Songwriting - preparing the seed bed

I've been thinking a lot about the process of songwriting recently. I've decided to set aside times in the week dedicated to songwriting...but what should I do in that time?? What if the 'inspiration' isn't there, or there is no half written songs to keep working on?

I don't know whether my years at agricultural school are now beginning to show their influence, but I've started thinking about the process of songwriting like gardening! A lot of the work in songwriting you could think of as 'pruning and training' an established plant to make it healthier and more fruitful - snipping off the dead wood, encouraging other branches to grow out, cutting back the foliage to encourage more fruit...the analogies continue! We'll discuss this side a bit more in another blog.

But what do you work on when there is no 'established plant' of a song already there? I wonder if you, like me, have been driven to frustration sitting behind a piano or guitar and trying to force some inspiration? It just doesn't seem to work...not for me anyway! So what do you do? Is it just a matter of waiting for inspiration to knock on the door with an established plant delivery?

Over the last few weeks, I've been working hard on preparing seed beds. If you want a plant to grow well, you have to put the work into the soil in preparation...tilling it, making sure it has all the right nutrients and minerals, adjusting the pH level...and it differs depending what type of plant your planning on growing. There's lots of things you can do in preparation, so when that moment of inspiration arrives, there's good soil for it to grow and flourish in.

Here's some of the things I've found helpful for writing church songs...but this is by no means exhaustive! I'd love to hear what works for you...

Pull together a pool of related / complementary verses
After a conversation with a friend, I've been challenged to writing a song based around / starting at James 1:27 - "Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world." The first place to explore is the verse's immediate context...here in James, its all about having a faith that expresses itself in actions of love, and not just words. But start looking up cross-references and follow the links, and you'll come across many other passages that will support and shed more light on this idea of religion. Do a cross reference search on James 1:27 and Job31:17; Is1:17 & 23 and Mt25:36 come straight up...with many more cross references for each of theses. Follow these idea trails - read them in their contexts - and this will help develop your understanding of these concepts. Having this pool of verses will not only help develop lyric ideas when they arrive, but they will will probably spark some ideas themselves! Best of all, you'll be challenged and changed as you meditate on God's word.

Explore key themes and concepts
This is similar to the point above, but based around themes and concepts rather than verses. Try and articulate the key themes of the passage you are looking at, and then explore these further. Word search functions can really help with this to find other related verses. But it is also helpful to generate a pool of similar words, phrases and concepts as starting points for further exploration or inspiration. Paraphrasing passages can help with this. The other benefit of this broad soil preparation is that it often leads to other ideas and songs sprouting that you weren't really expecting!

Go for a long walk / drive
Its amazing how often, after filling my brain up with lots of these ideas above, a long walk or drive alone will help good ideas float to the surface. Find out what works for you, but try and find an extended time when you can prayerfully ruminate (more agricultural analogies) on the themes and concepts you've discovered - but not in an intentional, sitting at the computer / piano / guitar sort of way...let the cogs spin a bit!

And here's a few tools that I've found helpful in this process...

Study Bible
Study bibles have really useful tools like cross-references and concordances to help you discover connections and complimentary passages that you may not be aware about. The great thing is there is now lots of online / electronic tools that can really help with this. Bible Gateway is a go to site for me when I want to do some searching around - the Holman version has good cross-references. But recently I've been using the Olive Tree Bible Reader App on my phone a lot - it has a great word search function, lets you view different translations side by side, and lets you make notes attached to specific verses or words.

Notebook
Doesn't really matter if this is electronic or old school paper...but something that you keep with you at all times to take down ideas and thoughts as soon as they sprout - don't assume that 'if its good enough, I'll be able to remember it' - I've lost enough good ideas to not think that way anymore!

PersonalBrain
This is a very new discovery for me, but one I think will become indispensable to my songwriting!! I've always struggled with how to compile all this digging around in a helpful way...do you categorise things by verses or themes or concepts when there's often multiple points of connection? PB is a mindmapping tool that lets you maintain, and navigate around, these multiple connections. But it is WAY more than that...rather than just leaving you with a web of concepts and thoughts, it will let you attach your notes, lyrics sheets, verses, demo recordings, websites, emails...whatever...straight into that mindmap so everything is at your fingertips. Hard to explain...easier just to check it out! It wont be for everyone...but if your brain works like me - more random and unsystematic - then this might be just what you're looking for. I'm just hanging for the iOS version...

Anyway, that's a few things that I've found helpful to prepare the seed beds for songs. Even when, at the end of the day, there's no new song ideas, I know I've put some really helpful preparation in, ready for when the ideas surface. And I've spent really intentional, beneficial time in God's word...can't be bad, can it! But how about you - any ideas to add??