Songfarmer

Writing More and Better Songs

Owen Temple
WITH Gordy Quist

Austin, Texas

Songfarmer: Writing More and Better Songs. Copyright 2015 by Owen Temple.
Printed and bound in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including
information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the
publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by
El Paisano Press, Austin, Texas. First edition.
Cover painting by Latan Temple
Illustrations in text and photo on back cover by Owen Temple
Songfarmer is a trademark of Owen Temple and Gordy Quist, USPTO serial number
86770953.

ISBN 0-990-42020-5

Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE

Overview

CHAPTER TWO

Set a Goal

CHAPTER THREE

Create Songwriting Habits

11

CHAPTER FOUR

Recognizing Song Seeds

20

CHAPTER FIVE

Composing

23

CHAPTER SIX

Improving FLOW

35

CHAPTER SEVEN

Improving EDIT

43

CHAPTER EIGHT

Strengthening Habits

56

CHAPTER NINE

Stickiness

68

CHAPTER TEN

Collaboration

75

Prompts

79

Conclusion

81

About the Author

85

Acknowledgments
Many people directly and indirectly contributed to this book. Without
the many conversations on songwriting I had over the years with Gordy
Quist, this book (and, of course, many of our co-written songs) would
not exist. I learned much from all my songwriting partners, including
Adam Carroll, Walt Wilkins, Hal Ketchum, Kelley Mickwee, Jamie Wilson,
Jaida Dreyer, Brian Keane, Jason Eady, Cory Morrow, Scott Nolan, Paul
Cauthen, David Beck, Paul Lee, Len Lewis, and Clay McClinton. Also, big
thanks to Tom Russell and Butch Hancock for solid advice very early in my
songwriting journey.
Thanks to Brian T. Atkinson for editing the manuscript and helping
me move steadily toward its publication. Thanks also to my recording
collaborators Lloyd Maines, Gabriel Rhodes, and Phil Madeira for bringing
sonic landscapes to lyric and melody. Thanks to Jenni Finlay for trading
notes on stuff that works for moving forward on projects. Thanks to all
the past participants of the Songfarmer workshop for testing and validating
the processes in these pages.
I have much gratitude to Paul Zollo for his book Songwriters on
Songwriting. The quotes that precede chapters in this text are from the
transcripts of his interviews with the worlds best songwriters.
Much love to Mary Miles Temple and to Bond, Pace, and Latan.

DAYS
A place to start and a place to go
A mind, a heart, and an open road
It can all go a million ways
Some highs and lows and days
A fire at home and work to do
Some hard seasons to get through
Some fly like arrows, some feel like a maze
A path wide and narrow and days
Sunrise, sunset
Whats behind, and whats not yet
A chance to ride the light before it fades
And theyre all gifts days
Youll make some turns, youll grow and change
Everything around you will do the same
Life moves in circles, it moves in waves
Blessedly simple days
Sunrise, sunset
Whats behind, and whats not yet
A chance to ride the light before it fades
Theyre all gifts days
A chance to ride the light before it fades
Each ones a gift days
(Owen Temple and Walt Wilkins, 2014)

Chapter One:
Overview

Songfarmer is a process-oriented approach to growing more and better

songs. It is a set of habits, principles, and techniques you can use to move
forward in songwriting so that you are constantly learning and creating.
Songfarmer is about taking the long view on writing songs - a sustainable
and fulfilling way to develop at the ongoing routines of songwriting so that
you get songs today, tomorrow, and on into the future.
A farmer of the land doesnt walk outside one day and simply expect
crops to burst forth from the ground without daily preparation and steady
application of habits. Similarly, songwriters should collect seeds for
songs, revisit them, handle them, and work them gently until they grow.
The farmer and the songwriter both have tools that come in handy, and
they both need patience to overcome frustrations as they stubbornly persist
in doing the work to grow things.

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What is Songfarmer?
Songfarmer is a systematic view of the processes involved in
songwriting. Songfarmer is a map of the songwriting process that can be
used to improve and troubleshoot work, session by session, day by day, and
even minute to minute. Songfarmer is a look at the process through the
lens of human psychology, and Songfarmer is a battle for forward progress
despite obstacles.
The intention of Songfarmer is to write more and better songs through:
the daily use of a few songwriting habits to collect seeds for songs,
and
an alternating, intentional move between two different modes of
writing that Ill call FLOW and EDIT.
As a Songfarmer, you collect seeds (ideas for songs) and you improve
the soil (the skills, knowledge, and memories in your brain) through your
habits of writing, listening, performing, and reading. Then, later, you grow
songs from those seeds in composing sessions in which you water the
seeds with a stream-of-consciousness writing mode called FLOW. Then,
after a good flow session, you weed your and prune the plants with an
evaluative, critical, and structural mode of writing called EDIT.
Our goals:
to gather SEEDS for songs with our habits
to improve the SOIL with our habits
to grow songs and compose in sessions using the two modes of
writing
to use the FLOW mode to water and grow our seeds
to use the EDIT mode to weed, shape, and prune them
The FLOW mode of writing is a stream-of-consciousness style of
writing with no judgments, punctuation, spelling, or critique. The object of
FLOW mode is to get many connected, associated ideas and possibilities
out of your head and down on paper or into an audio recorder. The nature
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of the EDIT mode is an evaluative, critical look at the current work that
can lead to restructuring and changes in words and phrasing, all done with
the intent to refine and polish.
The two modes of writing are a FLOW mode and an EDIT mode and
they should be done separately. When writers try to FLOW and EDIT at
the same time, the result is often getting stuck or writers block. You
cant feel free to create or make unexpected connections (FLOW) when
the judging, critical side of our consciousness (EDIT) is watching with
scrutiny, so one of the skills this program will encourage is a conscious and
strict separation of the two modes of writing.
Unlike other books you may have come across on songwriting, this
book will not cover song structure, rhyme scheme, scales, keys or the music
theory of melody. It is a book on the self-guided process of improving at
the skill of songwriting. There is a wealth of books on those other specific
topics of songwriting, so Ill stick to the habits and processes of writers who
improve and work diligently at their craft. On an ongoing basis, Ill trust
you to use the music you love to identify what specific skills and knowledge
you need to acquire on your journey, and Ill help you to build processes
and the habits to acquire them.

Why we write songs

I write songs to remember people and places that I want to carry
with me through the rest of my life. I write songs to solve problems, to
remember the solutions, and also to ask questions for which I may never
know the answers. I write songs to try to record and capture a version of
the truth of what it is to be alive. I am a songwriter because I write songs,
and I write songs because I am a songwriter. My mind is always on the
hunt for song ideas, and I am on the hunt for song ideas because it is an
activity I have done so frequently that it has become a habit.
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This program will help you to strengthen the habits that lead to more
and better songs.
Some of the habits that are helpful for songwriters include:
Sitting down with a notebook to journal or list phrases
Listening to music
Playing your instrument

Learning about your instrument

Singing
Reading great prose or poetry
Listening closely to the way people talk
Noting song ideas as soon as you get them on paper or voice
memos

If you strengthen these habits, you will write more songs. The more
songs you write, the better theyll become.
Wait, you say: does writing more songs result in writing better songs?
Not necessarily, but I argue that writing more songs is very likely to lead to
writing better songs. I argue that by showing up day after day, even in a
small way, to perform the routines of your habits, you will be successful at
writing songs. Ask many artists, and they will tell you that moving through
the process of creation is the most gratifying and reliable pleasure of art,
so thats why I say: if you faithfully show up for your songwriting habits,
you will be successful growing songs. And as you follow your own tastes
to study and learn about existing songs you admire, you will upgrade your
own skills and abilities to grow songs that accomplish your goals.
So while were thinking of more and better songs, we might consider:
what is a great song?

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A great song is a mystery

What is a great song? A great song is a beautiful accident of the
prepared mind- a perfect storm of ideas and sounds transmitted with
voice, guitar, piano, notebook, pen, or pencil. Having an idea for a song
depends on where you are, who you just met, what conversation you
overheard, what movie you saw, or books you read.
Knowing a process for writing songs doesnt guarantee great songs, but
having a way to move forward - having a process for writing songs - can
help you make the most out of the ideas that the universe throws your way.
With Songfarmer, my hope is to give you a process, a structured way
of showing up, to take the actions that will move you forward in your
writing. The objectives are straightforward: to make more and better songs.
My hope and goal is that you will get a firm idea from this book of how to
continue in your songwriting journey and that youll have some reliable
methods to get more and better songs in the future.

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Chapter Two:
Set a Goal

Our brains are problem solving machines and they need purpose and
direction, so lets come up with a purpose and a direction for them by
breaking down the idea of more and better songs with two questions. Now,
grab a notebook to write down your answers to these questions in this
section. Plan to keep this same notebook handy whenever you are reading
Songfarmer to answer questions, capture song ideas, and make plans.
The first question: how many songs you do want to write? I am
assuming you want at least one more song, but beyond that it is up to
you to be specific. Do you want enough for a performance, enough for
an album, or just one? Do you want to have a lot of extra songs to choose
from for your purposes, or do you just want a certain number - no more,
no less? Do you have a frequency goal, such as I want to write one song
a month, I want to write ten songs a year, or I want to write a song a
week? Or do you have a target goal date, such as I want to have two new
songs by August 1?
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Simply set a goal for how many songs you want to write and specify
a time period for when you want to have them completed. Dont proceed
until you have written down your quantity goal.

Better songs
Better means something different to everyone. But for our purposes,
better means that over some interval of time, your songs become more
effective at doing what you - the songwriter - hoped the songs would do.
Ask yourself: What do you want to do with your song?
Some common purposes of writing a song are:
Enjoy the physical and intellectual activities of making music and
writing lyrics
Discover your own thoughts and feelings through the act of writing
Communicate concepts to a reader or listener
Connect and make a listener feel similar emotions and empathize
with the characters in a song
As the creator of a song, you will need to determine why you want to
create them. What do you want the songs to do? Do you want them to
help you have fun, discover, communicate, and connect? Though these
are common uses of a song, this list does not cover all the purposes of
writing a song. You may have a few additional goals, including to make
money with songs (and thats certainly a valid - and common - goal). Or
your goal may be to change others behavior, or to elicit positive feedback
from people you admire or respect. However, I would argue that, even to
accomplish goals like these, your songs need to do a good job of helping
you to discover, communicate, and connect.
To the extent your songs allow you to discover, communicate, or
connect (or make money, change others behavior, or raise your influence
or profile in a community), your songs will be better as get you closer
to accomplishing the goals you hope to accomplish with them. Better
will be determined by the song creators assessment of progress, or lack of
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progress, towards his or her goals for the songs. Answer as best you can:
How do you want your songs to improve?

Quality through quantity

(or, more can lead to better)
I firmly believe that the problem solving, practice, and skills you
acquire through writing more songs (quantity) will increase the likelihood
you will write better or more effective songs (quality). I also believe that the
more songs you plan to write, the odds are:
You will spend more time on a weekly basis practicing your
songwriting skills.
You will regularly run into problems, and then come up with solutions
for those problems, while writing songs.
You will finish songs that communicate, connect, and move people the
way you hoped, and you will develop a sense for what works and what
features made that connection more likely to happen.
You will finish songs that do not communicate, connect, and move
people the way you hoped, and the more this happens, the more you will
figure out what doesnt get the reaction you hoped for.
Consider someone who decides to train for a marathon. The more runs
the person completes, the more he or she will learn to solve the problems
that come up while running. Through each completed run, she finds out
what works and what feels good and what doesnt.
A fast, satisfying experience at a marathon doesnt necessarily follow
because someone completed a quantity of completed runs, but all those
completed runs make a competitive, effective long run more probable
because of all the learning and strength in muscle that the frequent exercise
made possible. If you complete the training runs in an effective way, using
the feedback and learning throughout the process, your odds of completing
your goal of running a marathon go up. In the same way, the more
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songs you complete, the more your skills and songwriting muscle will
strengthen to make you ready to write better songs or songs that allow
you to accomplish your goals.

Quantity and quality

Quantity: How many songs do you want to write?
Quality: How do you want your songs to improve? What goals do you
want to be able to better accomplish with the songs you write? (Such as to
discover, communicate, connect, and/or to do what else?) This is tricky, but
you might also decide how you will measure or track the extent to which
your songs accomplish the goals you set for them. That is, how will you
know if your songs get better through the work you do in this program?
Be as specific as you can be, though I know it is hard to quantify. Do your
best to come up with a way to measure your progress at song quality with
respect to your goals.
So again, before you move on, write down your answers to the
questions: How many songs do you want to make? What is your target date
or how often do you want to write them? (Create a tracking chart or use a
wall calendar so that you can see your quantity goal and you can make a
mark for each created song.) In what ways do you want your songs to get
better or more effective? What goals do you want them to accomplish?

Activating the Songwriter Consciousness

Deciding to write songs is an act of courage. You are deciding to a
devote a portion of your time, attention, and problem-solving power to a
recurring process of creation. You are deciding not to only consume but to
produce. You are deciding to tell the stories and the perspectives that only
you can tell, because no one else in the world shares your history and no
one else in the world has lived the set of experiences, places, and people
that you have.
Your life has never been lived before. You are an original. Only you
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can write and sing the songs that emerge from your hours, days, weeks,
and years as an aware and sensitive individual in your family, your town,
your job, and your time on this planet. You have decided to try to grow
things - to record and organize the truth of your experience in a way that
is recognizable and relatable for your fellow man and woman. You seek to
communicate and connect with your inner self and others, despite all the
differences, distractions, and hassles. And that is an act of optimism and
hope and the opposite of chaos and disorder. The act of commitment to
write a song will engage your brain, and immediately after you set your
goal, a songwriter consciousness is born, and it will be there as long as you
have a goal to write a song.
Set a goal to write songs, decide to be a songwriter, and the songwriter
consciousness will emerge and be a part of you. And almost immediately,
the songwriter consciousness will be on the hunt, sifting through your
past and present experience for material that it can use. Did you set your
quantity goal to write a song by a specific date or to write a song at a
particular frequency? Did you write the goal down somewhere you will see
it and be reminded of your commitment? If you answered yes, then you are
a songwriter looking to grow more and better songs.

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Chapter Three:

Create Songwriting Habits

Dont be a writer. Be writing.
- William Faulkner
Be there. On a daily basis. And youll get better.
- Burt Bacharach
In many ways, we are what we do, so when we talk about doing more of
something, what we are really saying is that we want to create or strengthen
a habit. We are saying we want to do something more often or longer or
more consistently. This means we are in the habit creation business. You
are what you do, and many of the things you do are habits. You get up and
brush your teeth, you take a shower, you drive to work, you check your
email, you meet with customers or clients, and when you do these things,
you are in a groove. You dont have to think about many of these activities
because they are actions that have been repeated so often that they are
habits.
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What if - with daily repetition - you elevated songwriting to the status

of a habit, that is, something that you do because you just somehow find
yourself thinking about it and then doing it? What if you could strengthen
your songwriting habits enough that it was actually harder not to write
than it is to write? What if day after day, you woke up knowing that that
day you would complete a few of the basic actions of songwriting?
As a Songfarmer, it is possible to move forward at a relentless, steady
pace to grow more and better songs. We are going to work together to
strengthen your songwriting habits so that you are making the most
of ideas that come your way, so that you are not getting blocked or
procrastinating or putting off your songwriting, and you are acquiring
skills and learning from the songs you love.

Think about your own thinking

A good metaphor for thinking about your own thinking is an image of
a rider on an elephant. New York University social psychologist Jonathan
Haidt explains much of our behavior using this metaphor in his book The
Righteous Mind, and I have found it to be a very useful, visual way to think
about songwriting (and many other beneficial activities) that we want to
get ourselves to do.
Imagine a rider on an elephant. Imagine that the rider is the
controlling, planning, coordinating part of your brain that is trying to get
the bigger, lumbering, sluggish, and more elephant-like automatic part of
your brain to take certain unfamiliar but beneficial actions. The rider must
coax, cajole, motivate, and encourage the elephant to do the unfamiliar
actions that it would usually try to avoid, procrastinate, or postpone. Over
time, the rider can train the elephant to do these behaviors (and it turns
out that elephants learn new things best by doing them by repetition,
if possible, every day) until the well-worn, usual path that the elephant
travels is the very path that the rider desired and steered it toward.
So how does this rider on an elephant image apply to you and your own
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songwriting behavior? We want the rider and the elephant in agreement

about what to do in your ongoing work to write songs. We are going to
relentlessly create and strengthen a set of habits that you visit and complete
regularly, so that you actually do perform the songwriting work you need
to do. This is the work - repeated over days, weeks, and months - that will
earn you more and better songs.

Key habits
I have already mentioned a few of the components of a songwriting
habit, but lets take these general activities of songwriting and classify
them into narrower categories of habits. Specifically, I think that ongoing
songwriting can be viewed as the repetition and cycling between four key
habits:
I.
II.
III.
IV.

Writing
Listening
Performing
Reading

You will collect seeds (ideas for songs) and you will fertilize and enrich
your soil (improve skills and learn from work you admire) by doing each
habit. In some ways, listening and reading can be viewed as inputs and
writing and performing can be considered outputs. But because listening
and reading will often very quickly trigger song ideas or seeds, these habits
can be seen as mechanisms for output too.
Lets look at each habit in the next section.

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I. Writing
Lets consider the writing habit itself as being made up of several
different activities, including:
Noting ideas as they come to you in places where they can be
reviewed later (whether the notes are taken on a smartphone app,
in a notebook, or on a cocktail napkin)
Journaling and freewriting
Singing voice memos of words or melodies
Reviewing previously noted ideas
Composing, or drafting lyrics and developing melodies
If you were to adopt only one activity on the list, and ignore almost
every other habit, please consider adopting the first one: writing down
your ideas at the moment they come to you. I will have more to say about
this activity later when we discuss seeds for songs, but its importance for
a songwriter cannot be overemphasized.

II. Listening
When you are listening with attention to a new song or a familiar
song, either as a recording or a live performance, you are working on
songwriting, and lets call this your listening habit. Every song you ever
heard came through your ears and some portion of it was stored in your
memory, and the way to continually add to that musical literacy and
knowledge is by listening to songs.

III. Performing
When you sit down with your instrument and play chords or melodies
or rhythms, or when you sing, you are working on songwriting, and this
is your performing instrument habit. This habit is also whats happening
when you take a lesson, learn a new chord or a new tuning, or play
something you know.
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IV. Reading
Hearing and reading language must be key habits in songwriting.
When you read fiction, poetry, theater, screenplays, or spiritual texts, when
you see great (or even mediocre) films, and when you listen closely to
the way people around you talk, you are working on your Reading/Story
habit. As a songwriter, in many ways, you are a storyteller, so stories going
in can help when its time to move stories out with your pen, keyboard, or
instrument.
Always have fiction or poetry on hand for those thousand moments a
day when you must hurry up and wait. Download the Kindle app or carry a
paperback, so that when you are waiting - for the meal, for the bus, for the
file to download - you can absorb language you admire and that inspires
you.

The power of daily

Now that weve briefly discussed goals and habits, I propose:
Your quantity or frequency GOAL (that you noted in your notebook
earlier) plus these four HABITS (writing, listening, performing, and
reading) will equal: you getting song SEEDS (or ideas for songs) and you
generally enriching the SOIL of your ongoing musical and lyrical thoughts.
From your goal and your habits, you will either get a specific idea for a
song - a SEED - or you will get a general improvement in your knowledge
and skills - the SOIL.
When you are trying to build a new habit, you will find that inertia,
procrastination, and already established routines work against your plans
and can prevent you from performing the tasks you want to do. The only
way to confront these forces of inertia and the way to do what you want
to do with your life is by creating new habits. When it comes to forming
habits, there is a very special power in daily. Anything you do daily, will
become established habit faster than anything done every other day, or
SONGFARMER | 15

weekly, or monthly.
In his book Mini Habits, productivity writer Stephen Guise argues that
one way of holding to a daily habit is by setting stupid small, tiny daily
goals. He argues that having one to four mini habits that you complete
every day is a reliable and effective way to build up habits we want in our
lives. I have taken his advice and applied it to the four songwriting habits
to create four mini habits for myself that I complete, almost without fail,
every day - at varying times - before I go to sleep.
They are:
1. Free write 50 words in journal
2. Listen to 1 song
3. Play 1 chord on instrument
4. Read 2 pages of fiction or poetry
You might say, thats not enough words, songs, chords, pages etc. to
make you a songwriter. Maybe youd be right. The only way to know for
sure is to try it for yourself, but remember that these four components of
the songwriting process happen every day, 365 days a year, and remember
that the Grand Canyon was formed by many small drops of water over
time.

Log of completed daily habits, plus tracking of occasional compose session

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I must also point out that on many days I do more than just my mini
habit requirement. Some days, I write 500 words that might later become
lyrics, I listen to 13 new songs, I play 50 chords, and I read 100 pages of
fiction.
Most importantly, I hope you recognize that by completing small daily
actions, you can acquire a set of daily habits that require you to confront
your avoidance and anxieties and fears of failure - every 24 hours - in a way
that you will always end up feeling victorious and energized. Mini habits
can create an upward spiral, where confidence begets confidence, and ideas
beget ideas. The practice of mini habits works very well for me, as these
small actions are important enough to do every day, and I believe these
actions and these habits help me to continually develop as a songwriter.

The Rule of Nine

The Rule of Nine is a principle of writing that I found in The Comic
Toolbox by John Vorhaus. The idea is: that for every ten ideas you produce,
one will be very good. Every ten times you take a risk, one time will really
pay off. Your ratio of hits to misses may be slightly different, but I challenge
you to accept the Rule of Nine because:
1. it will help you to lower your expectations while you are writing, and
2. it will get you producing more of your work.
Lower expectations mean that the EDIT mode of your mind - or
your internal critic - cuts you some slack and allows for development.
Internalize the Rule of Nine and as you start writing, the critic will say:
Wait! This developing song doesnt look like a number one hit! Oh, ok,
no problem, yeah, weve got to write nine songs to get the one great one.
Proceed, do your thing, FLOW, and I will take a backseat.
If you believe that you get gold about one out of ten times that you
make something, the Rule of Nine tells you not to be disappointed if what
you just made is not amazing. The Rule of Nine tells you to keep going,
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keep making things, because it turns out you have to make songs and ideas
regularly and relentlessly to get the good stuff. One of my favorite mantras
comes from legendary University of Texas college baseball coach Augie
Garrido. He regularly tells his ballplayers to do your best, fail, and do your
best again.1

Overcoming distraction
I have found that using the mini habits framework has helped
me create periods of focused attention to perform the routines of my
songwriting habits. The stupid small size of the mini habits goals makes
me less likely to procrastinate performing my routines, because I do feel
that I can accomplish them. The small mini habit gets me to BEGIN doing
my routine, and then once I am doing something, it is easy to keep going.

The Pomodoro Technique

Another idea I have found helpful for getting more focused sessions
is The Pomodoro Technique, described in a book by the same name,
developed and written by Francesco Cirillo. The idea is that you break your
work into pomodoros, or 25 minute sessions of focus on one task, and
that you do not allow distractions or interruptions during that 25 minute
session. Pomodoro means tomato in Italian, and Carlos recommends
using a windup kitchen timer. (Carloss timer was in the shape of a tomato,
hence the name for the technique.) During a pomodoro, you dont check
Facebook, you dont take phone calls, and you dont check your email. After
25 minutes, you take a mandatory 5 minute break, and then determine
whether you would like to do another pomodoro session.
Being a successful writer is 5% talent, and 95% not being distracted by
the Internet, so turn off the Wi-Fi connection on your computer and turn
off your phone when you are focused on your habits. You can use computer
1
Inning by Inning, directed by Richard Linklater (2009; New York: Virgil Films
and Entertainment), DVD.

18 | SONGFARMER

applications like Freedom and Self-Control, and they will actually disable
your Internet connection for a set period of time that you specify at the
beginning of a session.
Now lets discuss what you will find while completing the actions of
your habits: ideas for songs or... seeds.

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Chapter Four:
Recognizing Song Seeds
The concept, if there is a concept, or the hook, is all youre concerned
with. Because you know you can go back and fill in the pieces.
- Harry Nilsson
Ive had a lot of songs that kind of intruded on whatever is going on.
They usually come in the form of one line, which you might remember and go
get alone later.
- Townes Van Zandt
Your goal to write a set quantity of songs by a particular time will
activate your songwriter consciousness and a part of your mind will always
be looking for material to work with. You will find that while you are
practicing your writing, listening, reading, and performing habits, and in
the day-to-day of your normal life, you are screening your experience for
song seeds.

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Song seeds can be:

short phrases that strike your ear in a pleasing way
truths or insights about life
grooves
chord progressions
pieces of melody

symbols or metaphors that reflect truth of life

interesting situations
characters, real or imagined
strong emotions you have experienced
a setting or location where a song could be set
a single word to put in a song

What qualifies as a seed? One definition: If it gets you writing, it was a

seed.

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A seed is an idea to start responding to, expanding upon, and seeking

meaning around, and anything can be a seed. The importance of a seed
is that it is a beginning. When a seed is placed in the soil and watered,
it starts growing. Tiny buds and then leaves appear and those leaves can
become branches. As it grows, a farmer can prune the plant and weed
around it.
If you water your song seed, then words and melodies, like leaves,
will emerge from it. Certain words will become phrases, and phrases will
become lines, and lines will pair up and become verses and choruses. As
a songwriter, you will remove words that dont help the song, and you will
reorder lines to help the song grow in directions that you find interesting
or beautiful. Growing a song from a seed is a process that is marked by
trial and error, expansion and contraction, and the slow emergence of
interconnected ideas.
In the next section, lets use the word composing to mean the creation
and structuring of melody and lyrics or growing a song from a seed.

22 | SONGFARMER

Chapter Five:
Composing

I kind of try to play until I go into a semi-conscious space. And then

things start arriving You cant question what youre doing, because that
could really get in the way of whats trying to come up.
- Tom Petty
Sometimes you just put anything down Dont let the critic become
bigger than the creator. Dont let it strangle you Let it go. Put a string of
stuff together. Go ahead. And then futz with it.
- Randy Newman

Flow and Edit

When you move through your songwriting habits, you will occasionally
get ideas for songs, and they might come as situations, grooves, melodies,
lines, feels, or stories. Lets call all these ideas seeds. When you find a
seed, write it down, record it, do whatever it takes to note the idea, so
that you can develop it (possibly into a full grown song) at a later date. In
SONGFARMER | 23

many ways, all our songwriting habits are aimed toward finding seeds,
setting these aside, and later, growing them into songs. Take good care of
your seeds, so that any place that you store them (a notebook, an app, a
program, a folder, a list, a cardboard box) should be a place where you can
revisit and review them often.
Now, lets talk about what to do with these seeds once you have them
collected. Its time for the continued use of your writing habit, but this
time, well be doing a specific kind of writing called composing. And well
further subdivide composing into two modes - FLOW and EDIT - that
we can use to first grow, and then to shape, your budding songs.
Were at a checkpoint in Songfarmer, where we have discussed habit
creation and weve encouraged you to be sure that songwriting habits are
built into your daily life, and through those habits you collect seeds. Once
your farming habits have resulted in a collection of seeds, now you will
water them (with the composing mode called FLOW) and then you will
weed the fields and prune the plants (with the composing mode called
EDIT.)
The critical Songfarmer concept is, again, that there are two modes
of composing: FLOW and EDIT. One is a stream-of-consciousness mode
(FLOW) and the other is a critical, structural, revising and evaluative mode
(EDIT). The key: Dont try to do the two modes of composing, FLOW and
EDIT, at the same time.
Can you really do two things at once? If you are like most people, you
think you can, but in reality, you cant. Many people try to do two things at
once while they are composing, and they get stuck because they evaluate
what they are creating too early in the process before giving their ideas a
fair shot.
1. FLOW. The earliest, initial mode of composing is a freeform, no
constraints, stream of consciousness, keep-the-pen-moving, keep-thekeyboard-clicking, dumping of thoughts, feelings, and images onto the
page.
24 | SONGFARMER

2. EDIT. The follow-up mode of composing (that should be used in

later phases after a sufficient FLOW session) is structured and evaluative.
It is focused on rhyming, order, and making the most of the raw materials
(words and sounds) you produced during the FLOW mode.
The two functions cannot be performed at the same time, and a very
strict separation of the use of them will help you produce more songs.
There is a time for FLOW and there is a time for EDIT. You will go
back and forth between these two functions throughout the process of
composing a song, but you cannot do them both at the same time, and
if you try to, you will get frustrated and shut down the creative drive.
Imagine an iterative, repeating, back and forth dance between these two
modes as you compose: FLOW and EDIT, FLOW and EDIT. Repeat as
necessary until you determine that the song is finished.
Here are some typical characteristics and features of both modes:
FLOW

open
intuitive
subconscious
subjective
dreamlike
open channel
relaxed
play
internal
accepting
free
listening
pouring
liquid
go
raw

EDIT

closed
intellectual
self-conscious
objective
wide awake
dams and gates
reserved
work
external
critical
constrained
reacting
structuring
solid
pause
filtered

SONGFARMER | 25

FLOW
Think about writing in the FLOW mode as an emptying of thoughts
and just write down words and connections as they appear, without
evaluation, hesitation, or critique. Just as water will find a way around
barriers, so you should allow your thoughts to move to the page when you
are in this mode. Try using the FLOW mode to free write for either a set
period of time or for a set number of pages and:
dont worry about rhymes
keep the pen moving, dont evaluate, just generate
dont use backspace if you are using a computer
create a junkyard or wild zone of material to pick through later
dont focus on punctuation, capitalization, or correct spelling
put down whatever words or images cross your mind, even if they
are expressions of doubt or uncertainty, just keep writing words
down!
Trivia: Bob Dylan wrote Watching the River Flow on a notepad
in the studio, on the day they recorded the song, in ten minutes.1 Leon
Russell, the producer of the session, reported that he saw Bob was
writing in an automatic, flow mode that initially resulted in a few lines
expressing doubt about being able to write. Bob nevertheless wrote his
doubts down with no editing, and the flow of words kept coming until
they became the narrative that is the songs lyrics. But the first two
lines of Watching the River Flow are:
Whats the matter with me
I dont have much to say
The moral: write down whatever comes to mind during the FLOW
mode and keep writing.

1
Andy Gill and Kevin Odegard, A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the
Making of Blood on the Tracks (Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2005), 30-31.

26 | SONGFARMER

Flow Exercise 1:
Create a Junkyard or Wild Zone of Words
Is there any subject you would like to write a song about? What are
some words that might be in a song about ________? List them and keep
going until you run out of ideas. This list of words and phrases will be what
we call your junkyard or a wild zone that we will pick through during
later EDIT phases.

Flow Exercise 2:
Listing of Thoughts
Without using paragraphs or punctuation, just start listing words,
phrases and sentences that cross your mind and dont stop until you get to
the bottom of two pages.

EDIT
Use the EDIT mode to refine, polish, structure, and ask questions that
will help you make decisions about your song.
In EDIT mode, search for key phrases:
Do any of the words or lines you have produced look like an intriguing
first line?
Do any of the words or lines you have produced look or sound like the
title of the song?
Can you think of some words that rhyme with these key phrases? (Go
back to FLOW mode to produce other rhymes.)

SONGFARMER | 27

Wild Zones and Manicured Zones

Consider the FLOW mode like watering your fields to see what grows
and to see what springs up from the soil of your experience. When you
are flowing, you are pouring out a stream of words, thoughts, and sounds
without regard to anything beyond just keeping it going. Think about the
EDIT mode as the pruning, the weeding, and the careful moving of the
tiny plants that the fields produce after plenty of watering.
Lets also propose that most of us use two different zones of farmland
(or at least two different fields): one is a wilder zone and the other is a more
manicured and regulated zone. We FLOW (or water) to produce growth
in the wilder zone, in the more natural field. Once we begin the EDIT
mode (pruning, weeding, selecting), we are moving our upstart plants to a

28 | SONGFARMER

more manicured garden zone. Of course, we can still water or FLOW once
something has moved to the manicured zone, and we will have to FLOW
to keep it growing, but in a more focused way.
What does this mean practically? It probably means that you have
pages or a notebook or a recorder for your stream-of-consciousness
FLOW output of words and sounds, and then when you switch to EDIT
and decide you like something, you write it down on another page or in
another notebook or put it into another recording. In other words, your
ideas are slowly graduating from a jumble of sounds and scribbled ideas
to initial melodies and structured lyrics as they pass through your editors
judgment and your various filters.

Composing with a Song Seed

A routine that should be in the mix of your songwriting habits is, of
course, the act of composing, or the assembling and creating of lyrics
and music. You might begin a composing session with a seed for a song,
collected in the course of your normal songwriting habits of writing,
listening, performing, or reading - or you might have a blank page.
Here is an example with a series of steps to take and questions to ask
during a composing session that you begin with a song seed.
1. Review your collection of song seeds
2. Select an interesting song seed
3. Using the FLOW mode, fill up two pages with words and phrases
related to your song seed
4. Using the EDIT mode, look through the wild growth pasture of
words and phrases created during the FLOW session, looking for:
First lines of a verse
A song title
First, middle, or last lines of a chorus
Last lines of a verse
Anything that strikes your ear or eye as pleasing
SONGFARMER | 29

5. Run a second focused FLOW mode session to fill a page with words
related to any of the pieces you identified in Step 4
6. Using the EDIT writing mode, on a clean sheet of paper, select and
write down the most interesting lines or phrases from your FLOW
session
Keep wild growth pages on one side of your writing area and
keep clean, edited garden pages on another side of your writing
area, and slowly upgrade phrases and lines from the wild
growth pages to the clean, edited garden pages
You are moving words through stages of testing, almost like
transplanting untamed, wild growth into a cleaner, more
ordered garden zone of interesting phrases and lines
7. Using a new blank page, now use the FLOW mode again to respond
to the items on your edited pages and seek to:
Rhyme with interesting phrases
Set up (write what might precede) any interesting phrases
Complete (write what might follow) any interesting phrases
8. FLOW and EDIT, FLOW and EDIT
Move words and phrases from the WILD ZONE you create
with the FLOW mode into the more MANICURED ZONE you
create by using the EDIT mode, by selecting your favorite lines
and phrases
Rhyme, reorder and restructure the phrases in the manicured
zones
Create more wild growth using focused FLOW mode to
possibly fill in the gaps you find in the manicured zones
9. Repeat step 8 as necessary, with breaks of minutes or hours or days
in between each repetition between FLOW and EDIT, until you feel the
song is done.

30 | SONGFARMER

Composing with no song seed

Though your habits should provide you with seeds, lets consider
composing without a seed. All the steps above apply, but with one
difference, before Step 1, you try to find a song seed in a hurry. The best
way to do that is have an impromptu morning pages or FLOW session,
where you keep the pen moving or the keyboard clicking until you have
filled three pages with words, phrases, and lines, or until you have filled
three minutes of a voice memo with grooves or chords or melodies. Next,
use the EDIT mode to look through what you produced, looking for seeds,
or ideas that could be explored further in the composing steps.
If you dont find anything, proceed with another FLOW session and fill
three more pages (or three minutes on your voice recorder) with thoughts,
lines, ideas, stream-of-consciousness rambling, anything. Again, once the
pages are filled, switch to the EDIT mode, and look for a song seed. If you
find one, begin Step 1 above. If you dont find anything, you might have
to postpone your composing session, and instead complete one of your
routines of writing, performing, listening or reading until you find a song
seed.
All the same steps apply to composing with a lyric seed, a melody seed,
or a groove seed. The primary difference is that with melody and groove
seeds youll use a voice recorder more than paper or a text document. Lets
talk a bit more about starting from a musical seed in the next section.

Composing a melody
When you are seeking melody and grooves, we can defer to a certain
wonderful, mysterious, and comforting fact about the brain, and that is:
bits and pieces of melodies you have heard over your whole life - fragments
from your entire of life of exposure to music - are available to you as a
composer. And, obviously, the more you practice the habits of listening to
songs and performing your instrument, the more bits and pieces of melody
SONGFARMER | 31

and rhythm you will have at your disposal.

You will find these bits and pieces of music by opening up the gates
and having a FLOW session with your instrument and/or by singing ideas.
Maybe you have actual words or nonsense words attached to the melodies
or maybe its just la, la, la or blah, blah, blah. The bottom line in FLOW
mode is to get the ideas down, so dont judge them, evaluate them, or shut
them down with your EDIT mode.
With musical ideas, unless you can write in musical notation, many
times you will be using a voice recorder instead of paper to get down your
FLOW session and for your wild zones, so, obviously, you will be singing
or performing your melodies for playback later instead of writing down
words. When you play back your recordings made during a melody or
groove FLOW session, you will switch to your EDIT mode to listen for
interesting or satisfying melodies or rhythms. While still in your EDIT
mode, reproduce the interesting or satisfying melody or rhythms by
performing them again into a second recording that will serve as your
manicured zone.
Once you have moved some ideas to a manicured zone, you have, in
fact, mapped some or all of the musical structures of a song. These musical
phrases will show you the number of syllables or words you need to fill
those spots. For example, you might sing a piece of the melody and note
how many blanks you need to fill in with lyrics.
Whether you start with musical or lyrical song seeds, use the FLOW
composing mode to expand, experiment, and create, then use EDIT
composing mode to evaluate, select, structure, and decide what to keep.
See your first early pages, documents, and voice recordings as wild zones,
and then, as you make commitments to certain lyrics and melodies, create
manicured zones on new pages, documents, and voice recordings.

32 | SONGFARMER

The iterative move between FLOW then EDIT, FLOW then EDIT,
always applies as you write words, sing, and play, until you get the sense
that, yes, this is the way these words should be sung, or no, I need to
keep FLOWing ideas until I find the notes to fit these words (or the words
to fit these notes).
A song is a marriage of lyric and music, and composing with the
FLOW and EDIT modes will help you to find a good match, regardless
of whether you start with a lyric seed or a music seed. The most common
question asked of songwriters is: which comes first the words or the
music? By now you recognize that it doesnt matter what you begin with
- the main thing is to begin. Then go back and forth between creating
options, making choices, creating options, and making choices.
Brian Wilson says that he writes melody2 by:
Choosing a key
Playing chords in that key until he finds a progression of chords
and a rhythm for them he likes
Then he starts either singing nonsense words or lyrics as he moves
through the progression until he likes a melodic line
Some songwriters find that composing melodies by singing, without
playing an instrument, can lead to more inventive melodies. Some other
songwriters use their instrument to create a progression of chords and
rhythms that suggest a feeling or mood, and then they begin composing
words that match that feeling or mood (or that contrast with that feeling
or mood). Create options, make choices, create options, make choices, is
another way of saying FLOW, EDIT, FLOW, EDIT.

Paul Zollo, Songwriters On Songwriting (Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003), 127.

SONGFARMER | 33

The good news is that when you create options, you will be attracted to
some directions more than others, and you will choose them. Then those
choices will be connected to other options, some of which you will favor
more than others, and then those choices will suggest further options,
and the process goes on and on, until the song is finished. The underlying
criteria for the choices you make are your subjective tastes informed by
all your life experiences and by your habitual study of music and language.
You will choose what interests you, what delights you, and what you find
beautiful or compelling.

Habits lead to seeds that can be grown and pruned with composing sessions into
finished songs

34 | SONGFARMER

Chapter Six:
Improving FLOW
Im interested in discovering where my mind wants to go, or what object
it wants to pick up It always picks up on something true as a lyricist my
job is to find out what it is that Im thinking. Even if its something that I dont
want to be thinking.
- Paul Simon
Great ideas occur to you and the last thing you want to do is sit down,
at that moment, and shape it. You just want to ride. So I usually just record it
and then listen back.
- Jackson Browne
In a strange way, you were born knowing how to FLOW, and you
really just need to adjust the timing of your EDIT mode habits to get more
FLOW into your life and songs. Your brain stores connected information.
Each sound, picture, or feeling is connected to every other sound, picture,
and feeling through thousands of circuitous routes and neural pathways.
SONGFARMER | 35

FLOW is really just allowing the connections that are already present in
your brain to be revealed to your conscious mind. Sometimes I think of
FLOW as gently picking up a thread (of any idea) and following it, picking
it up and following it, as it goes on through other linked and connected
ideas. When Pete Seeger wanted to FLOW, he said to himself: Brain,
ramble on. Let me see what happens.3
EDIT mode happens when you evaluate, select, and structure the
connections that are revealed during the FLOW mode. The key is to do
this EDIT mode later, after the FLOW session has produced material, not
during the FLOW session!
Your mind is always working on problems in the subconscious, just
outside of your awareness. If you have the goal of getting ideas, your
subconscious will occasionally present some of these ideas to your
conscious mind, and you should always write them down. You can evaluate
them from the EDIT mode later - just write the ideas down when you
get them in order to keep them coming! Your ideas are like customers: If
you treat them with respect and honor them, they will come back to you,
time and time again. If you ignore them, or disrespect them by not at least
acknowledging them by writing them down, they will not come back to
you, until proper attention and respect is shown to them.
The FLOW mode is about discovery - your goal in this mode is to
discover the contents of your thoughts and their connections. You want to
get the editor/critic out of the way so that the ideas can come forth and be
captured on the page or on the voice recorder. There are a few techniques
and concepts that relate to improving your ability and awareness of FLOW,
and Ill discuss a few of those methods here.
To anyone who says, oh, I could never come up with an imaginative
story or anyone who says Im just not creative, ask them about the last
dream they had, and get ready to hear an interesting, entertaining, and
creative story from someone who just said they cant come up with ideas.
3

Paul Zollo, Songwriters On Songwriting (Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003), 11.

36 | SONGFARMER

If you want proof that your brain already has all the creativity you need,
just think about the vivid dreams youve had in your life. Some examples of
what the FLOW mode is like: its whats happening when you are dreaming,
mowing the grass, and driving long highways.

Dreaming
You can get seeds for songs from dreams if you keep a notebook by
your bed. Set a goal to remember your dreams before you go to sleep, and
then note or record the ideas you get while falling asleep and the ideas
you have right away when you wake up in the morning. (Warning: this
technique can make for less restful sleep, so dont have this goal when
youre really needing to recharge.)
Its really that simple. Have a pen and a notebook (or a smartphone
note app or voice memo recorder) by the bed, and commit to recording
any song seeds, rewrite ideas, or as much as you can remember of dreams.
Some songwriters think about a lyric they are trying to edit - or a lyric
they are seeking a melody for - right before bed, with the intention of
using brain activity during sleep to solve the problem. I use this technique
regularly, and I know other songwriters who have woken up after this
exercise with a revised lyric phrase ready to write down or a musical idea
that works for the lyric.

Morning Pages
In The Artists Way, the author Julia Cameron discusses morning
pages which are 1, 2, or 3 pages written first thing in the morning in the
open FLOW state with no structure or editor looking over your shoulder. It
is a valuable routine for clearing out and recording fragments that can keep
ideas coming while you are still close to that dreaming state.

SONGFARMER | 37

Improvisation
In Keith Johnstones book Impro, the famed Canadian theater
instructor shows how the techniques of improvisation in the theater
are very similar to writing in the FLOW mode. Johnstone refers to the
EDIT mode as the gatekeeper who judges the acceptability of ideas that
are produced spontaneously. Much of the art of improvisation involves
learning to turn off the gatekeeper and allowing ideas and performances
to emerge in an uninhibited way. Learn as much as you can about the
techniques of improvisation to do better at FLOW.

Strange words
Sometimes strange words, arcane bits of slang, technical vocabulary
from another field, or rarely combined words can create an intriguing idea
to explore with a song. Take a look at lists of slang online or listen closely
at the next family reunion to see if any colorful phrases spark music or
lyrics for you.

Writing as Fast as You Can

Another technique for entering the FLOW mode is to write or type
faster than your EDIT mode can keep up. By writing as fast as you can
until you fill up a set number of pages or until you get to a target number
of words or for a set period of time, you can practice writing closer to the
speed of thought.
Bob Dylan spoke of something like FLOW saying put yourself in an
environment where you can accept all the unconscious stuff that comes to
you from the inner working of your mind... take it all down. You have to be
able to get the thoughts out of your mind.4

Paul Zollo, Songwriters On Songwriting (Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003), 72.

38 | SONGFARMER

Shitty First Drafts

Opening up, dropping perfectionistic tendencies, and giving yourself
permission to write a shitty first draft are skills that have to be learned
and practiced. Anne Lamont, in her book Bird by Bird, advocates this
shitty first draft technique, and most of us will admit that it does make
intuitive sense to write and produce a text this way. Write without editing
because once you get the ideas down you can always go back and polish,
reorder, cut, and add to them as needed.If your internal critic (or the EDIT
mode) jumps all over you in this exercise, just say, easy tiger, this is just
the first draft, youll get to polish and rework it after Im done.

Different positions, different tunings

If the chords or the progressions you are playing dont move you or
they dont seem to suggest possibilities, it may be time to learn some new
chords or play the chords you already know in a different way. Try capoing
the guitar up a few (or many) frets. Look up an open tuning and tune your
individual strings to Open D, Open G, or Open C to see if the sounds of
the chords strike your ear or your mind in a different way and shake some
ideas loose. Or use a tuning like Drop D. Or use a capo at the second fret,
but leave the top (biggest string) open so that the capo is only clipped on
the bottom five strings. Play a D chord (which, with the capo on at fret 2
will actually be an E chord) and see if the sound leads to musical ideas for
you.
If you use piano, instead of using C major chord, try using chords
on the black keys, like C#, F#, and G#. Subtly different frequencies may
sound fresh to your ears. In general, if you find yourself mildly bored by
the chords you are playing, its time to learn some new chords or some new
voices of chords. Learn to play a diminished chord, or change the order of
the notes in the chords you play (called inverted chords).

SONGFARMER | 39

Repetitive, Meditative States

As mentioned earlier, if the pure FLOW mode is like dreaming, then
many people can get to a FLOW type state in the early morning after just
waking up. The Beach Boys lead songwriter Brian Wilson warns against
too much coffee when writing5 because he suggests you may become too
awake in some ways to take advantage of the FLOW mode.
Some songwriters go for a drive, a walk, a run, or a hike to engage a
FLOW mode, and then they pause the activity to take notes on the ideas or
have a compose session when the FLOW state seems accessible. Some have
spoken of mowing the grass or exercising to get the channel open.
Find some quiet and be disciplined. Turn off the radio or the TV, and
be with the quiet, so that your mind can be tempted to create and fill the
empty space with ideas. Being in nature is a great way to get the quiet, and
being close to the natural world leads to wide perspective and truth - two
qualities that are valued in great songs.
Experiment to see what works best for you to get the editor and the
critic out of the way. The bottom line, best measure of the FLOW mode
is getting something down - words on the page, a chord progression, or a
recording of a melody.
And finally, to use FLOW mode, remember to connect with a spirit
of play and enjoyment of music and writing. The most reliable reward of
creative work happens in the present, when you can enjoy the process and
focus on loving writing for its own sake - not for its results.

FLOW experiment
Here are few ideas regarding getting better at writing in the FLOW
mode. Think of the FLOW mode as a kind of free-associating, improvising,
riffing writing style, a style thats very different than most of the other work
you do.
5

Ibid., 127.

40 | SONGFARMER

Your dreams at night are pure FLOW mode, so keep that in mind as
the ideal when you are in a FLOW session. While you are dreaming, your
mind is just following connected ideas, so a FLOW session in many ways is
a kind of waking sleep or a trance or a childlike trusting of your own mind
to present the ideas, while your conscious, analytical mind completely
withholds judgment or evaluation.
Following your connected ideas is another way of thinking about
the FLOW mode. Come up with some cues that signal to yourself that
you are going to do this very special kind of work. Design cues in your
environment to help you go into the FLOW mode - cues that can remind
you to put aside the analytical, critical thinking of the EDIT mode.
For my own FLOW strengthening experiments, I go into the dining
room in my house (a room where I rarely do any critical thinking or
planning) with a notebook or the laptop, and do a 10 minute pomodoro
of free writing in the FLOW mode. I have experimented with putting on a
certain hat that I only wear during FLOW mode, and I have found it to be
a useful cue. I have experimented with taking off my shoes to signal FLOW
mode, and I have found it helpful too.
So if you see me wearing a hat, with my shoes off in the dining room,
you know Im FLOWing so dont interrupt me, okay?
Why do I bother trying to adjust the cues to this extent? Why bother
going into another room or sitting at a different spot at the table or
wearing a different hat or no shoes when you do this free-associative kind
of work? Because switching to FLOW mode is a skill, it requires practice,
and anything that might make the skill easier to practice is welcome to
me. It might work for you too, so the next session of FLOW mode that
you do (during a creativity appointment, morning pages, journaling or
composing) try adopting a cue (or several cues) that could help you get
into your FLOW routine.

SONGFARMER | 41

Important: Take the hat off, or put your shoes on, or move back to your
more usual workspot before you do anything remotely related to the EDIT
mode, right? Right. Keep the cues related to FLOW mode, and ditch them
when you go back to your normal work or EDIT mode work.

42 | SONGFARMER

Chapter Seven:
Improving EDIT

The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it
shines.
- Leonard Cohen
I take the tired verses and throw them out.
- Loudon Wainright III
Then something better shows up in that ninth or tenth verse than what
you had before. And you go, Oh.
- Tom Petty

Beat the Line and Overwriting

Once you have gathered a few lines into your manicured zone, you
can start playing an EDIT game called Beat the Line. How to play: Take
a lyric or line from the wild zone to the manicured zone. In other words,
you select a line and put it in the structure of your song. For example, you
might use it as the first line of a verse, or as the first line of a chorus, or
SONGFARMER | 43

anywhere your taste and judgment says it might fit. Then assume thats the
line you will use in the song, unless a better one comes along. Next, try to
imagine a new or tweaked hypothetical line that would be better than the
line you have in that spot now.
Yes, you will have to FLOW to come up with ideas to beat it, and your
EDIT mode will decide whether it is stronger or not. If what you find in the
recent FLOW is not stronger, the original line stands, and you did not beat
the line. It remains king of that spot.
If, on the other hand, you did come up with something stronger than
the original, then that becomes the new line, and you move the defeated
line back to the wild zone or to somewhere else in the song.
To take the idea further, instead of just focusing on beating single
lines, try overwriting, or writing more whole verses than you will need for
a particular song to be sure you have found the best words, phrases, and
lines for your lyric. So if you imagine a song needs three verses, compose
five, seven, or even ten verses to see whether lines emerge that you like
better than what you have.
The following are topics and questions to pose when in the EDIT
mode. When reviewing your draft of lyrics, consider:
Development - Does something happen or change from the beginning
to the end of the song?
Pronouns - Is it clear who is speaking or which perspective the song
is from? Is from first person (I, me), second person (you), or third person
(he, she, they). Or does it blend these in a logical way?
Phrasing - Can you eliminate excessive or redundant words? Do the
words fit the melody comfortably?

44 | SONGFARMER

Clarity - Is it clear or apparent what is happening in the song? When

you ask your buddies about it do they get the actions of the song?
Believability - Do people behave like this? Would your characters
really do or say these things?
Images - Can you put more vivid pictures, sounds, smells, dialogue
into the lyric? Can you create a lyric so rich with images that it seems like
listeners just traveled somewhere and interacted with your characters?
Contrasts - Can you set up opposites or polarities to make the ideas
pop?
Mystery - Can you leave out some facts so that listener has to solve a
mystery or play detective at some point in the song?
Repetition - Can you repeat something often enough that it is singable
or a welcome resting place or break from new information?
Metaphor - When you introduce a metaphor to compare one thing to
another, is it consistent and logical?
Originality - Theres no such thing. Borrow small pieces from
many, because theres nothing new under the sun, but there can be fresh
combinations. You can learn a lot from writing your own lyrics to an
existing song. (Thats what Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan did many
times.) Then, after youve got a newly composed lyric, you can just come up
with another melody for them!
Ending - Does the end of the song feel like a return to home, a
transformed reflection of the beginning, or a loop closed?

SONGFARMER | 45

Associated words
When composing the first draft of your song, you may have produced a
list of words related to your song seed. Now that you are in an EDIT mode,
take second look at your seed, and switching back to the FLOW mode,
produce one more list of words related to either that initial seed or to the
central phrase in the lyric. The object of this exercise is to see if you have
fully explored the ideas in your song and to see if obvious (or less obvious)
associated words can be used to improve individual lines in the song.

Vary sounds
Use a variety of sounds in your song to keep the lines sounding fresh
to the ears of your listeners. While you are composing, use the EDIT mode
to determine what sounds your lines end with. Consider vowel sounds in
particular, because vowels sing well. Specifically, think of the long vowel
sounds (A, E, I, O, U) and see if you have an: ay rhyme, ee rhyme, eye
rhyme, oh rhyme, or an oo rhyme.
If you dont have one of these long vowel sounds, use your FLOW
mode to produce a few words that end in this sound that might make
sense in your song. Then continue to use FLOW mode to come up with the
words in the line that precede your rhyme. For example, if you dont have
an ay rhyme, you might use FLOW mode to produce day, stay, and way.
Then youd use FLOW mode to come up with the words that set up one of
these end of line sounds: When you walked by today. Then come up with
the line that follows this one, I hoped youd look my way.
To take this idea of sounds further, you might think of word families
to vary the sounds in your song. Word families are words that have a
common feature or pattern; they have some of the same combinations of
letters in them and a similar sound. The most common 37 word families in
English6 are: ack, ain, ake, ale, all, ame, an, ank, ap, ash, at, ate, aw, ay, eat,
6
Wylie, R. & Durrell, D. 1970. Teaching vowels through phonograms. Elementary
English, 47, 787-791.

46 | SONGFARMER

ell, est, ice, ick, ide, ight, ill, in, ine, ing, ink, ip, it, ock, oke, op, ore, ot, uck,
ug, ump, unk. Try ending some lines with these sounds. That is, use FLOW
mode to produce a word list and then produce the lines that end with these
words.

Rhymes
Rhymes provide patterns, and patterns help the brain organize
information. When you use rhymes in songs, you establish patterns that
make the information in your song easier to remember. Because rhymed
lines are more memorable than unrhymed lines, most songwriters are
looking to rhyme words that fall at the ends of lines. One additional way to
enhance the memorability of your lyrics is to try to create internal rhymes
(when it suits the song.)
An internal rhyme is:
two sounds that rhyme within a single line (before the last word of
the line), or
a rhyme that happens between two sounds in two different lines but
not located at the ends of those lines
If used correctly, internal rhymes add rhythms and a kind of pleasing
snap to lyrics.

Hard rhymes
As an experiment, throughout the course of a song you are composing,
try using only hard rhymes, that is, perfect rhymes at the ends of your
lines. For example, with word stone you could use alone but not
home. You will end up saying things with your lyrics that you might not
have anticipated by sticking to hard rhymes as you compose lyrics.

SONGFARMER | 47

Feminine rhymes
Feminine rhymes are two syllable rhymes, like drinking and thinking,
or father and bother. They can sometimes have a more memorable quality
in a lyric because theres twice as much rhyming happening at the end of
lines and the two syllable words are encountered slightly less frequently
than single syllable words.

Repetition
It seems obvious, but then, maybe thats why we need to remind
ourselves that building in repetition makes songs more memorable.
Repetition builds familiarity into a lyric that allows the brain to rest and
enjoy before tackling new information in the rest of the song. The tradition
of choruses that come around a few times in a song is based on the
enjoyment of repetition, but even for songs without Verse-Chorus-Verse
structures or songs without refrains, repetition can be employed. If you are
writing a song with a chorus or without a refrain, you can still find spots to
repeat phrases or words to provide pattern and familiarity for the listener.

Clich
To make your lyric more memorable, do your best to avoid clichs
or overused expressions. Go for a fresh comparison or statement in your
lyric - to add a new twist or unexpected perspective and to pass up the
most obvious or frequently used ideas. The best cure for clich is knowing
a lot about your subject, or writing about what you know, because your
experience will direct you to the more nuanced features of your subject and
not just the surface, superficial ideas.

Hear your song a different way

While you are composing melody or finding a way to sing lyric
fragments, move to a different key from the key you were playing in
48 | SONGFARMER

initially to compose the song. Try some of the melody in the new key to see
how it strikes you from that new position on the guitar or piano. Or play
the song in the same key you were writing in, but use a capo on the guitar.
Sometimes the different voicings of different chords can influence melodic
choices or overall feeling, and can send you off down fruitful paths.
Once you have some words and melody coming together, try singing
and playing your song directly to the wall and listen to your song bouncing
back at you. We are used to hearing the sound of our singing in our
heads, but the wall will reflect the sounds back to your ear with a delay of
milliseconds. Using that bounce of the sound waves against the wall in the
EDIT mode can give you a slight distance and enable you to evaluate and
listen to your song more objectively.
Finally, as a way hear and evaluate the current state of your song,
record it on a voice memo and play it back. Listen to it as if you didnt write
the song. Try to put yourself in the perspective of someone hearing the
song for the first time and take notes on what you like and what could be
better.

Chords
Interesting chords can sometimes produce unique melodies or create a
feeling you can explore with lyrics, so ask your musician friends if there are
any new chords they know that they can show you. If there is a new chord
you have learned, try it out while you are composing and see if it suggests
any promising possibilities for the lyric and melody you are composing.
Try a diminished chord, a minor chord, or inverted chord with the usual
order of notes switched around to see if it adds to or detracts from the
movement of the melody. As for my own performing habit, I keep a copy
of Mel Bays Guitar Chords around and in easy reach, and I try to learn one
new chord a week.

SONGFARMER | 49

Development
Listeners expect development in a song. What do we mean by
development? In many ways, a song is a story, and listeners expect that
songs and stories have a beginning, middle, and end, and that by the end,
something has changed. Components that can change:
The character can change his belief, attitude, or behavior
The perspective can shift from a close up focus to a wide focus, or
vice versa
The questions posed in the song are answered
In general, strive for something to be different from the beginning to the
end of the song.

Bridge
The right time to think about adding a bridge is usually after the
verses and choruses of the song are mostly finished. A bridge section
usually brings musical and/or lyrical contrast, new twists, or some form of
development. Thinking about a bridge is a good time to ask: what havent I
said about this subject or situation that might be relevant? Not every song
needs a bridge, but its usually a good exercise to consider a bridge, even if
you just rule it out.

Truth, resonance, and timelessness

People have varying opinions on many subjects, but there remains
significant overlap in our various views, and that overlap we can call truth.
When we encounter these rare observations or statements, the essence
of the idea feels valid for many people across many of different various
experiences. A song with truth is one that you can sing over and over
again. When you have found lyrics with truth, you can look people in the
eyes as you perform it, because it is something you can stand behind with
50 | SONGFARMER

confidence.
Truth can emerge from the EDIT mode when a rough idea is polished
and refined to a state of clear meaning, and truth can also emerge from
the FLOW mode when a line pops out with all the necessary equipment
in place to communicate and connect. Resonance might be the presence
of a near universal truth in a song, and most of us hope we can find songs
that have this quality in the finished versions. To highlight truth in a lyric
while revising, in EDIT mode, ask yourself: what is true about this song?
If its not already in the song, stated in an economical way, try to compress
those lines. Use EDIT and FLOW to rewrite anything that you do not feel
is true or credible.
To test whether you believe a lyric: sing it. If it is hard to sing with
conviction, most audiences will detect this subtle backing off, and the song
will probably held back by this lyric. It should be rewritten.
Another way to think of lines that you can sing year after year is the
quality of timelessness. Timelessness means that it deals with the truth of
the human condition and some universal concerns in the lyrics. Sometimes
saying something that you feel but have never said out loud before can be a
way to find truth, resonance, and timelessness.

Dont explain everything

Listeners and audiences like to play along, and you can allow them
room to play along by not filling in every single gap in your lyrics. The
Rolling Stones used to go through their song lyrics, crossing out lines at
random, to make sure that the exact meanings were open and intriguing
enough to be memorable. (For example, Jumping Jack Flash was initially
about a gardener walking in wet rain boots during a storm, and Mick
Jagger and Keith Richards took out the lines in the song that made that too
clear.)

SONGFARMER | 51

Phrasing and singability

The best way to refine, polish, and test your draft of a song is to
perform it. Each time you perform a new song, in your room against
the wall or face to face with your fellow humans, you will get closer
to the true path and true shape of the song. You will find comfortable
and uncomfortable spots and you might get ideas for helpful revisions.
Sometimes, while performing, you will unintentionally sing a better word
or a better phrasing of the lyric. Sometimes the energy of performing will
show you a better key for the song or a way to vary the melody or rhythm.
However, while you are performing in public, focus entirely on
communicating and connecting, and put the EDIT mode completely away,
out of your mind. Afterward, you can revisit your memory of performing
the songs to identify spots that might need some tweaking or ideas that
didnt come across. Some songwriters maintain a rule that the song
doesnt exist unless you can perform it, and every time you play a song,
you will learn something about it.

Imitation is the best form of flattery

If you get stuck with a song, sometime it helps to imagine your
songwriting or musical heroes. What would your favorite singer do with
this idea or lyric? Imitate them to discover possible answers for your own
songs. Once you get moving forward with an idea again, you can drop
the imitation, or keep it going if its working. An extreme version of this
idea: you could write new lyrics to an existing song. Then once the lyric is
finished, you could compose a new melody for the lyric you wrote. A less
extreme version of this idea: cover that songs you love. Learn the lyric,
chords, melody until you can perform it with notes or lyric sheets. You will
unconsciously and consciously learn techniques, structures, tricks, and
phrasing that may eventually help you to compose songs.

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Folders
By now, you know that I recommend keeping a file or a folder that
holds seeds, but you should also have a folder for finished songs. (These
can be physical or digital folders, whatever you prefer.) Additionally, you
should have another middle folder for songs that are in draft form but
not finished. Keep these three folders together, side by side, so that you
are motivated to move ideas from a seed folder to a drafts folder, and then
to move drafts to final folders of songs. Having a trusted system or a set of
folders where ideas grow up, stage to stage, folder to folder, will assure the
songwriter consciousness inside you that the ideas you generate will be
stored, evaluated, and used, and that nothing will slip through the cracks.

Feeling stuck
When you feel stuck on an idea that has passed the SEED stage but not
yet a finished song, there are two things to do. Either:
1. FLOW in a focused way to find material that might fit in and fill in
the gaps, or
2. Take a break from composing for a while and switch to another
activity, like driving, another one of your habits, mowing the yard,
folding the laundry, or sleeping. Your subconscious mind will be
churning on the problem, and odds are, it will present a solution to
you suddenly or the next time you sit down to compose.
The main thing is to remain calm and believe that solutions will appear,
even in a period of uncertainty about the future shape of the song. Your
patience over time, the good taste and skills youve developed with your
habits, and the problem-solving work of your unconscious and conscious
mind will find a lyric and melody that feel right.

SONGFARMER | 53

Finishing what you start

Many songwriters will tell you they have a principle that helps keep
them moving forward and it is finish everything. What this means: once
you begin growing a song from a seed, you stick with it and move it along
from the seed stage to a first draft stage. This principle doesnt mean every
seed has to be developed, it means that once you begin expanding a seed
that you usually see it through to a finished first draft.
Most songwriters further revise beyond the first draft through multiple
drafts of songs, but the point is to get to the first draft in order to assure
yourself and your songwriting consciousness that:
You will not judge the songs worth in the middle of growing it
You will learn something from every song you complete
You will be employing the Rule of Nine (see Chapter 3)
Writing up everything to a completed stage will close open loops in
your mind
One more way to think about finishing things: try thinking of every
song as a table that you are making. Some tables are big, ornate formal
dining room tables and some are crooked little kids tables, but for it to be a
table, it needs four legs and a flat surface. So go ahead and get all the seeds
you begin composing to a playable song form.
One alternative to finishing an idea to first draft form, is consciously
putting it into a folder or a file that you can access later that is labeled On
Hold or Fragments. That action of putting the idea on hold will free
your mind from thinking about the idea because your mind cant stand
ambiguity and now you have made that on hold status of that idea clear.
Therefore, the idea doesnt need to be on the active list of commitments
that your mind automatically monitors every day.

54 | SONGFARMER

Unicorns
Like reports of unicorns, there are tales of songwriters who, in a fury of
FLOW, write down pages of lyrics and the song is basically finished. These
cases are extremely rare. But every now and then you may catch one, so
just hold on and enjoy the ride.
By far, the more common writing style is getting down the basic
structure and a few key ideas about the song in an early draft, and then
using EDIT mode to improve it.

SONGFARMER | 55

Chapter Eight:

Strengthening Habits
If you wait around for inspiration to happen and are not conducting a
creative life where youre involved with your music and your instruments,
then that inspiration will happen and youll have a couple good ideas and it
will be gone before you can respond to it.
- Jackson Browne
Whatever I hear becomes part of my vocabulary... Whatever you listen
to, it becomes part of what you do.
- David Byrne
Your GOAL and your four key songwriting HABITS (writing, listening,
performing, reading) will help you collect SEEDS. Then you can then take
a seed and begin to compose with FLOW and EDIT, moving budding
words, phrases, lines and melodies from WILD ZONES to MANICURED
ZONES, until they are finished SONGS. Using the habits and FLOW and
EDIT will get you more songs, but one more exciting proposition is that the
56 | SONGFARMER

habits will get you better songs too.

The four habits will make you the director of your own learning, and,
through their use, you will lead the study and design that allows you to
develop your skills and knowledge. Your habits will direct daily attention to
works and concepts that you find inspiring and useful.
Your writing habit will keep you noting the ideas that cross your mind
and it will help you create rich junkyards or wild zones of FLOW free
writing. It will keep you collecting seeds where you might have neglected
them in years and months past. Your performing habit will help you learn
new chords, gain confidence using your voice, and upgrade your motor
skills at playing the piano, guitar, or whatever instrument you use.
Your listening habit will continually present intriguing and inspiring
songs to you, and your close attention will help you see how other artists
solved problems and made the most of their ideas. Your reading habit will
direct your attention to language and storytelling that can teach you how
to use beautiful language and principles of good storytelling in your own
songs.
In summary, the writing and performing habit will get you accustomed
to producing words and melodies, and the listening and reading habits
will help you acquire knowledge and skills by enriching the soil of
your mind. In many ways, writing is the interaction of your senses and
memory, requiring you to combine ideas from both your current and
past experience. Reading and listening provide a steady incoming stream
of images, sounds, and words, and they are good ways to load new
stimulating experiences into your memory where they can intermingle
with the experiences of all your previous days on the planet.
In summary, to attempt to say the thoughts above in the fewest possible
words:
GOAL + HABITS = SEEDS
FLOW & EDIT grows SEEDS into more SONGS
GOAL + HABITS = improved SOIL and better SONGS
SONGFARMER | 57

Another visual model to show how songwriting habits will result in seeds you can
use to compose songs. Note also that the inputs of each habit, whether they result in
a seed or not, will enrich the surrounding knowledge and experience, the soil, of the
songwriter.

In this section, we will dig into the habits a little deeper and Ill show
you how to use them in a more advanced way. By understanding the three
part structure of habits - cue, routine, and reward - you may be able to
cue your habits more, execute the routines more, and reward yourself for
completing them.
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Cues
We are trying to strengthen our habits, and any habit is made of
three components: a cue, a routine, and a reward. When I wake up in the
morning, I walk in the kitchen and see the coffee maker. Seeing the coffee
maker is the cue for my coffee habit. The routine I perform in response to
the cues is: filling the machine with water, putting a filter in, measuring
coffee into the filter, and flipping the switch to brew. The reward is the
aroma and taste of coffee (which I love) as well as the stimulation I get
from the caffeine. I have a habit of drinking coffee, I perform the routine
when I see the cues, and then I get the reward.
Lets look closely at the sequence of cues, routines, and rewards to
decide how to strengthen the four habits of songwriting.
Examples of songwriting cues can be:
a guitar sitting out on a stand (not hidden in a closet)
a piano
a blank notebook
listening to a song or an artist you admire
a book on songwriting
a written goal to write a song posted in a place where you see it
regularly
a friend who asks to hear a new song
language you admire in a book or a poem
a strong feeling about something going on your life
a memorable phrase or piece of conversation
To strengthen the habits of songwriting, keep songwriting cues present
and visible in your environment. If you dont have cues to write songs in
your environment, try to find a way to get those cues into your daily life. A
written goal in a place you will see it is a powerful cue. A notebook and a
pen (nearby at all times) are very helpful cues for a writer.
In my own life, when I keep a notebook by my bed, its a very visible
SONGFARMER | 59

cue in my environment and a constant reminder of my goal to write songs.

I know I am serious about finding seeds for songs when a notebook is one
of the last things I see at night and when that same notebook is one of the
first things I see in the morning. Bottom line: decide what cues might work
for you and build them into your daily world.

Routines
To use the language of habits, songwriting routines are the sequence
of actions you perform after you hear or see a cue. Some routines that we
have already discussed so far include: free writing in a journal, singing or
playing a chord, listening to a song closely, or reading pages of fiction. All
these routines can be used to help you collect seeds and improve your skills
and knowledge. Once you have seeds, you can use the seeds themselves as
a cue to perform a composing routine.
One tip: do your most difficult routine first thing in the morning as it
is the one most likely to get procrastinated. For me that means my writing
mini habit (50 words of free writing) is one of the very first things I do in
the morning, before even looking at email. In your routine, use the same
tools and materials day after day to smooth your workflow. Select tools
that inspire you, with designs that fit your needs, because they will make
completing your routines more enjoyable.
Is there a particular style of pen or notebook that feels right and is
aesthetically pleasing to you? Buy a few extra to keep on hand. However,
do try to use just one notebook at a time rather than keeping notes spread
among the first five pages of five different notebooks. In my own notebook,
I write down phrases and lines from movies, books, and conversations. I
take notes several times a day in it, and I also take notes on an app with my
smartphone.
Regarding tools, here are a few choices I have heard friends talk about
that you might consider for your own songwriting toolbox:
Notebooks with unlined pages (sometimes better for freeform
60 | SONGFARMER

FLOW mode)
Notebooks with lined paper (better for EDIT mode)
Graph paper (yep, also sometimes better for EDIT mode)
Particular pens or pencils
Computer program where final versions of song lyrics can
be composed or stored (MasterWriter, Scrivener, or just text
documents in a folder)
Voice recorder or voice memo app on smartphone
A folder on your computer to keep rough acoustic demos of songs
Rhyming dictionary book or online (I like RhymeZone.com best)

Rewards
The reward you get for completing a routine will usually be a feeling
of satisfaction at getting it done or the songs that eventually result from
the work, but feel free to add other rewards to the system. For example,
you might write a newly completed song onto an ongoing list of your
compositions that you keep. Anything else you enjoy and could use to
celebrate completing a routine might be a good prospect for a reward too.
(After I complete all my mini habits, I watch my favorite stand-up comedy
series).
There is a plethora of apps and websites for tracking completion of
routines (my favorite tracking website is www.chains.cc), but for me, the
best tool for getting a sense of reward and completion, is checking off
the days on a wall calendar or a single summary of the months tasks. In
my opinion, there is still something more intrinsically rewarding about
marking a routine or a mini habit as completed with paper and ink. You
might find it gratifying to see a hard copy record of the days you completed
the commitments you made to yourself. It is rewarding to see tangible
evidence that you are moving forward with your habits and building skills.
I use year-at-a-glance wall calendars and put a check mark on days
when I completed all my mini habits. I also make a monthly record using
SONGFARMER | 61

graph paper. On the graph paper I write the month name at the top and
then list 1 through 30 or 31 for the days in the month on one row. Then, on
the left side of the page, I write each habit on a different row, so that I can
put a check on the row for that habit for each particular day of the month.
The point is, dont assume digital records and digital to-do lists are
more rewarding or motivating than paper-and-ink lists. Thousands of years
of evolution have made the act of making a physical mark on a surface
more rewarding than any digital check marks. Go with whatever works for
you and gives you a sense of satisfaction after completing the routines to
strengthen your habits.

Belief
The final essential component to an ongoing habit is belief. To keep
a routine going, you must believe that is worthwhile and that more and
better writing is possible if the habit is maintained. Belief is best cultivated
in interactions with other people, so plan on seeking out one or two or
more people with whom you can share your habit creation successes and
challenges. Find a community of songwriters you can join to refresh,
rebuild, and sustain belief, so that you can create and maintain your habit
of songwriting.
Belief can also be reinforced by books by other people who have done
the work you are doing. You can strengthen belief with interviews and
advice straight from some of the worlds best songwriters in the books
Songwriters on Songwriting by Paul Zollo or And Then I Wrote by Tom
Russell and Sylvia Tyson.
Be assured: your habits will fill and refill your collection of seeds and
your habits will enrich the soil of your mind. Keep in the groove with your
habits by performing your instrument, listening to songs, reading words,
and writing notes/journals/morning pages, and the seeds and skills for
more and better songs will inevitably come along.
62 | SONGFARMER

Lists
Keeping a few lists on hand is good way to keep your habits supplied
with incoming fresh material. Think about lists as cues for routines you
want to perform. For your listening habit, keep lists of songs or artists you
have heard recommended by friends or other trusted sources, so that when
you have a crosstown drive you can cue up the song or a new album to
listen to.
For your reading habit keep a list of movies and books to read. Because
folks who tell stories well are a good source for song ideas, you might even
keep lists of people to make a point to talk to regularly and listen to them
closely for song ideas. Fiction, spiritual reading, history, and poetry are all
good genres for songwriters to read. For your performing habit, keep lists
of chords to learn and songs you want to cover. Remember that, in addition
to piano or guitar, your singing voice is also an instrument, that the more
you use it, the stronger it becomes. For your writing habit, in addition to
actually working on song lyrics and music, you should keep lists of writing
techniques and routines like journaling, writing-all-the-time, morning
pages, and creativity appointments to use in this habit.

Writing Routines
Journaling
You can create rich soil for songs and find and collect seeds with a
journaling routine. Any topic is fair game - anything on your mind can
go into the journal entry. Some of what you write down will be feelings,
things you need to do, reports of recent activities, things youre looking
forward to, or things you are worried about. Use the opportunity to write
down beautiful, remarkable, or surprising things you noticed in the events
of your day. Think of journaling as exercise for your noticing, reflecting,
feeling mind.
SONGFARMER | 63

Note-taking
Regular journaling is an important writing routine, but another kind of
writing routine can potentially be happening all the time. Writing-all-thetime is a mindset, a practice, and a discipline. All it requires is a notebook,
a cocktail napkin, a note-taking app on your smartphone, or the back of a
receipt.
Writing-all-the-time is a decision, a commitment you make to
yourself, a promise to take notes when ideas cross your mind, whenever
and wherever you are. The discipline of writing-all-the-time requires you
to write down the ideas you have when you have them, and not to say oh,
Ill write that down later, because, of course, you wont write it down later.
You will forget the idea you had. Also: Writing-all-the-time requires you
to not judge or evaluate your idea - only to record it in a place you know
you will see it later.
Many professional musicians do not compose drafts of songs while
touring or on the road, but say they do take notes while on the road. Then
later, back home or off the road, these pro songwriters will expand these
collected notes into drafts of songs.

Creativity appointments
Actually performing songwriting routines on a daily basis is the
best way to strengthen the songwriting habit. I know how hard it is to
do anything on a daily basis, but its not impossible. Most people brush
their teeth every day. Some people wait to be inspired to write, but in
my experience, I am more likely to be inspired while writing rather than
waiting to be inspired to write. Showing up - setting aside the time
to write - is the most basic and necessary requirement for a song, but
additional sessions can be scheduled beyond your daily mini habits, so
consider making a creativity appointment with yourself and committing
5 to 25 minutes to focus on one of your songwriting habits. Shut the
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door, turn off the phone, close down the internet browser, and open the
notebook.

Procrastination
Procrastination sometimes comes along in the form of over-preparing
and waiting for ideal times and conditions. You find ways to delay
composing a song because, I need to collect more seeds or I need a
stronger idea to start with or I need my usual notebook to write or I
need a longer block of time to get anything done on the song. When you
see these kinds of statements in black in white, you probably realize that
they are just the different masks and disguises of stalling and fear of failure.
They are excuses that prevent you from getting to work. So remember, in
course of your habits, your quantity goal of finished first drafts of songs
should keep you completing and finishing songs, not just planning and
preparing for songs.

Revisit your writing

Regardless of what songwriting routines you perform, whether
journaling, writing-all-the-time, or creativity appointments, plan on
revisiting all this writing at regular intervals to look for song ideas.
My own writing routines include a daily mini habit of writing 50 words
of morning pages and then throughout the day, I write down every seed
idea I have. Then once or twice a week, I set make a creativity appointment
with myself to review seeds and compose from a seed (FLOW then EDIT).
I usually structure composing into three 25-minute blocks with two 5
minute breaks built in, so thats 25 focused, 5 break, 25 focused, 5 break, 25
focused for a total of about 85 minutes. During this time, I review seeds,
then FLOW, EDIT, FLOW, and EDIT to see if I can get a song growing.

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Performing routine
Getting better at your instrument will make you better at playing and
writing songs. No matter what instrument you play, chords are your friends
when you are writing a song, so always be looking for a chance to learn a
new chord. Take on the viewpoint of a chord collector, and youll always be
interested in getting a new one added to your collection.
Learning some music theory - the principles of harmony and melody can also provide you with seeds, enrich the soil of your mind, and serve as
a subject you can tackle in small pieces your whole life. Reading a book on
guitar or picking up a new instrument to play, like harmonica or piano, can
also influence your songs for years to come. Learn how to play and sing a
song youve always admired. By deconstructing the lyrics and chords, youll
see up close how the songwriter built it, and then you can emulate it in
your own songs.

Listening routine
The melodies, harmonies, and rhythms you have heard throughout
your life are stored in your brain, and the music you expose yourself to will
inform your future songwriting. Each of us synthesizes the sounds we have
heard throughout the course of our lives to get melodies, harmonies, and
rhythms for the lyrics we write.
Explore the great music you havent heard. Get a list of highly esteemed
music from a source you trust (a friend, blog, or book) and regularly listen
to the artists or songs that are on that list. Always have an artist, album, or
song list that you are working through, and closely listen to the works on
that list as part of your listening routine.

Reading routine
In many ways, the reading routine can also be considered a story
routine. Getting lost in the stories you watch, read, or listen to is a great
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feeling. However, when you are working on your reading or story

routine, one idea that can help you develop as a storyteller is to be mindful
and analytical as you read, watch, or listen to stories. When possible, try
to track the structure of the story and notice how your attention is carried
on through, scene by scene, to see how the characters are changed by their
experiences. Two books - Robert McKees Story and Joseph Campbells The
Hero with a Thousand Faces - are helpful for understanding the form of
stories that move through a classical arc from conflict to resolution.
Reading poetry exposes you to compressed, condensed imagery, and
religious texts and scientific publications can bring you stories from a wide
perspective. Fiction and biography will often drill down into a narrower
perspective inside the life of one individual and their feelings and social
interactions. Exposure to all this language will help you make effective
songs.
In addition to reading books and seeing films, the reading and story
routines can also be employed in listening closely to the stories told by the
people around you. The most common advice to writers is write what you
know. Listening closely to stories, words, and sayings of many different
kinds of people expands what you know about, and the more you know
about, the more you can write about.
And dont forget to read your own work. You can and should revisit
and reread old notebooks. Sometimes an idea from years ago will be sitting
there, waiting for your present-day self to see it and understand it in a
new way. (Because you will reread and revisit old notebooks, this is a good
reason to write in one at a time and fill up all the blank pages to the end of
the notebook, because this will result in fewer old notebooks you have to
store somewhere!)
Now that we have discussed ways to strengthen habits, lets consider a
framework for designing memorable songs.

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Chapter Nine:
Stickiness

Write down answers: What do you want a song to make people feel or
understand? What do you want them to do? Do you want them to stand
up and sing along, do you want them to cry, or do you want them to play
it at their wedding? By writing a few goals for the song you write before
beginning a FLOW process, you can sometimes wind up with a song that
meets your goals. Better songs can mean songs that accomplish the goals
you set for the songs. Some songwriters want their next song to be the one
that:
People play at full blast at the summer keg party and sing along to
People dance to at a country bar
Inspires their songwriter heroes to send them a message to say
well done
Gets played on the local radio station
Is popular among college students
Will get you booked at a folk festival
The bottom line is that better songs can only make sense in regard
to your goals for your songwriting, and your songs get better to the extent
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that they accomplish the goals you set for them.

One idea I believe we can all agree on: more memorable songs are
generally better. We want the people that hear our songs to pay attention
long enough for the song to make an impression in their consciousness and
memory. Lets use the word stickiness to describe how memorable a song
is for a listener.

Elements of a memorable idea

In his 2000 book The Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell proposes that
some ideas are stickier than others. That is, they are more memorable.
In a further exploration of this idea, Chip and Dan Heath, in their 2011
book Made to Stick, surveyed research on ad campaigns, urban myths, and
other often repeated social phenomena in order to describe five factors that
contribute to an ideas stickiness or the quality of being memorable.
They created an acronym from the first letter of each of the five factors
and they spell SUCCESs:
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Stories
(The last s in SUCCESs is silent and doesnt represent any sixth
factor.)
Use the acronym SUCCESs to remember a few features you can
possibly build into your own work to make it more memorable.
Simple: a core idea comes through and a central idea is clear. By trying
to pack too many simultaneous messages into a song, we end up losing the
main idea. Simple means we should try to make at least one central idea of
a song apparent to a listener. The test? A listener can state what the song is
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about after the song is through.

Unexpected: A surprise that can hook and keep attention. Any element
that defies or disturbs expectations will grab attention and, thus, have a
shot at being memorable.
Concrete: details and talk of people, places, and things will be more
memorable than abstract concepts. Vivid images are your best friend when
striving for the concrete.
Credible: you believe the voice of the songwriter or that you believe the
characters in the song would truly behave as depicted. Specific details can
also lend credibility (as well as concreteness).
Emotional: the work elicits an emotional response as events in the
song reveal how characters move closer or further from their goals. News
networks and horror movie directors know how to use emotion in their
stories. Strong emotion is memorable.
Stories: we store information provided in a narrative structure better
than in other forms. One way to think about a story is an interruption of
a routine that is eventually resolved. How was someones usual routine
interrupted and how do they attempt to get the new challenge resolved?
The account of an interruption and its resolution is a story, and the
information embedded in the series of events is more memorable.

Details
The SUCCESs framework from the book Made to Stick is a good
framework to keep in mind when you are looking for seeds and also when
you are in the EDIT mode and you are looking closely at your early drafts
of songs. Sometimes you will spot ways you can make your song more
sticky and memorable when you are editing them.
Most lyrics will have components of more than one of the SUCCESs
dimensions of stickiness. For example, very personal song lyrics are often
more memorable, often because they are credible, emotional, and reveal a
story.
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If you get overwhelmed trying to judge all the SUCCESs dimensions to

create stickiness, just keep in mind one rule of thumb: its very difficult to go
wrong by adding details.
Details - images, proper names, place names, colors, and numbers - are
reliable choices for creating more memorable lyrics. For example, consider
the power of details like:
Proper names
Mary Janes Last Dance, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Jack and
Diane, Roxanne, Visions of Johanna, Layla, Eleanor Rigby, Billie Jean
Colors
Purple Rain, Purple Haze, Tangled Up in Blue, Green Green Grass of
Home, Brown Sugar, Back in Black, Yellow Submarine, Red Red Wine
Numbers
1999, Thirty Days, 867-5309, One Love, 9 to 5, Summer of 69,
Highway 61 Revisited
Place names
City of New Orleans, Viva Las Vegas, Georgia, New York, New York,
L.A. Woman, Folsom Prison Blues, Please Come to Boston, Atlantic City

Why try to design for stickiness?

As we discussed in the Why we write songs section of Chapter 1, a
song can be a tool for human connection. If, by this view, songs are tools,
then the purpose of a song is to create a communication and connection
between at least two human minds. Catching anothers attention and
helping that other to remember features of the song seems like the
minimum requirements for communication and connection. So when
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we are setting out to improve a songs hooks we ask: How can I make this
more sticky?

Simple to unexpected moves

As you consider the music of your song, moving from simple to
unexpected throughout the song will maintain interest and be more
memorable. Use common melodic patterns plus occasional sonic surprises
to get familiarity and novelty into an ideal mix.
To tap into the unexpected component of stickiness of lyrics, try to use
surprising turns of phrase or unexpected information at the very beginning
of your song, so that you raise questions for the listener to get attention
and draw them in. The first few lines of a song are prime real estate for
snagging a listeners interest, so make the most of it. And keep the surprises
coming throughout the song whenever possible.

Ask questions
As listeners, a question requires just a touch more processing power
from our brains. Because our brain is a problem-solving machine, it will
try to answer the question. Extra processing means more memorability,
so we remember when Bob Dylan asks: How does it feel... to be on your
own? or How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a
man?

Go personal
Only you have lived your own particular life, so the details from your
experiences that you know and include will make your songs credible. And
as a bonus, the events from your own life that you use are likely to have
stickiness components of story and emotion.

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Show, dont tell

Our brains handle images better than abstract ideas, so when possible,
convey the feelings in your song using pictures and sounds. If you give
us pictures we will see the story or song for ourselves in our minds eye,
rather than just take your word for it. For example, rather than saying
a character felt sad, describe him as looking down or with tears in
his eyes. Give the listener pictures and allow him or her to produce the
feelings themselves. In fact, whenever possible, convey the ideas in the
song as images because one way to think about a good story or song is as
a waking dream. When composing, try to see whats happening and use
words to reproduce the images on the page or in the mind of the listener.
Very often the difference between a good song and a great song is the
presence of rich, vivid images, so use them whenever it suits your song.

Metaphors
The use of metaphor can also embed memorable images in your songs,
especially if the metaphors are used consistently. We humans can break
the overwhelming, abstract complexity of the world into more familiar,
concrete symbols. The Oxford Dictionary defines a metaphor is a thing
regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, especially
something abstract. Songwriters use metaphors in songs, and one way
to make songs better is by paying attention to consistency in the use of
metaphors. Metaphors can make for aha moments where you show the
listener how unlike things are, in fact, similar in some ways. If you are
inconsistent with comparisons, the attempt can lead to confusion and
frustration for the listener.
For example, if in a song you say: our love is like a river and it flows
over deserts and through the plains, then you are saying the force, power,
and persistence of flowing water is similar to a strong relationship through
hardships and different settings. Now that you have made this comparison,
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it would be inconsistent to say: But now our love is broken. Why?

Because you said your love was a river. How does a river break?
You get it. Once you make a comparison by using a metaphor, use it
consistently, until you set up the next comparison or metaphor. Dont mix
metaphors because when you lead listeners astray they can lose patience,
and a bunch of small errors can be the icing on the camels back.

Hooks
The bottom line: a hook is anything that gets and keeps attention.
Sometimes I ask myself: what would be the first line of an interesting
song? What line would get me leaning forward, turning up the volume
to hear what comes next? Whatever line fits that description is a hook.
If something interests you or if some idea or sound or rhythm appears
in your thoughts, thats a clue that you should explore it. Creativity and
fresh ideas come from people exploring what they love and what amuses/
interests/delights them. Do consider the listeners perspective, but, at first,
you will have to use your own experience and aesthetic tastes. The good
news is that we are not so unique and there are other people in the world
amused/interested/delighted by the same things we are. So go ahead and
make something for yourself and for them.

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Chapter Ten:

Collaboration
Co-Writing
Co-writing is what happens when two or more people have a goaloriented, creative conversation and slowly discover (and take note of) lyrics
and melody for a new song. Perhaps some songs can only be written by one
person - all alone - who must go and interrogate himself until the words
and music express his singular, artistic vision. But many satisfying songs
have been crafted when two people contribute their own distinct feelings,
perspectives, and styles into the same new composition.
What makes a good candidate for a co-writer? Because much of cowriting is conversation and trading back and forth of ideas, a co-writer
should at the very least be someone you would enjoy having a conversation
with. As a rule of thumb, two hour blocks of time are the minimum that
most pairs of songwriters need to put a song together. Four and five hours
might be the upper limit for a productive, focused meeting on creating a
song.

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Step 1: Brainstorming (FLOW)

The first phase of a co-writing meeting is settling on a topic or phrase
or melody to focus on for the next 2 hours. The first phase is characterized
by the FLOW style. The co-writing meeting can start with an existing idea
for a song (or even a partially written song lyric or melody idea) that you
two flesh out into a full song, or it can start from candid and personal
conversation of whats been going on? Any distinct feelings or issues that
either one of you have been thinking about or dealing with lately might
hold the seeds of a song you can create together.
Listen closely in your conversation with a co-writer for any feelings or
phrases that catch your ear. Recent travels, family members, or personal
experiences/difficulties/successes are usually productive areas for cowriting. As you bounce ideas back and forth, write down the words that
come up in conversation in a notebook. No need to note structure - just list
the interesting words or ideas that may come up in your conversation. The
first part of your meeting is about FLOW of ideas, with no judgments, just
listing, sharing, free-associating, and connecting. Devote 20-40 minutes
on just creating a wild zone or junkyard of ideas that you both can pick
through later.
Maybe another good question for this phase is: what kind of feel for a
song do you feel like writing? (uptempo, bluesy, bluegrass, rocking, ballady,
country?) When brainstorming - and during co-writing in general - keep
the sharing channels between you wide open.
Remember: Write down all proposed ideas, whether or not you think
they will appear in the final version of the song. The word no is not
helpful in co-writing. Instead, use the phrase, Yes, and... over and over. If
you use no or thats not good you will shut your partners creativity and
sharing down (and thus, youll shut down your own as well). When you
are tempted to say no to an idea, try instead saying Yes, got it down, and
what else? The key is to keep generating raw material at this phase. You
need all the material you can get for later phases of the co-writing.
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Step 2: Focus (EDIT)

After brainstorming and having a freeform conversation about possible
song topics, and listing words, issues, phrases, and feelings, it is time to
enter an EDIT phase of the session. Together, take a look at the junkyard
or wild zone of words and ideas you have produced together, and circle
the ones that seem rich for further digging, unearthing, and discovering
together. Use the evaluative function of the EDIT mode to seek a phrase
or a melody that you both would enjoy contributing ideas toward for the
next couple of hours. Did you find an idea that could serve as a jumping off
point, a central idea that you both can continue to explore together with
the goal of creating a song? If so, proceed to step 3. If not, go back to step
1, Brainstorming, and repeat the process until you do have something to
proceed to Step 3 with.

Step 3: Expand your wild zone

Once you have a topic or central phrase or central melody or some
concept that your song is about, now its time to resume the FLOW phase.
Together, ask yourselves: What words or phrases might be in a song
about __________? List them with no judgment, just write, talk, and free
associate. What chords might be in a song about ______________? Revisit
the idea of question of what kind of feel might the song have (uptempo,
bluesy, bluegrass, rocking, ballady, country)?
Sometimes drawing bubble maps or mind maps helps, and sometimes
it helps to list different aspects of the topic on multiple pages of a notebook.
Produce lines that rhyme, lines that dont, lists of words, and favorite
phrases that might connect to this central idea.

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Step 4: Pick a line to start reacting to

From what you produced in Step 3, use EDIT to find a line that sounds
like the beginning of something - a line that could be the beginning of a
verse or the beginning of the chorus. Or maybe its the last line of a verse,
or the last line of the chorus, or the last line of the song. Either way, take it
and write it on a new sheet of paper.

Step 5: Find out what comes after that line or

before it
React to that line with FLOW: try to figure out what comes right after
it, or maybe what comes before it, what rhymes with it, what contrasts with
it, or what goes along with it. Grab any words from Steps 1, 2, or 3 and
expand them into phrases that can precede or follow up the line you have
written down.

Steps 6, 7, 8, 9...
Whenever you feel moved to, try singing some of the lines in a musical
FLOW mode or play some chords or a groove that might fit the lines.
FLOW and EDIT, FLOW and EDIT, FLOW and EDIT, until youre both
happy with the song. But, by now, youre not reading these steps anymore,
youre off and running, co-writing a song, because you got it started by
listening and writing down everything that was said without judgment.
You said yes, and and what else? and you got the song growing from a
seed. You created options, you made choices, you used FLOW, then EDIT,
then FLOW, then EDIT. You and your co-writer created a draft of a song
that would never have existed if either of you were writing alone. Your
minds and ideas interacted to create an artifact of your conversation and
experiences. Each of you will probably revise it by singing it and playing it
on your own, then youll meet up again to show each other what you have
learned. FLOW and EDIT until you both agree that the song is done.
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Prompts
Feel free to use one of the following prompts to start a compose session:
Talk to somebody that isnt there
Go on a trip to a new place and pay attention to the things you see,
hear, and feel
Stay in a familiar place and pay attention to the things you see, hear,
and feel
Try to create a specific mood with a song

Read a poem and imitate the style and feeling of it in a lyric

Use a common saying as a title for a song (or use an uncommon
saying)
Write a first line with a lot of options and paths that you can take
from it
Write a line that is true for you and then exaggerate it
Start a song with lines that sound like the beginning of a joke
Write a song about a character with supernatural abilities
Write a song with a mix of conversational language and more
poetic language

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Write a song based on a historical person

Write a new song to a beat or a groove you like
Write a song based on a character from a movie
Use a book title as the title of a song
Pick a setting and write a song where the action of the song
happens in that setting

Learn a new chord and put together a progression of chords that it

fits in. Imagine that each chord is like a pearl on a string and string
them together, one after the other, and then produce lyrics and
melody after the chord progression is basically set
Write a song with just one or two chords
Write down all the things that have caught your attention recently
and put them together and see what happens
Embody another character different from yourself and write a song
from the first person perspective that the character would sing
Write a chorus that would be encouraging for you to hear and
believe
Write about your feelings without using the word for the feeling.
Try to produce the same feeling in a listener and convey that feeling
using lyrics that show pictures and vivid images

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Conclusion
In summary, I believe that cultivating songwriting habits, collecting
seeds, and moving back and forth from a FLOW mode to an EDIT mode
while composing is how songs are written.
I believe that you will write more songs as you:
Strengthen songwriting habits and increase the number of song
ideas you get from songwriting routines
Separate FLOW mode composing from EDIT mode composing to
prevent writers block and getting stuck
Gain skill to FLOW more freely
I believe that you will write better songs as you:
Design songs to meet your goals
Study what makes for sticky or memorable songs
Gain skill to EDIT and improve early drafts of lyrics
Gain musical skill with your instrument
Learn from listening and performing how to use melodies and
grooves effectively
I believe we can make something with our days. So go ahead and...

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MAKE SOMETHING
Tighten up that string, stomp your foot on the floor
Find some words to sing, open up your door
Grow the tree, carve the wood, polish till it shines,
Find the better way, something that saves time
Go on light the way that no ones ever seen
Bridge the gap, draw the map of the places in between
Make something, make your own
Theres a statue waiting inside a block of stone
Twist the knob on that amp til you find the right tone
Make something, make your own
That picture in your head, put it on the wall
Paint it on a cave, hang it in the hall
Change the oil, change the tire, get it rolling true
Do your best on the test, thats all that we can do
If its beautiful but useless, dont be ashamed
Show it to your people, dont forget to sign your name
Make something, make your own
Theres a statue waiting inside a block of stone
Take a hammer and a nail, build someone a home
Make something, make your own
Make something, shake something with both hands
Leave your mark, throw a spark so the world will understand

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That restlessness to see whats over the next hill

Keeps you up at night, probably always will
So keep the fire burning, on into the dark
But if it keeps on raining, go on and build an ark
Fall in love, raise a child, teach her right from wrong
Build her up, raise her tough, so she can write a song
Make something, make your own
Theres a garden rising up from seeds that were sown
Tell the story that the world has never known
Makes something, make your own
Make something, shake something, up and go
Believe me when I say, the clock aint moving slow
Make something, while you can
If you want to live forever, better make something man
While you can, make something man

(Owen Temple, 2013)

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84 | SONGFARMER

About the Author

Owen Temple has recorded and released 12 albums of original songs,
under his own name and pseudonyms, and the songs he has co-written
with friends appear on the recordings of more than 12 artists. Other habits
besides songwriting include spending time with his family and running.
He lives in Austin, Texas.

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