{"id":475,"date":"2010-06-28T09:42:41","date_gmt":"2010-06-28T17:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/?p=475"},"modified":"2015-02-26T18:20:33","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T01:20:33","slug":"songwriting-without-an-instrument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/songwriting-without-an-instrument\/","title":{"rendered":"Songwriting Without An Instrument"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently someone commented on one of my blogs that they would like to know how to write a song without an instrument.\u00a0 You would think that because there is music involved, it would be next to impossible to write a song without any musical “ability”. If you are overwhelmed with the idea of learning an instrument, the fact is that many of us assume that we are supposed to become some kind of virtuoso on it which, as a guitar teacher, I can tell you is not true! Most guitar teachers can tell you that.<\/p>\n

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Even if we are not singers, we can all hum.\u00a0 And if you’ve been around music all of your life, as most of us have, you’ve probably found yourself humming along or singing along with your favourite songs.\u00a0 If you already have some lyrics written, free yourself from your musical inhibitions by “singing” them in some sort of way that gives you a feel for the meter (rhythm) of them.\u00a0 Don’t worry whether or not it is GOOD, just do it!\u00a0 See if you can’t find some kind of melody that matches the meter and then just keep experimenting.\u00a0 You might find that you “hear” certain melodies with certain lines and not with others.\u00a0 That could mean that you just haven’t found it yet, or it could mean that the lines with no melodies just aren’t working.\u00a0 So keep working at it, change the lines or mess around with another melody…just keep trying.\u00a0 The more you liberate yourself from feeling like you CAN’T do it, the less inhibited you will become.<\/p>\n

If you are overwhelmed with the idea of learning an instrument, the fact is that many of us assume that we are supposed to become some kind of virtuoso on it which, as a guitar teacher, I can tell you is not true!\u00a0 Most people learn an adequate number of chords within a few weeks or months, for instance, to be able to play a good selection of songs that they like.\u00a0 The fact is that many songs are rather simple in their chord progressions (a chord progression<\/a> is a series of chords), and so they can be learned fairly easily.\u00a0 So you can probably learn enough chords in a couple of months to start trying to match them to your lyrics.<\/p>\n