October (SPOOKY SEASON) Songwriting Challenges
Midnight: Taylor Swift’s recent oeuvre includes the 2022 album “Midnights,” and let me tell you, there is something magical about the witching hour. Compose a song that begins and ends at midnight.
Hollow Wind Whispers: Go out into the night and use your phone to record fieldsounds of hollowing winds. Incorporate the sounds of those winds into your composition, adding an unsettling and ghostly quality.
The Ghostly Song: The word “ghost” is ubiquitous is pop music, spooky season or not1 Lean into the ghost of it all and write a song that tells the tragic tale of a ghost, capturing the emotions and memories that linger.
Cathedral Choir: A choir can be beautiful, but a chorus of voices can also be haunting and creepy. Use the reverberant sounds of a cathedral choir as inspiration to underlay a composition, leaning into feelings of mystery and eeriness.
Spooky Sound Design. A creaking door opening and closing. A hooting owl. A witch’s cackle. Use classic, even campy, sounds of spooky season. Pepper them throughout your production but twist them to be ear candy as opposed to unsettling tidbits pulled from the Halloween catalogue of sounds.
Zombie Love: In Hozier’s debut album, he duetted with Karen Cowley on the song “In A Week,” a romantic tale about two corpses rotting in the woods together. And, before you ask, yes Hozier managed to make it extremely romantic, hiding the decay under sweet guitars and melodies. Write about something creepy or vile, but mask it in the sounds of joy, love, and happiness so as not to turn off your listener.
Monster Mash Update: Write a modern take on the Monster Mash. Use the same melodies and song structure but pen verses that fit with our modern language and ideas of monsters.
Cast a Spell: In Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Springs,” Stevie Nix curses her band mate and ex-boyfriend Lindsey Buckinham, promising him that “you will never get away/from the sounds of the woman who loves you.” Use the power of repetition to incite a bit of magic—a curse, a love spell, or something else.
Trick-or-Treat Anthem: Imagine that you are writing a song for a children’s cartoon in which the characters are going out trick-or-treating. Create an upbeat anthem that captures the excitement and thrill of trick-or-treating on Halloween, with catchy melodies and playful lyrics.
Ritual Drum Circle: Explore the rhythmic patterns of a ritualistic drum circles. Infuse a track with these hypnotic beats and rhythms and then write a topline over them.
