Songwriting Software Express, Issue # 15 -- Writer's Blocks for Writer's Block

To help your songwriting with a focus on the benefits of innovative songwriting software, tools, resources and programs for your songwriting craft and career.

6 Steps To Songwriting Success - Jason Blume is one of a few songwriters to have had simultaneous hits on country, pop and R&B charts - The Backstreet Boys to The Oak Ridge Boys.

Learn: developing successful song structures, effective lyrics, memorable melodies, successful demos, your song biz and persistence. Click here for more information and to order 6 Steps To Songwriting Success.

"Awesome. It's everything you need to write a hit song."
Howie Dorough, The Backstreet Boys.

1. Unblock Writer's Block With Writer's Blocks (Say what?)
2. This Month's Notable Quote

Songwriting Software Plus welcomes our new affiliation with Music Books Plus to bring you the best of "software for your songwriting brain". You can note our first offering above with the insightful, instructive and inspirational 6 Steps To Songwriting Success.

Also, this month's issue has a new ecover, above, that is now the official cover for Songwriting Software Express that will grace each coming issue. And it hints at new, to the point, features that will be bringing even more benefits to your songwriting, both craft and career.

This month's software program, Writer's Blocks, can help you untangle your thoughts and help to get you past any writer's block that may occasionally crop up as you're trying to write your next hit.

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Sometimes you may have a some starting ideas for a song but get stuck on just how to flesh out your ideas and in what order they all might fit into the story flow of your song.

It can be quite helpful to write out each idea onto a blank piece of paper or type it into your word processor, one idea per page, and then jot down or type in anything that comes to mind per each idea on each page.

If you're stuck even at that point try noting, in list form, the following words at the top of five columns across the top of each page; who, what, where, when and how and maybe even add in two more columns for feelings and objects that are related to your idea. Then write down anything that comes to mind related to each item.

If things begin to flow quickly it can be helpful to just freely write out the story to your song, on a separate page, without stopping to judge what you're writing, just keep writing it out until you feel you've exhausted the idea. Even if it's not fully fleshed out just get your thoughts down.

If you've done this in your word processor then as you review your material you can easily cut and paste different sections from the other pages that help to add to and enrich your story onto one central song story page.

Next, as you look at your story you may begin to see lines that flow like a lyric line and you can piece by piece draw out lines that work to tell your story in the form of a lyric. Basically you're taking the best of your longer, written out story and grabbing the lines that best capture what you're trying to say in the shorter more focused form of a song lyric.

Another way to use this same process that also allows you to quickly rearrange your ideas is to use a program that's akin to using index cards on your computer, but in this case the index cards can contain as much information or as little as you'd like.

A program that works on this idea is Writer's Blocks but it's much more highly organized and flexible.

This program was originally written with screenwriters in mind but it's application is totally on the money for writing songs. Indeed some songwriters liken the writing of a song to the writing of a mini movie.

Jai Josefs, internationally renowned songwriting coach and author of Writing Music For Hit Songs, has commented that writing a song is essentially scoring a movie.

As you begin to develop the story of your song, your movie and sound track as it were, you can organize your brainstorming efforts into handy "blocks" and reorganize them quickly and easily.

Writer's Blocks allows you to create virtual blocks, essentially virtual index cards, of the various ideas you're developing.

With Writer's Blocks you can quickly see an overview of the various ideas you've plotted for your song in an orderly outline of "index cards" and you can then readily rearrange them.

If you want, print out your blocks for writing time away from you computer or just to see it all on paper as you take a break and stretch out on your couch.

Since your mind can only go from one thought to another having all your ideas in front of you allows you to more quickly see how all of your ideas will best fit together.

Once you've decided how your song will flow to tell its story arrange the blocks into the flow of your verses and choruses.

As you write your lyric out you can simply draw upon the boxes of information to feed the images and lines of your ideas into your song as you construct your verses and choruses and even your bridge.

Songwriting Software Express and the Songwriting Software Plus web site were
developed and continue to be run and grown using the Site Build It! web site system.

A great web business building system requiring no programming skills at all.
It does help if you can type though :)