RE: Dear Steemit Songwriters ... I Have Never Written an Original Song Before and am Looking for Advice on How to Start
This is an interesting reach-out for sure.
I've often thought about making some kind of songwriters 101, however, I haven't really seen a demand or rather, any real deficiency in the many excellent songwriters from Openmic & and the Songwriters Challenge.
Nevertheless, if you want some advice.... The best way to get started is to:
press record on your voice memo (iphone or similar app) plays some chords and just sing whatever comes to mind for a few minutes.
Listen back and if there was anything good, melody, lyrically or a mistake turned into a an excellent point of inspiration, try to use that small snippet and repeat the process (as in keep recording and reviewing) until you slowly start to form a main idea and supporting materials (like chord progressions and strum patterns or grooves etc).
Hope this helps. Feel free to reach out if you have any curiosities.
JB
Thanks so much for your thoughts and advice @jaybird! I really look up to you as a songwriter, so it means a lot that you took the time to stop by my post.
Love the idea of just hitting record and seeing what happens. I just tried that this morning, and it went better than I thought! The nice thing about recording it too, is that if anything ends up being good or usable, I can reference back to it. I imagine it would be easy to forget a melody or riff a couple days later.
Also thank you SO much for stopping by my little sisters intro post and showing her some support!! It means so much to me that you did that. I I think you’re right that she can hopefully teach me a thing or two about songwriting. 😉 She’s been a little shy about sharing her original music in the past, but I think steemit will be a good opportunity for her to get out of her comfort zone a little bit and start sharing.
No Problemo on both fronts.
Are you making any progress?
You're bang on in thinking: "The nice thing about recording it too, is that if anything ends up being good or usable, I can reference back to it."
That's definitely the point of this method. It's an idea generator, which you can take further through repetition and workshopping.
Equally as important though is also paying attention to why something was good....all the subtleties that may have emerged with the initial improvisation. Elements such as dynamics, or voice quality, things that affect the vibe, emotional quality and the groove ie. laid back or pushed, or emphasis on syllables or words/how you said a specific lyric or line, melody ornamentation etc.
Those little things when preserved from the initial conception of the idea can sometimes make a "simple or bare bones idea" suddenly interesting as fuck...