Well, I certainly haven’t done a lot of songwriting recently. You may have noticed in my last post that I’ve been busy learning others' songs. But, I’ve been muchly inspired and haven’t stopped the active process of thinking of writing music. (Aside: What I'm personally learning is that I need to give myself a break sometimes and not hold myself to the ‘rules’ or goals I set for myself.)

So, how do I let original music flow?

1. Let music flow: Be inspired by new sounds

Wow, I’m inspired by Hammock’s album — I recently wrote about taking a day of rest and prayer with music. Hammock's music must have affected me, because last night I got home with a USB to Midi cable, plugged it in to my keyboard, and wrote this:

2. Let music flow: Don’t put the self-critical spirit on!

I learned last night that it's freeing to do a one-take-only of each track and allow myself permission for errors. (Yes, I went back and altered the grossly wrong notes, but left some dissonance in there just for kicks!)

We tend to want to micromanage our errors if we’re perfectionist musicians. So, I purposefully made up the lyrics as I went along. They flowed out in a very unique way. I’ve never had this before! It was a short, but significant concept. (see the end of this post.)

3. Let music flow: Change up the process.

Letting music flow out of you means doing things in a different way. In this song, I sung lyrics after composing the music, which is also a different process than typical. Usually I have the lyric concepts and ideas before or during the melody composition.

It’s good to mix up songwriting methods, it’s refreshing, and I’ve found myself very energized through the whole process!