better. And this is often difficult to do on your own, which is why looking to outside sources can be most helpful.

To read the rest of the article, click HERE

I’ll be honest, I’ve been writing songs for so long that it’s hard for me to think in those terms.  However, it looks like this article came from a blog that is specifically about getting started writing songs.  If you are a beginner who is interested in getting started, you might want to search through the rest of the articles on that blog.  You might find something very useful.

But of course, keep coming back to this one, too. 

The RPM Challenge is Complete!

My songwriting group (Blair Hannah Payne… otherwise known as BHP) completed the RPM Challenge this February!

For those who don’t know, the RPM Challenge is a challenge put out to songwriters all over the internet to write a complete album (9 songs or at least 35 minutes of music) from start to finish in the month of February.

For BHP, this becomes even a little more challenging, because we only get together for a few hours every Thursday night.  So for us, we had the challenge of essentially writing an entire album in 5 sittings (we took an extra Friday night to finish it up).

I am quite proud of what we came up with.

I’ll probably be breaking down some of the songs on an individual basis sometime in the future, but for now, here’s a link to listen to or download the entire album.

“Of Fire, Ice, and Rage” by BHP

Related articles around the web

• The RPM Challenge (wiretotheear.com)
• RPM Challenge 2010 (netnewmusic.net)

Here are some recent articles and blog posts from around the web that you are probably going to want to read.

• How to Write a Song Without Playing an Instrument – A lot of people seem to find me by searching for “how to write a song without playing an instrument”, so I thought I’d link to an eHow article that talks about just that
• 10 Free Acoustic Guitar Lessons That Will Bring Out the Creative Guitar Player In You – This one is for you guitar players. (mostly at a beginner to average level) There are 10 video lessons on this page to make you think about different ways of playing your guitar
• When a song tells a story – A quick tip about streamlining a song that tells a story
• Muse’s Muse Songwriting Message Board – This is a good message board to join if you want to get to know other songwriters. I’ll admit that I’ve gotten out of the habit of going here, but there are a lot of people on this site that are willing to lend a critical ear (in a good way!)
• Finding time and space for songwriting – A short article about how people find time and space to write their music.

I thought I’d do another post of random ideas and inspiration.  Today I’ll give you guys some potential song titles.

Try not to look at this ideas literally or word for word, but instead try to look at them from different angles and see if they can inspire something unique and creative in you.  Try to take the words from the ideas and approach them from an unusual point of view.  Or maybe you’ll read the words and start to think about them, but they’ll bring a completely different idea to your mind.

The idea is to read them and allow your brain to think creatively.

Chasing After Restlessness

Displaying Sanity

Of Knights and Princesses

Encouraging Mystery

Fighting Off Optimism

She Clings To Her Sorrow

Without Nevada

She Talks With Kings