Songwriting - My tips and Tricks!

Although I may be relatively new to producing electronic music, I have been a songwriter for around 2 years now and this blog will be dedicated to those of you who are just starting out or are looking to get into it! I'll be covering topics such as how I began, how my songwriting has progressed up until now and how I handle problems such as writers block! So without further ado, let's jump right in!

How did I start writing my songs?

Originally, I started out playing guitar and singing in my year 10 music class for a concert at the end of the year. I never really thought I'd take it much further than that and that once the year ended, everything would just go back to normal. But once I had a taste of what it was like to be on stage, playing music and just all around having fun there was no way I could go back. I began to practice every day and learn new songs to cover and perform with my friends at school and eventually, in venues throughout my home town.

My main profile shot for venues around my home town, Bundaberg. Photo taken by Jacob Baumgartner, 2017.

I came to realise the feeling I had when I was playing music not just on stage but anywhere in general gave me a feeling I couldn't possibly get from anywhere else. However, I always found myself wanting more. Sure, learning other people's songs and performing them in my own unique way was incredibly fun but I always felt like I could be more creative than that. Thus, I started writing my own songs! One of my major influences at the time was Ed Sheeran, who writes a lot of acoustic pop/folk music. Therefore, being a 15 year old songwriter who didn't actually know where to start songwriting I started in that same genre! Similar to Sheeran, I wrote many songs about my hometown, girls and other random things that were going on in my life!

However, I've always been really picky with certain sounds and how I want my original work to sound. This is when I'd started listening to more electronic music and started experimenting with a looping pedal, a launchpad and my first DAW - Ableton Live Lite (I was broke ok). I found myself starting to use the launchpad more and more until the guitar slowly faded away more and more. It was then that I realised what I truly wanted to create with music and that this was my first evolutionary step as an artist.

how my songwriting has progressed until now...

As I mentioned earlier, I had originally started as a singer/songwriter and wrote acoustic/pop songs on guitar. However, over the course of the last year my passions for music have taken a new turn which caused me to slowly drift away from that style. I found myself mixing songs together on my laptop to create mash-ups and blends that I thought sounded really interesting. I seemed to take a liking to this very quickly and little did I know that it would be the first step towards my real dream, becoming a DJ/Producer!

I eventually saved enough money to buy myself a DJ controller and before i knew it, I started playing house parties and learning how to control crowds. Soon after this though, I had the same feeling that I did with my original performances, I wanted to be more original and creative than I was. This is when I started producing electronic music. Soon after this, I began to incorporate my previous experiences in songwriting back into my productions and my progression with music has never been smoother!

I soon realised my real passion for music lied within electronic music and creating atmosphere's that people could truly enjoy themselves in. Half the struggle with songwriting

is finding the area/genre that you truly want to write in.

After that, its simply a matter of finding the right equipment!

^^Myself playing a house party recently

in my new home city of Brisbane, Australia.

Photo by Jayden Findlay, 2018

How to deal with writers block

If you're new to songwriting and find yourself having nothing to write about, don't stress, this is perfectly normal. Even the most experienced songwriters in the world suffer writers block from time to time. The best news is, its not permanent in the slightest! One of my best methods for dealing with it personally is going and listening to other artists music and trying my hardest to form a theme from that curation of songs. Another way is to just take a step back, take a breath of fresh air and just think about what is going on in your life personally. Do you have problems you can't express in any other way than songwriting? Are you missing home if you live far away? Is there a special person in your life you wish to write to who is unaware of your feelings? These are just a few of the many themes/topics I think of daily. However, its always different for other people because everybody lives their own life. But ones thing's for sure, your life can't possibly be that boring that you have nothing to write about!

Below I have listed a video from a local DJ/Producer in Brisbane known as Art Supplies who explains this exact situation and how he deals with it personally! Even though the video is only about a minute long, he does make some seriously good points so I'd recommend checking it out!

Overall, if you're new to songwriting but are intimidated about what people may think about you or even just the sheer number of other songwriters in the industry, don't be. Everybody has to start somewhere and generally, thats at the bottom. Even with my own songwriting abilities I know that I still have a long way to go to get to where I want to be. I've written countless songs over the last year and found that I scrapped most of them. Some people find their creative passions straight away and some other people are like me, who take a while to experiment with a multitude of different genres until they find the one they wish to stay in. At the end of the day, no one ever said it was going to be easy, the journey of songwriting is long and hard, but it really pays off at the end of day. In the words of the great deadmau5 - "If you can impact one person with your music then, it is pretty much worth it ... sometimes it happens in 5 years, sometimes it happens in 10 years, sometimes it doesn't happen at all. But, it's definitely, 100% not gonna happen if you don't go out there and try it for yourself".

Works Cited

- Art Supplies, 2017, 'How To Move Past Writers Block', Last Date Viewed: 7/3/18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zehGnJZEF_4

- Masterclass, 2016, 'deadmau5 Teaches Electronic Music Production', Last Date Viewed: 7/3/18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtj6dDARgfQ