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How do you generate ideas?

In interviews, Robert Smith of the Cure, is often asked if he's a depressed and despondent person because of all the gloomy songs he writes. To which he replies, not at all, he's quite happy and upbeat. He says he gets his inspiration from observing people around him. Whether that's true or not, we'll never know. Woody Allen insists none of his movies are autobiographical, but I find that hard to believe.

In my experience, songwriting (and composing) falls into two categories: writing for myself and writing for others. And the process is very different for each.

Nearly all of my early songwriting efforts were deeply personal, mostly about girls, breakups, and relationships. The songs were my way of processing whatever emotions I was going through or didn't know how to express any other way. The writing was very "inward", exploring how I felt and figuring out what I needed to get off my chest. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic :p, it felt like mining the depths of my soul, and was usually quite cathartic.

But later, when I started writing songs for licensing and commercial purposes, everything changed. I grab at anything for inspiration, or often, I'm told what to write about. The entire process is very "outward" and more calculated and methodical because specific requirements must be met. It's still creative work, but instead of being a painter, you're now a graphic artist.

But ultimately, regardless of how or what we write about, it all passes through our personal filter, and all our experiences, perspectives, and feelings, influence the final result, whether it's about ourselves or something detached. There's a little bit of us in everything we create.
 
Most of the time for me it starts with a strong emotion that can be the result of something I experienced (i.e. a fascinating moment in nature, a time of grief or strenght, a moving part of a song, movie or game) or the result of a thought process / realization (wow I am going to die, I can love and hate myself at the same time, life is not only black or white but something in between, etc.).

This strong emotion sparks the desire in me to keep it, to preserve it and to tell about it through music. Quite often I try to understand and grasp the emotion right away by finding words to describe it and that often leads to the first lyric lines. And sometimes I can hear a basic melody or just the idea of a melody that goes with this emotion right away in my head. Then it‘s all about implementing this idea. So I start playing guitar or synthesizer and / or sing until I feel something that is similar or even exactly like the original emotion. Then I go on from there, which leads to the next idea and so on.
 
As far as lyrics go, I just start with ideas that I'm already thinking about and try to put them into words. I often think in words anyway. I'm a philosopher by training and previous profession, so there are lots of abstract ideas that I'm used to thinking about and trying to apply to ordinary life. But, in truth, if I'm dealing with words I prefer prose. So I don't want to write lyrics anymore and haven't done so for years; also, I don't often listen to music that includes lyrics.

I never wrote about my own life, and not always from my own perspective; but I typically voiced my own concerns, albeit not typically my own opinions. The content remained very personal to me and did involve sharing myself; but it wasn't about me.

For music, I improvise a lot. Often in the same way as with lyrics, I explore sounds that get me into places that relate to ideas that I'm thinking about all the time anyway. I particularise them, and approach them in an emotional register that I find myself feeling. Sometimes, I end up finding something completely different, perhaps a chord change or riff, and head off in a new direction altogether. This approach builds up plenty of musical elements over time that I haven't yet developed. So, if I want to begin writing some music, I can draw on those and start to develop them.

Usually, though, to be completely honest, when I set out to write something I have the idea in the moment, the emotional response too, and just hammer away at the keys and find something new in the moment. Either it is working for me, and I get started recording; or it isn't working for me and I try something else.

When I speak of ideas and emotional responses, it may sound a little analytical. Often, these come to me as a vignette. I do tend to think and write in terms of an experience. Walking through a tunnel with a certain emotional context - struggle in the face of lost hope, for example. It's a little dreamlike. I don't know the story, I just know the scene - yet I still have a sense of its meaning in some unknown broader context. It is both sensory (sights, sounds, smells, touch, etc.) and psychological. A contrast of paradigms might help to make this clearer. One might think about writing a novel based upon a scenario - lizard people have disguised themselves as our political leaders and replaced them, someone finds out and must expose the truth. My starting idea would be, there is a girl in an unbearably hot attic who is looking for a photo album and she is afraid of finding it. That's closer to the kind of starting point I use for music.

I have basically spent thirty-five plus years picking up a guitar (now, sitting at a keyboard) and improvising. I've also done a lot of improvising with other musicians. The upside, I usually find it easy to generate music. The downside, if I'm depressed I can't do anything at all. It's like I can't even speak and my music is my lost voice. In that state, I can play notes but they don't mean anything. And, also, my music at its best is probably completely unappealing to nearly everyone; so maybe you shouldn't pay attention to how I work!

The problem with improvising is a) you can be limited by your own musicianship and b) muscle memory can lead to the same or similar ideas coming up again and again. But if improvising is only the starting place and not the whole process, I don't think that these problems need taint the final composition. Instead, they can add a shape and character to it that might not have been present otherwise; and without precluding more expansive developments.
 
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Mike Greene said:
. . . This was way out in the country, so I had an hours long drive down country roads through the area where I grew up, windshield wipers thump-thumping, the stories we all told were fresh in my mind, I had all these emotions in my head ... opportunities don't get more golden. So I really tried. I really tried. But nothin'. . .
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Set this paragraph to music, Mike, particularly
"Way out in the country
opportunities don't get more golden
So I tried,
I really tried"

(I think Realitone has an acoustic guitar pattern generator -- maybe you could borrow it for the weekend. . . "windshield wipers thump-thumping" is just begging to be set to music)
 
i usually always write Chords first and then hum a melody , before i could play anything i would always hum a melody in my head and then put random words in “so all that has changed it now i make the chords first as opposed to having someone else figure them out , i then write down various lines that pop out to me and then ill look at the words until they make kind of sense and rhyme and i’ll keep re editing the songs phrasing until it makes sense and sings well , then after some time , il get along to the computer and put a little beat around it and take it from there .

also i may take little bits of melody from
other songs and change bend them to sound different .
 
Sometimes I’ll get ideas while practicing or noodling on an instrument. Or while doing breathing or walking meditation. If I’m out on a local hike I can usually loop an idea mentally so as to not forget it on the drive home, then get it down in Logic or MuseScore. I make a point carry a notebook if I’m traveling somewhere far away from home or off the grid.

It seems like the most imaginative ideas arise while I’m waking up from catnaps.
 
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Louie said:
Sometimes I’ll get ideas while practicing or noodling on an instrument. Or while doing breathing or walking mediation. If I’m out on a local hike I can usually loop an idea mentally so as to not forget it on the drive home, then get it down in Logic or MuseScore. I make a point carry a notebook if I’m traveling somewhere far away from home or off the grid.

It seems like the most imaginative ideas arise while I’m waking up from catnaps.
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That's great. The mental looping and remembering things in from the liminal state between sleeping and waking... That is really hard for me as I tend to lose the idea; but I love it when it works. I'm really glad for you that you can get a lot out of that.
 
Bee_Abney said:
That's great. The mental looping and remembering things in from the liminal state between sleeping and waking... That is really hard for me as I tend to lose the idea; but I love it when it works. I'm really glad for you that you can get a lot out of that.
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It took years to develop and I still forget much of what I “hear”, but it keeps improving slowly. I compare it to panning for gold. I’m happy when I get a little dust, and overjoyed when I find a nugget.

Edit (I guess more of a VI-C topic but thought I would share as it is related to string and horn arranging for popular music): After getting in the habit of remembering and putting it into practice, melodies and bass line are no longer a problem to remember. Remembering inner voices in the harmonies or counterpoint is more difficult, and it is much more difficult to remember orchestral textures. This is where it can be frustrating because I usually know what instruments are playing.
 
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Louie said:
It took years to develop and I still forget much of what I “hear”, but it keeps improving slowly. I compare it to panning for gold. I’m happy when I get a little dust, and overjoyed when I find a nugget.

Edit (I guess more of a VI-C topic but thought I would share as it is related to string and horn arranging for popular music): After getting in the habit of remembering and putting it into practice, melodies and bass line are no longer a problem to remember. Remembering inner voices in the harmonies or counterpoint is more difficult, and it is much more difficult to remember orchestral textures. This is where it can be frustrating because I usually know what instruments are playing.
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Apparently Brian Wilson is really good at arranging harmonies in his head. He also writes it out on music paper, so I'm sure some amount of finalising happens at that stage too.
 
Bee_Abney said:
Apparently Brian Wilson is really good at arranging harmonies in his head. He also writes it out on music paper, so I'm sure some amount of finalising happens at that stage too.
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Spot on.

He learned it naturally by so much intense harmony singing with his brothers growing up (and a genius on top of that).

David Gilmour sang in church choir growing up and attributed that experience to his ability to arrange a lot of the harmonies in Pink Floyd’s music.

I played bass in a bluegrass band for a while and marveled at how the singers could just harmonize spontaneously without rehearsal.

So I think it is tied to singing harmony from a young age.

I could always pick out and remember the melodies of tunes, but didn’t have that harmony singing experience growing up, but played in orchestra reading music. This was not an advantage for developing the inner ear, it was more, monkey see-monkey do. So had the reading music notation part, but had to put in a lot of ear training practice for harmony, and it is ongoing.

I do tend to come up with more musical stuff that way—if I can capture it! My keyboard playing is very rudimentary so that also might be a factor, I’m not sure.

Edit: when I extract it originally from the inner ear, usually it somehow works. Writing it down, it becomes more objective and I almost always will tweak it. I believe it is similar to writing thoughts with words in the sense that once you see it on paper, it is now thought material that can be refined within a feedback loop.
 
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Louie said:
Spot on.

He learned it naturally by so much intense harmony singing with his brothers growing up (and a genius on top of that).

David Gilmour sang in church choir growing up and attributed that experience to his ability to arrange a lot of the harmonies in Pink Floyd’s music.

I played bass in a bluegrass band for a while and marveled at how the singers could just harmonize spontaneously without rehearsal.

So I think it is tied to singing harmony from a young age.

I could always pick out and remember the melodies of tunes, but didn’t have that harmony singing experience growing up, but played in orchestra reading music. This was not an advantage for developing the inner ear, it was more, monkey see-monkey do. So had the reading music notation part, but had to put in a lot of ear training practice for harmony, and it is ongoing.

I do tend to come up with more musical stuff that way—if I can capture it! My keyboard playing is very rudimentary so that also might be a factor, I’m not sure.

Edit: when I extract it originally from the inner ear, usually it somehow works. Writing it down, it becomes more objective and I almost always will tweak it. I believe it is similar to writing thoughts with words in the sense that once you see it on paper, it is now thought material that can be refined within a feedback loop.
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I really like here what you are saying about training - formal or informal - being so important to developing these skills. There is such a thing as talent; but so much of what we think of as talent is really developed talent; which is to say, skill. Hard work can make a huge difference.

In my own case, I thought I couldn't hear high frequencies anymore. But, with ear training, I have found that the real problem was that I had stopped noticing them because, for me, they were often much quieter. The training I've done on this in the last few years has been invaluable. Although, it does mean that I find there are a lot more irritating sounds in the world now!
 
Bee_Abney said:
Apparently Brian Wilson is really good at arranging harmonies in his head. . .
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Linda Ronstadt tells a story of Brian in the studio to sing all the background vocals for "Adios," from her album Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind:
Brian was struggling with some of the intricate passing harmonies, so he retreated to a piano in the corner of the studio and played a boogie-woogie--totally unrelated to anything on the track--came back after a few minutes and *nailed* the vocal parts (then, of course, all the individual parts were double or triple tracked)

Here is the end result:
 
Double Helix said:
Linda Ronstadt tells a story of Brian in the studio to sing all the background vocals for "Adios," from her album Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind:
Brian was struggling with some of the intricate passing harmonies, so he retreated to a piano in the corner of the studio and played a boogie-woogie--totally unrelated to anything on the track--came back after a few minutes and *nailed* the vocal parts (then, of course, all the individual parts were double or triple tracked)

Here is the end result:
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He is truly amazing.
 
I just muck around in my studio till I get something that makes me go "ah". Then I start to build an arrangement around it. I sing or hum etc... at times to make sure there's a melody there to work with. 90% of the time the song tells me what it's about as a line, a few words, maybe a title pops out and just seems to fit with the music.
 
I posted recently with a similar question, so I'm glad to have found this thread.

Lately my creative ideas have come out of a purely emotional place that lead me to sounds, which lead me to the notes I play, and so on. Putting words around the emotions is the hardest part for me.

The challenge for me with lyrics is the words fall far short of the feeling. For example, the words 'I feel sad' don't convey the emotion while sad music does. I struggle to find the words that evoke emotion in the same way the music does.

Also, this may sound strange, but I sometimes 'hear' melody in sounds around me, and I usually put placeholder words to it so I don't forget the melody. Then I carefully try to sing it into my voice memo app on my phone. I'm not a good singer but it's been useful for me to capture the idea.
 
I've got a zillion ideas in my phone. I might use one or two someday.

I haven't been doing much lyric writing as of late as I've either been crafting score or producing/engineering songs for other writers. This is one place the co-write comes into play... a client comes in to work on a tune and may be open to some lyric suggestions. I'm hired primarily for my musical contributions, but have been able to help more than a few refine their words to their satisfaction. I find it enjoyable helping others find more than they expected in any and every dimension of their songs.

The last full-on song I wrote resulted from a call I got from an old friend who was running a session of "The Game"... two titles to write to, pick one or both, 30 days to craft it, and then perform your song live in front of all the participating writers. I wrote to "Carried Away". It was a lot of fun, and the song went over really well with the group. I ended up recording it, probably over-producing it... somehow that first live performance will never be topped.
 
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