Creative Restrictions
In case you’d like some ideas for fruitful creative “rules” you can try out, I’ve sketched a few out below.
- List out a few of your favorite words. Just words that you think have a nice ring. For me that might be words like “sapphire, dalliance, apricot…” Write a lyric that includes all of those words.
- Restrict yourself to only two or three notes. This will force you to use the notes almost as though they were three drums, and your focus will shift to seeking out interesting rhythms that bring those notes to life.
- Use a specific kind of song form or structure. You might try writing an ambient instrumental, for example, or a list song.
- Require yourself to use a certain technique that you’ve been studying lately. An unusual rhyme scheme, perhaps, or sensory imagery, or the use of a specific musical scale to draw your melody from.
- Write an entire lyric that uses only sensory imagery, no dialogue or commentary.
- Try writing ten different melodies over the same chord progression.
You can invent many other creative restrictions of your own, of course, inspired by your studies and by the songs you’ve been analyzing in your copybook. This is only scratching the surface—giving yourself assignments of this kind is a great way to create good work and practice specific techniques at the same time.