Step one. Have an idea.
Step two. Forget that idea.
Step three. Tap a folder or another non-lethal object against your head, trying to think of that idea.
Step four. Proclaim ‘fuck this shit’ and go have a self-abusive night of debauchery in light of your being a failure.
The next day, in the throes of your regret, pick up your guitar again. Drop it. Curse every existence and the universe, kicking various objects across the room. TV remotes are good for this. Curse your birth, your father’s mistakes, the dead bones of your pets and any roommates you may have had (but don’t have currently). After adequate cursing, sit down with the guitar again and tune that bastard. I suggest tuning with an electric tuner (such as a KORG), since I doubt you’ll have the patience to use a piano (if you even have one) or do it by ear.
When you’re finally done tuning the guitar, stare at it for a few minutes. Strum a G. Pick random mute-notes. Emit the darkest sigh you can summon from the ruined depths of your insides. Repeat step four.
Maybe you’re feeling better. Time for some original thinking. Listen to one of your favorite albums on loop for as long as you can stand. Depending on how the rest of your day’s been going, this may not be too long. Because it’s been drilled in your head so much, you’ll have no choice but to play one of the few songs from it that you know. Play it repeatedly until your roommates leave, go in their rooms, turn the TV up to full volume, or scream at you to shut up. When you play something over, and over, and over, and over the fuck again, you’ll naturally start jamming out, using little mistakes you make and turning them into little side-riffs that become real riffs that become various things you keep coming back to, which becomes a chorus, which leads into some versey things, which QUICK GET A NOTEBOOK!
Quick side note: or you’ll fall asleep. Which is also a plus. But don’t pay attention to this because YOU HAVE TO GET A NOTEBOOK GO.
Got a notebook? Okay cool. Tab out what you’ve come up with. Or for you fancy bastards, write your stupid sheet music. You’ve probably got a staff book, right? That you got for graduation, cuz your family full of Philharmonic Whatever douchebags knows you’re going to be first chair in the Ohh-Look-At-Me-I’m-Playing-Jazz-Standards Ensemble? And you’ll probably end up being a well-off studio musician unlike the rest of us who have to slave away at one of the few things in this world that we love until it cracks the very skin of… Ahem. I may have gotten carried away.
So once you got that all written out so you can remember and understand it, take a Step Four.
Take a look at your notebook. Still remember how to play that shit? Well, play it until you do. If you don’t, make up something that sounds like it. Or start over. Get something to eat.
So now, at least on the guitar, you’ve got the bare bones of a song. That is, if you’ve been following this guide religiously. If not, well suck my dick, you heathen. Start over.
If there’s any other instrumentation you want to work out (some guitar leads, basslines, piano, banjo, timpani, wooden fish…), go ahead and do that now if you must. Some people really like fleshing out their song before they write words and slap a title on it. For some reason. Never struck me as the thing to do, but hey, more power to you. Personally, I would suggest not taking too much time with this. The longer you put off writing words, the less you feel like it, the longer the half-finished scrap of scripture sits in your notebook. And longer. And longer. Never to be touched again, at least not for months. Maybe years. Just sitting there, half-formed, like a sad lonely fetus that can’t be a real boy. That’s how Pinocchio goes, right?
My point being, it might be wiser to just get some words to that shit. I’m a master procrastinator, and I can tell you there’s no better way to not do something than to not do it. Stupid and obvious, but… uh… so are you. Yeah, that’s all I’ve got.
Ready to write some lyrics? Well tough, cuz they won’t come right away. Might help to get a melody first. Play whatever part you’re working on over and over again. And over. And over.
And over.
Maybe, just maybe, something will incept in your head, a melodic catch you can maybe hum. Turn that hum into a scat to get the vocal nuances down. Try to turn that scat into lyrics. IMPORTANT: This is YOUR SONG. Just like a work of fiction, a song is never finished. Merely abandoned. You can rearrange and rewrite all you like until it hits the studio and gets a wide release. So in that case, you’ve got all the time in the world. I say this because when you first develop lyrics, the ones you want most likely won’t be the first ones to come out. Come up with whatever pops into your head. Nine times out of ten, it will be nonsense. This is fine. Preferable even. At least you have something. You don’t have to write down the exact shit that just came out of your mouth. Unless you want your refrain be “Pickled walrus horoscope, find a simple isotope.” I mean, if you do, shit. More power to you. Actually… no. I’m using that.
By coming up with this gibberish, you have the frame of your line. You can come up with more original rhymes this way and get the vague idea of the syllables. So you can turn “Pickled walrus horoscope, find a simple isotope” into… hmm… “Pick the hallowed number-pope, find his simple little hope”. I don’t know. Go ahead and use that. I prefer “Pickled walrus horoscope, find a simple isotope”.
I’m gonna go write that song now. I’ll come back to this.
Oh calm down. My songs are more important than yours.
Epilogos: I didn’t come back to this.
Epilogos Dos: I lied, I totally did. To add this and that last thing.
Thomas Gumbel is a 19-year-old attempt at a writer and musician. Yes, an attempt. A long, arduous and half-mad attempt. He, like the other senior editors of this blog, hails from Chicago, or more specifically, the mystical town of Oak Park, where the scene kids roam free-range and un-beaten-up, much to his chagrin. Thomas grew up on a steady diet of comic books, Nintendo, Kingdom Hearts, loneliness and Captain Crunch to feed the constant, gnawing appetite of his imagination. He regrets nothing. Though that's probably a lie. He currently studies at Columbia College Chicago, lives downtown, and plans to graduate majoring in Fiction Writing and, God-or-Christopher-Lee-willing, will have an album recorded and self-released in the next year, though not under his name, because really, what a horrible name. No, his "band" name is "Fragile Will", though that's not what it says on his meager, meager Soundcloud, because he's lazy and has not changed it. Read his stuff. Read this blog. Within lie the keys to the kingdom of awesome. Do not let them tell you otherwise. May the Force be with you.
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