May Songwriting Challenges
Narrative Ballad: Craft a story-driven ballad with a clear beginning, middle, and end, using descriptive verses to tell a compelling tale.
Reharmonization Challenge: Take one of your own songs and completely reharmonize it, changing its harmonic structure while maintaining the melody. Plainly, if a song is written in a major key, rewrite it in a minor key or vice versa.
Limited Vocabulary: In your next co-write, create a list of 100 or so predetermined words. You may only fashion lyrics from these words, forcing creativity within those constraints.
Blind Genre Fusion: Choose two genres at random and merge them into a single song. This may be done alone or in a group.
Dialectical Dialogue: Create a song structured as a dialogue between conflicting perspectives, aiming to find a resolution through the lyrics and music.
Advanced Automation: If you’re a producer or if you’re working with one, employ automation extensively—let it be the central tool to your production— to create intricate changes in effects, volume, and parameters throughout the song.
Dull Repetition: Create a song with intentionally repetitive lyrics or melodies, exploring monotony as an artistic statement. Can you use this monotonous element to drive home something new and interesting in your work?
Annoyingly Catchy: Create a deliberately annoyingly catchy song, aiming for a tune that gets stuck in people's heads for the wrong reasons. You may employ tropes like the millennial whoop.
Polarizing Perspective: Take on a controversial viewpoint or debate in your lyrics. Fight diligently for your perspective and see if it opens you up to new audiences.
Multilayered Storytelling: Craft a song that tells multiple interconnected stories, weaving them together to create a layered narrative. (Think Billy Joel’s “Piano Man").
