This post originally appeared on ben-church.co.uk, and is republished in full here with permission from the author.

Ever been writing and find yourself frozen with indecision?

It’s easily done. But writer’s block is also easily avoided. For one thing, it’s important just to let your writing flow. But before that, it’s important to plan your song.

I like to brainstorm ideas and draw a mind map of words, phrases and their associations. The associations are particularly important because this is what will lead a song will stand out. For example, a very common song theme is love – what do you associate with that? Red, hearts and excitement to quickly name something off the top of my head. Now go further – what do you associate with those things? Grab a pen and paper and draw it out.

Now all of a sudden we have some strong words and/or ideas to use and develop. ‘Heartbeat’ is about as cliché as it gets, but what about heart blood? Combine them into a single, new word and there’s a strong title – Heartblood. Otherwise ‘heart blood’ is a strong image that might feature in a line or two.

To demonstrate my point here I’ve committed a cardinal sin – I’ve started writing before I’ve really planned anything. If I dive into writing titles and lyrics with just those few words and ideas, I’m going to run into what I think of the opposite of a dead end (a living end?) – there are just too many possibilities and choosing from them becomes overwhelming.

But that little brainstorm took about a minute and led to one idea straight away, helping me choose one of those possibilities. I’m not saying it’s a good idea, but it’s a starting point for something. What really needs to happen is to keep that brainstorm going:

• Expand on associations of the other words such as ‘attack,’
• Explore opposites of the theme
• Look up quotes about the theme
  • There are loads of great websites full of literary and pop culture quotes.
  • Try and be specific – quotes about lost love, for example.
• Write down any clichés you can find or think of and look for ways to alter them.

Fill a sheet or three with these ideas. I find that the shape of a song can start to change as you go through this process. Make sure you let it and don’t start writing until you’ve got a load of material to work from.

Even then, make sure you outline your song before you start actually writing.

This post originally appeared on ben-church.co.uk, and is republished in full here with permission from the author.

I’ve always thought that what sets individuals out as particularly good aside from talent (and the honing of it) is taste.

Taste is really the only thing that dictates the creative choices we make, whether in the songwriting process or in production. Sure there may be some commercial awareness there that sets certain requirements. Maybe an advert needs a certain upbeat feeling without distracting from the dialogue – it’s still taste that chooses how to create that feeling. It takes taste to pluck a good idea from a ‘complete’ song that maybe isn’t quite there in other ways, or to choose mid/side recording (or not) because the sound is right for a certain track.

The trouble is it’s easy to get caught in this flow of taste and possibilities and find yourself over-thinking and second guessing. This is where the inner critic chimes in and starts getting in the way. It is a common feature of my own songwriting and I know I am far from alone in this.

Basically, I’m trying to edit before I’ve finished writing – inflicting my taste on a partially formed hint of an idea or a line that came off the top of my head. Actually writing that out now it sounds a ridiculous thing to do – why should it be any good? It’s a small step on the way to something bigger and taking time to ridicule it only stops me practising and slows down making the body of work necessary to get any good.

What I’m saying is try and avoid judging your writing while you are still going. Editing is great and completely necessary, but comes later. Just relax and let it flow.

This post first appeared on ben-church.co.uk, and is republished in full here with permission from the author. Given the large number of artists we come across and work with here at Pro Music Tutor, Ben’s thoughts definitely struck a chord with us and are something we feel all musicians should read.

What is Success?

It’s an important question to answer.

My idea of success is almost certainly different from yours. It’s also something a lot of people never truly define for themselves, especially in the music industry. Make sure you answer this question for yourself. It’s important to be able to remind yourself that you have actually achieved success when looking back. If you don’t define what that means to you, there is the risk of always looking ahead to some vague idea of what success will feel like, some idea that you’ll know it when you get it. You won’t – it’s in our nature to always want more.

Three years ago I wanted to ‘make a living from music.’ These were my exact words to myself and many others and honestly I didn’t know what that actually meant. I think I probably didn’t care, just anything to do with music. I’m now making my living performing and teaching and have a fair amount of time most weeks to dedicate to songwriting, recording and producing, which it turns out was the real aim. In a sense I’m happy to have ‘succeeded’ in that now. Except I haven’t, not really.

If my aim had been that I wanted to ‘gig and teach to finance writing music’ then I could be happy in the success of that. As it is I never gave the aim that definition until afterwards and robbed myself of that sense of success. If I had also given it that thought I would have realised that what I really want to do was make my living from writing music then I could have focused on that more. I’d still be doing and enjoying everything else I’m doing, but I could have dedicated more time to the ultimate aim. There’s no sense in waiting.

I’m assuming that if you’re reading a songwriting blog then as a minimum you probably want to consistently write songs you’re proud of. That might be enough for some people and is a lot easier written than done. Maybe you’re aiming to be an artist with significant profile or perhaps you’d be happier getting songs and instrumentals placed on TV shows. Then again, maybe you want to write songs for other people to perform. There are a number of different routes and each has its challenges.

The important thing is to figure out which approach you want to take. It will help you set out a plan for what you need to do now and will help you take stock later on.