Whether you are new to songwriting or have written hundreds of songs, “The Songwriter’s Journal” should be within arm’s reach whenever the mood to write a new tune strikes. It is packed with the fuel you need to ignite the imagination and provides you with more ideas than you could ever hope to write about. With hundreds of entries designed specifically to spark the muse within, the book should reside on every songwriter’s bookshelf or desk. It includes songwriting exercises, chord progressions for new songs, word association exercises, ideas to write new songs about, note sequences for new songs, power words to include in your lyrics, items that belong in every songwriter’s toolkit and much more.
An invaluable tool and very strongly recommended for the novice songwriter “The Songwriter’s Journal: 52 Weeks Of Songwriting Ideas And Inspiration” by professional songwriter Stan Swanson was written to both provide aspiring songwriters with ideas and inspirations for new songs, and a forum in which to jot down their daily notes, thoughts, ideas, and musical notations over the course of a year’s time. The formula is straightforward: ‘An Idea to Write a Song About’; ‘Note Sequence for a Song’; ‘Power Words’; ‘Cliches, Expressions, Slang and Idioms’; ‘Rolling Stone…
Cornucopia of ideas The subtitle, “songwriting ideas and inspiration,” accurately describes this book. As one reviewer commented, it is rambling and not “organized.” Each of the 52 2-3 page sections is an independant, random unit of ideas and things to spark ideas and images to make a song from. (A shotgun approach to writing one song a week.) I like the idea. Within each “week’s” pages, it is completely random. The chord progression, tips, themes, etc. are unrelated to each other. I think the purpose is that if…
It’s a Songwriter’s Toolkit This is not a book you read; it’s a book you do. It’s a great workbook for songwriters, with sections for every week of the year. It includes places to jot down ideas, word games to inspire lyrics, chord progressions and melody lines to play with, and space to write a whole song, plus lists of “power words,” quotes from famous songwriters and information about songwriting resources. I just wrote my first week’s song, and I’m having a hard time keeping myself from reading ahead to next week. In…