November Writing Challenges
Go outside. Use your phone’s voice memo app to record a sound from the word outside: the hum of a car engine, the whistling of the wind, the crunch of the fall leaves under your foot. Use that sound as the basis for a new track and write over it.
Write in public. Often times we write where we are most comfortable - our rooms or studios. Find your way to a quiet space in a park with an acoustic instrument and start writing. What happens to your process when you are no longer in a space of optimal privacy?
Write to a recycled formula. Listen through a few records. Choose one and figure out the chord structure. Use that structure in a new son.
Write a song to your 7th grade self. What do you have to say to that person? What do you want them to know?
Clap out a rhythm in a 6/8 time signature. Record it and use it as the percussive basis as a new song. Use nothing but the claps as instrumentation.
Set up a completely new co-writing trio. What happens when you write with people you’ve never written with before?
Reconfigure your creative hour. If you tend to write in the morning, write at night. Switch around the hour at which you begin being creative. What happens when the timing of your creativity shifts
Eventually there will only be one person left on this planet - bleak, I know. Still, its a biological reality! Imagine that you are that person. What kind of song would they write? What would they see? What do they want to leave behind?
Time crunch. Set a timer for 30 minutes. You must complete a song within the allotted time frame replete with 2 verses, a chorus, and a bridge.
Choose a single event in your life. Write two songs about it - one in a major key and one in a minor key.
