When we buy and listen to music, we experience it linearly: the song moves in a straight line past our ears, from beginning to end. But the process of writing a song is anything but linear.
It was liberating for me to realize that a song can be written backwards, one note at a time, one word at a time, inside out, upside down… and that all of this is indeed progress. A straight line is not the only way to reach the intended destination. In my case, the path from seedling idea to finished song is convoluted and messy.
I’ve even stopped writing on notebook pages because the ruling tempts me to impose mental order on ideas that haven’t yet come together. On a linear page, I can’t help but think in a linear way. Songwriting calls for flexibility: I need to feel free to write the verses and other sections in whatever order they come to me, and I need to feel comfortable exploring tangents.
Index cards fill the need. I can shuffle and arrange ideas in any combination, and have no unnecessary sections visible except what I’m focusing on. Holding a card with verse 1 on it makes focusing on verse 1 much easier—and when you need to see the big picture, you can arrange the cards all in a column to read them. It’s a great way to zoom in to examine details, then zoom out to see context.
This method makes it easy to play with structure (shuffling and moving sections). Sections are easy to add, subtract, rewrite and replace. And it’s easy to experiment with alternate endings and variations on verses.
When I’ve finally got an entire draft done, I write it down in a notebook, record it, and stash it away for future listening and editing. I keep the index cards nearby so that I can hit the ground running again when it’s time to edit.
Give this method a try, then drop me a line and let me know how it worked out!
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