TakeLessons Presents: How to Break Your Songwriter's Block and Get the Girl

Online, October 24, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Twenty years ago in 1991, when Justin Bieber wasn't even born yet, soulful crooners like Whitney Houston and Color Me Badd topped the Billboard charts. It's also the year Boyz II Men released their first album, Cooleyhighharmony. Today the group released their latest album, Twenty, featuring an array of new songs, as well as a few of their old-school classics.

For those of us who spent the 90s swooning over Boyz II Men, you know that the majority of the songs - like most of the R&B genre - have a theme of love and relationships. For songs with so much emotional material, lyrics are especially important.

TakeLessons (http://takelessons.com), the fastest growing music lesson provider, works to help students of all ages stages reach their musical goals - whether they be mastering a specific guitar song, or learning how to write songs. In an effort to help those musicians that want to get the girl, but can't find the lyrics to say it, TakeLessons recently featured some tips to overcome "songwriter's block," courtesy of Disk Makers' blog, Echoes:

1. Start with a title
"Find an interesting title and most of the song will often write itself," says songwriter, guitarist, and producer Tommy Marolda, who has written tunes with Richie Sambora and Rod Stewart. "That's something I've used in a lot of my songwriting." Successful song-crafters like Bon Jovi and Diane Warren have used this strategy, and songs like "Living' On A Prayer," "Bed Of Roses," and "Dead Or Alive" were written this way. "With most songs, the title tells the whole story," he continues.

But where can you get an intriguing song title if the ideas just aren't flowing? "Try looking at magazines," says Marolda. "You can flip through the table of contents and sometimes they use interesting hyperbole or plays on words that can spark something in you. Or go to a poetry section in a book store and look at the titles of poems."

2. Look and listen everywhere
"Whether you're on a train, walking around, or just having a conversation, you never know what you're going to hear," says independent singer/songwriter Natalie Gelman. "When I'm really in the moment and paying attention to what's happening around me, sometimes I'll hear someone say something random and think, 'That's a great line! I should use that.'"

3. Carry a notebook, voice recorder, or both
This may seem basic, but since you never know when inspiration will strike, it's important to have a way to document a great musical idea whenever it comes along.

If you're comfortable with traditional musical notation, a small notebook with staff lines can be all you need. If you prefer to sing your melodies, a voice recorder on a smart phone or another small recording device can do the trick.

4. Keep unfinished ideas
Even if you're only able to come up with a verse here and a chorus there, save everything you write, recommends Marolda. "A lot of famous songwriters have a suitcase full of ideas that they pull for different songs when they get stuck," he says. "Go back into your own catalog of unfinished work and see what's hanging out. You'd be surprised that a bridge you wrote years ago might fit perfectly with a song you're working on now."

5. Write a lot
For Gelman, more hours spent writing music means an easier overall creative process. "Writing constantly helps you become comfortable with the act of crafting songs - and with yourself as a songwriter," she says. "As songwriters, we have to accept the good, the bad, and the ugly that comes out when we write. It's important not to reject anything that you write, and to keep writing."

Part and parcel of writing a lot is working on whatever inspires you at any given moment, regardless of whether or not it fits into your genre of choice. Are you a shred-metal guitarist who suddenly comes up with a great Zydeco accordion line? Write it down. Even if it's totally unusable for your current band or project, you never know when such a creative tidbit might come in handy down the road.

This is just the start to the full list of tips for songwriters, which can be viewed on the Echoes blog. What are your own strategies for writing songs? How many of you carry around a notepad for when inspiration hits? Let us know - head over to the TakeLessons blog, where readers can also find tips for battling stage fright, and join in on the discussion on Facebook (http://facebook.com/takelessons).