Category: All About Songwriting

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I’ve had a few people ask me why I’ve been a little quiet on the blogging side of late. Was it because the FAWM Songwriting Challenge that I participated in recently just wiped me out?

No… I have been working away in the background with my good mate Geoffrey Stapleton in forming Stapleton Stewart Productions, a production company that provides recording, production and songwriting services specifically catering for songwriters, lyricists and solo music artists.

I was asked by Geoffrey to consider becoming involved in Stapleton Stewart Productions in around the middle of February and it’s taken all this time to get everything ready to launch.

We flicked the switch on Friday, May 18th, 2017.

Both Geoffrey and I have the amazingly good fortune to base Stapleton Stewart Productions out of Karisma Recording Studio in Collinswood which is run by a fellow songwriter/musician Ian Coats (it’s near the ABC building for all you guys in Adelaide).

Working out of a fully functional, purpose built, professional recording studio space has been a bit of a dream of mine for a while, and the more I stay away from live performance the more I’m realising that working in a studio environment is the way to go for me.

It’s like this is the next phase in my music career. I’m not sure where this is heading as yet but I’m enjoying the journey so far.

Right now Stapleton Stewart Productions has a website and a Facebook page but Geoffrey and I are keeping it simple at the moment just promoting the recording/production aspect of the business. In the coming months however, more services will be rolled out and I’ll make sure that you guys know about it.

I invite you to check out the Stapleton Stewart Productions website plus Facebook page and if you haven’t liked the Facebook page already, please do so.

If you have any other questions about Stapleton Stewart Productions or, you want to give us a go you can contact me through the Stapleton Stewart Productions website or from this site.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Peace,

Corey 🙂

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One of my primary songwriting goals of 2017 is to never be afraid of words ever again.

Ideally, what this means for me is that by conquering my fear of words or, more accurately, the fear of my words being judged by others, I will be able to increase my ability to finish my half completed songs because at the moment a distinct lack of lyrical material is what is standing in the way of me finishing the songs that I start.

I know I’ve been doing a lot of collaborating with other songwriters for a time and while I’ve enjoyed this immensely, I still notice that for most of the time I end up doing most of the music/arrangement parts and the other collaborator takes care of the lyrics.

I really have no idea how I came to the misguided conclusion that writing lyrics is not one of my strong points but that is how I currently see myself as… A musician first and a lyricist (a very distant) second.

I think I have said this to myself so many times now that my subconscious actually believes it. It’s like I’m fulfilling some sort of prophesy about my lack of finished songs.

The biggest problem I have with my with lyric writing process is that I censor myself far too early in the piece. I really need to give myself the permission to put down on paper whatever comes to me, to write what is inside of me no matter whether I consider it crap or not and no matter how bad it might look on paper.

I’ve succumbed to the belief that I have nothing of value to say to the world through my lyrics. What a way to sabotage my songwriting and my creativity as a whole.

Yes, I’m pretty good at doing that.

Even though words have the power to change things and therefore, need to be treated with the respect they deserve, they can’t really hurt me and this totally irrational fear of them should never silence me.

The best thing I can do is to roll up my sleeves and just write songs and I know that by doing this I will in time, conquer my fear of words.

One song at a time…

Peace,

Corey 🙂

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Lately I’ve been looking over my old songbooks, half finished songwriting ideas and my recording archives to see if there are any thing that I can rewrite, reboot, update or restore in any way. Sometimes I get inspired by this exercise but for most of the time I don’t.

For me, it very much depends on what is currently going on in my life and how I’m feeling at the time because this exercise requires me to listen to these old songs with a fresh pair of ears.

This is a challenge as I inadvertently put my old songs and ideas into concrete and this makes it very hard to rewrite them in any other way. In fact, any rewriting of old songs is considered a little victory for me.

So, when it comes to the difficulty in rewriting old songs it’s nice to know that I keep in good company.

I came across an article by songwriter Tony Conniff titled “Revisiting Earlier Songs… As A More Experienced Writer” and he discusses how the more experience he gains as a songwriter, the more opportunities he has to improve on his earlier songwriting attempts.

On this topic, he says…

“It’s a bit of a paradox – my rush forward to write more songs, to gain experience, to get better, has perhaps left holes in some of my past songs (or maybe the holes are there simply because I didn’t know how to plug them at the time…?). But that rush forward to write more songs has also given me the experience to improve things that I thought were settled (but don’t have to be).”

Reading Tony’s article has definitely made me feel better about my struggles with revisiting older songs.

What I get from the article is that the more songs that I write, the more experience I gain in honing my craft, and with that knowledge and experience under my belt, the more I can look and hear my older songs with a fresh pair of eyes and ears.

At the very least that is yet another reason never to throw any of your old songs and songwriting ideas away. You never what you can do with them in the future.

Do you have a whole bunch of old song that need revisiting. Maybe reading Tony Conniff’s article will inspire you to take another look.

Peace,

Corey 🙂

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I have been writing songs for just over 30 years now and I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface of defining what the songwriting process means to me.

For me, songwriting is much more involved than just the song as an end product. No, to me it encompasses a whole creative process.

Writing songs is a discipline, a meditation, a calling, a vocation, a study into the human condition and a way of life. It’s all about doing “the work.”

Without a songwriting process binding everything together, the song as the end result of that process would not exist.

That’s why I’m so passionate about it… The songwriting process is THE essence of writing songs. I’m passionate about it because I feel that songwriters generally overlook the most important aspect of what we do…

Writing…

Songwriting is a word comprised of two smaller words, song and writing. It may seem pretty obvious, but a song is the end result of a process and the writing part of the word songwriting IS the process.

Therefore, without the WRITING there is NO SONG. I wonder how many songs aren’t written because of this fact?

You see, you can talk all you like about verses, choruses, middle-eights, bridges, pre-choruses, the length of the intro, topline melody, hooks and so on, but without the physical activity of writing, all of that songwriting theory is meaningless.

So look deep into yourself and define what your songwriting process means to you.
Remember, there are no rules regarding this because each songwriting process is as many and varied as the amount of songwriters in the world.

What I do to get to a completed song is going to be different to how you get there. GUARANTEED.

Once you’ve defined what your process means, adapt it into your day to day life and take action over your songwriting rather than just waiting for inspiration to come your way.

As author Stephen King once said… “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

But until then, happy writing

Corey Stewart
All About Songwriting

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There’s a lot of songwriters out there that are in need of some help kicking off their songwriting process on the right foot. Now I know from personal experience that from time to time a prompt such as a good song title or a few well chosen lines overheard in a conversation can be all that’s needed to open the floodgates of inspiration.

So, with that in mind, I thought I’d do some online research into these types of songwriting tools.

Some are fairly serious and some are humorous but if you have a look at them all you’ll find some value in these sites I’m sure so here is the BIG List Of Songwriting Prompts And Lyric Generators for you to enjoy and be inspired by…

Song Lyric Generators

Song Title/Band Name Generators

(Song) Writing Prompts

Remember, this list is in addition to the list already found in Songwriting Tool: Random Generators And Writing Prompts so that’s a pretty extensive list of online songwriting tools at your disposal. What do you think?

If you know of any other online songwriting tools you’d like me to share, please let me know and I’ll make sure I put it up in future posts.

Peace,

Corey 🙂

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Take it from me, there will be times when you’ll need a little bit of help in getting your songwriting process underway.

It’s inevitable…

But when this happens to you, be comforted by the fact that there are free online tools available that are able to get your creative juices flowing again.

As a songwriter who comes up with musical ideas much more easily than lyrical ones, I use these online random word generators and (song) writing prompts whenever I find myself in a situation where I’m fresh out of songwriting ideas.

It’s amazing that through randomness and chaos a sense of order sometime emerges

Here are a list of these online random word generators and (song) writing prompts to get you started:

Songwriting Lyric/Title Prompts

Band Name Generators

Writing Prompts

There’s even more songwriting tools available here

You’ll notice that some of these tools are a bit tongue in cheek but there are some that are seriously good. Either way, by using these tools you’ll take your creativity to places you’ve never imagined.

I’d be interested to hear how you go with any of these. If you come across any other songwriting tools that you feel will help anyone with their songwriting process, feel free to let me know about it.

Peace,

Corey 🙂