ErikEspangberg

I’ve written a lot of songs in my life. Some songs ended up better than others, but every time both the process of writing and seeing the end result was so rewarding. I’m writing a song at the moment and I’m at the stage where it’s more like laying a puzzle rather than coming up with ideas. I absolutely hate laying puzzles, but sometimes the picture displayed on the finished puzzle can be so beautiful. The thought of the end result is what motivates me to keep going until the very end, despite any feelings of frustration or tiredness that I may be experiencing. I don’t know if the song that I’m currently working on will be beautiful or not as I’ve only just poured the puzzle pieces out of the box, but I do know that some of the puzzle pieces are just so interesting. I’ll just have to put the pieces together and see if it was worth doing so.

I have a main melody, a chorus if you will. The main melody is catchy and tells the story well. I’ve got a longer melody that repeats itself a few times throughout the song. You may call it the verse. I also have some really cool and fast guitar licks and tricks for the solo. But I’ve got no bridge and no way of bridging the other parts together, so I realized that the puzzle is incomplete, a few parts is missing. Trying to create parts that fits in the puzzle is songwriting.

Often when I get stuck like this I just continue working on another song. I won’t do that this time as I’ve got a good feeling about this song. So what I’m doing is that I’m writing a bridge and then I rewrite it, just to later rewrite it again.

Some may call this process boring when you’re not inspired but I would call it being creative. You can’t feel inspired all the time, but if you work for it, the the feeling of inspiration may strike you. For example, say I didn’t practice my songwriting skills whenever I wasn’t feeling inspired, how would I then be able to catch the idea when I later felt inspired?
I do this so that those days when I wake up with a great idea for a song in my head, I won’t have to reflect over how I should play it or how I can write it down.

I do this crazy thing just so that one day, I won’t have to lay this freaking puzzle, but instead it will lay itself.
Today is one of those days when laying the puzzle just seems to hard.

Please leave a comment and tell us what you do when you’re feeling uninspired.