PSRSummarySongwritersIdeaBook

Summary of The Songwriters Idea Book.

Just got done reading The Songwriters Idea Book, and I'm throwing in a quick summary of the chapter headings. They might break down nicely into self-imposed 'songwriting practice assignments.'

Titles:

It looks like the easiest way to write a song is to start from an evocative title. This is a quick list of title possibilities.

• A color
• A city, state, or foreign place
• A day, month, or number
• A female name
• Use "heart," "night," or "if"
• "Borrow" a book title
• Use an antonymic pair
• Use an idiom, saying, or "paragram" ('tweaked' saying)
• A coined word
• Start it with "... And"

Useless Poetic Concepts:

This whole section is kind of redundant for any English major, but it's still useful to have an enumerated list of the broad categories of figurative language. I might go through each of these and try to use each as the central concept for a song. (Yes, such an effort will take forever, but oh well. I'm young. I've got forever.)

• A big metaphor
• A compact similie
• Personification
• Apostrophe (addressing the unseen)
• Synecdoche (substituting whole for part or part for whole)
• Metonymy (substituting attribute or symbol for the original thing)
• Puns

Structures:

The book moves on to concepts to base a song around. These are 'framing devices' that give you a song structure, if not content.

• Base the whole thing around a question
• A phone call
• A letter
• Base everything around a setting
• Profile a fictional person in third person
• A duet (accord or conflict)

Romantic Themes

The classic sources of content for 99.5% of popular music. :)

• Sex
• Love
• Infidelity
• Breaking Up
• Getting Back Together

Other Useful Themes

The remaining 0.5% of pop-music content.

• Parents & children
• The need for autonomy
• Friendship
• The arts themselves (music, dance, song), either per se or as symbols
• The need to escape
• Portrait of an archetypal person
• Portrait of a famous person

Special Genres

Other possibilities for sort of specialized markets.

• Christmas songs
• Children's songs
• Comedy songs
• Social protest!
• Inspirational songs ("Climb Every Mountain," etc.)