Have you ever had writer’s block? The phenomenon when you are sitting down to write your next opus but nothing seems to come out. You feel empty, dried up, void. You have seemingly no good ideas and just about every lyric, melody, or chord progression that comes to mind sounds overdone and worn out.
Via Jeff Kubina Flickr
You Can’t Create On Empty
Our pride tells us to keep looking deeper for the “music that’s inside of us” and it will come. Just be patient and it will come. But here’s the puzzling truth of it all: great songs aren’t born from an empty tank. In order to create something amazing, you need to be filled with other great music from other great artists.
This concept flies in the face of much “wisdom” out there, which claims that you are only tainting your pure musical ideas with other people’s songs and are then more likely to copy or “steal” from them. But that type of response is a prideful one built on the huge assumption that we have any pure musical ideas of our own. Newsflash: we don’t!
Nothing Is Original
Think about it for a second, the only reason you know anything about music is because you’ve listened to music before. Your very own opinions and ideas about what great music should sound like only comes from having listened to other music. There’s no way to start from pure originality, it’s simply impossible.
And that should never be our goal, because no one is truly “original” in the best sense of the word. What we should be focusing on instead is creativity and being you were uniquely created to be. Each of us sees things in a unique way and each of us can hear music in a unique way. That, my friends, is what we can offer the world of music.
Go Listen To Some Great Music
So to bring this all home to the problem of writer’s block, if you are feeling stuck and nothing good is coming out in your little songwriting pockets of time, stop what you’re doing and go listen to some great music. That’s write, get knee deep in someone else’s creation. Get back to what you love about music. Get inspired, have fun, and just let loose a bit.
If you do this, I guarantee you something weird will happen. Your head will instantly start swimming with ideas: riffs, melodies, rhythms, and lyrics will begin flooding your brain. And all of a sudden you will have a sudden urge to get in a quiet place, grab your instrument of choice and begin songwriting.
No Such Thing As Writer’s Block
Where did the writer’s block go? Well, it was never really there to begin with. The visual that there is something “blocking” your internal flow of original music is a false one and unhelpful. The better visual is this: you have a music tank that is either empty or full.
If it’s empty you’ll feel it and you won’t be very fruitful in songwriting. If it’s full (i.e. you’ve been listening to a lot of great music) you will brimming with ideas and the juices will be flowing.
Are you feeling empty today? Go fill your music tank!
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
There is the video series about the topic of how original human beings are:
http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
Summarising every work done by a human, not only artistic one base on simple schema: copy, transform, combine. So there is no shame when taking some inspirations, otherwise you are some kind of mega-genius 🙂
Man this article encouraged me so much. I have some listening to do! Thanks graham for all that you do. You’re making a huge difference! Much love! -Cole Mize
Great article Graham, very inspiring
To be honest, I guess always had a similar opinion but I was never able to explain it in words. Brilliant. Thank You
Great Graham! I was stuck in Writer’s Block a couple of years ago, and when I realized it it was much because I didn’t listen to much music at all. Every time I tried to sit down and write something I kind of cramped and nothing came out of me. And that was just because I had nothing to feed from, so listen to good music is the best cure for this.
I agree! I find music that I don’t normally listen to be the most inspiring. I hate Michael Jackson, but I put on Thriller the other day and got pumped to make music. Hahaha
The masters can confirm. I was just reading the interview with Eddie Van Halen in the latest issue of Guitar World. They asked him about the creation of various tunes and he would say things like, “Well, I was riffing on AC/DC’s ‘Back in Black’ and this is what came out. I hear other music and then it gets filtered by me and turns into something else entirely.” Or something to that effect.
Graham, this is a great series of posts and videos that I hope inspires your readers to develop useful songwriting and production skills. You are correct – it all takes discipline, hard work and – the reason we are all here – joy.
I absolutely THRIVE on the songwriting and production process and have been doing it since I was 14 and started mutlitracking by splicing a guitar/mike signal with the earphone signal from one Realistic case tape deck into the input of another. My songwriting process started on that day in 1974 and has never stopped. Song ideas pop in my mind any time they do (driving, napping, hiking) and I make sure I have a way to capture them (notes, sing them into my phone, whatever). The key is don’t let them get away. I usually don’t have time to move them farther at that point by the inspiration has been captured and ready to use when I’m ready. At any point in time I have 20-30 ideas, 10-20 “developed” songs and 5-10 songs in recording/production. When I’m ready to work on a project (i.e. EP or collaboration), I have a good stash of new pieces to start with.
Everyone has their own methods but this has worked well for me for 40 years now. The best part is that its always there – never starts, never stops.
Thanks for all the time and effort you put into helping others develop their craft and find their muse!
My songwriting is going OK-ish, I think. It helps that I have found a theme based around my release day (7th April) which is the 50th anniversary of the IBM System/360 mainframe, the first commercially available multipurpose computer. I’m doing three songs about some of the ways technology can bring us together or push us apart (the novelty is there will be two versions of each song – one digital and one analogue). This gives me a language to start with (transistors, diodes, technology) etc, and also suggests some potential structures. The fact that one ‘side’ of the collection is being produced entirely on an Android tablet also means (because I’m ‘programming’ the vocals and using a vocoder for pitch and harmony) that I have to enunciate very clearly, and that makes a difference to the actual amount of words I can use. Also, repetition saves memory.
It’s been an interesting process so far.
I would take this one step further, or an additional direction maybe, and say that not only should you listen to music to get inspired, but you kind of need things going on in your life that are somewhat inspiring to begin with. The times of my life that I write the least are when I am doing the least.
God bless you Nathan for making this statement. The best music I’ve ever written happened during periods of my life when my emotions were pushed to an extreme; whether it be happiness, anger, sadness, etc.
The true beauty of the human condition is that it can be expressed with music, and we can all take something different away from it.
Another article, over half of my life i have been writing songs now. And never quite understood the myth of sriters block(although i do fully grasp that nothing is completely original). But ginosko! This has hit home with me. Thank you Graham.
Today I discovered important thing. Don’t mess with drums if you are not good drum player, call your friend to play drums for you. Don’t write lyrics if you not have inspiration, call your friend with good voice and poet skills to sing a song for you. That’s what I done with my new song, so I have much more time for arrangements, and that is what I really like to do in song, make basic melody and arrangement.
That’s good advice, but also remember that you can become a better drummer, singer, lyricist, whatever by practising. I have always, for example, been able to hold a tune, but have never liked the tone of my voice. I’m using this – ie forcing myself to release into the world – to really look at what I don’t like about my voice, and working out ways to develop the bits I do like.
I was looking for a bridge for a song for literally days. Out of the blue i started doodling an Elvis song book as a break. I played a simple 3 chord progression from a song and realized it would work in the bridge. Amazing.
Couldn’t agree more. I believe that a person’s music consists of a combination of all their musical influences, but just put out obviously in their own unique way. I’ve done that before where I had a block and I went and listened to my favorite bands for an hour and really listened to everything going on. I then came back to writing and it was pouring out of me! Good Article!
This single article literally changed my entire perception on songwriting. I just realized I do the things he’s talking about. I start with trying to emulate something I’ve heard and it just evolves into an original composition that, at face value, has nothing to do with that piece of music that inspired me to begin with. I’ve been attempting to join Graham in releasing an EP in 3 months and songwriting month has been a challenge to say the least. I look forward to the inspirational articles that are being posted to help!
Glad to help Will!
I have to actually disagree with one part of this article: it IS possible to understand great music without listening to other artists first. What about the first musicians? The people who wrote the first songs? What if there was a person locked in a room for years with nothing but a guitar and a piano? I guarantee that that person would come across the major scale at some point. There’s something natural about how it just “sounds right.” Once they found that, they’d start to develop a taste of music.
Don’t get me wrong, listening to great artists is ABSOLUTELY vital, but taste in music doesn’t necessarily come only from listening to others.
Interesting point 🙂 I would suggest that this initial understanding of music came from God himself. In fact in Genesis chapter 2 (the first few pages of the Bible) the first song is ever recorded. Adam sings about his new wife, Eve (recorded as poetry)
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.” (Genesis 2:23 ESV)
Who knows what the melody was like though!? 🙂
Love this post. I’m gonna go listen to more great music and get inspired.
Fantastic advice! Time for me to get my tank topped off. Thank you!