Time required for this prompt: 30+ minutes

The thing that makes songwriting peculiar from any other art form is the union of music and language. It can be difficult sometimes to find a really satisfying, symbiotic relationship between a lyric and its music.

This exercise is for songwriters who write both lyrics and music.

1. Choose a moment from your life.

Choose a scene or time from your memory that’s emotionally charged for you. You might remember it fondly (like a birthday party) or the very thought of it might infuriate you still (your sister dropped your cake). All that matters is that this moment is emotionally significant to you.

• Set aside at least 30 minutes for this exercise.
• Clear away distractions; silence your phone and stash it away.
• I suggest using a pen and paper instead of a computer—just to avoid diversion.

2. Free write.

Once you’ve chosen a memory, the next step is to bring that moment back to life through free writing. Write for ten minutes nonstop, and try to include as much sensory detail and dialogue from the moment as you can: taste, touch, smell, sight, sound, and taste.

Don’t stop for anything; keep the pen moving and include as much detail as you can. Be fragmented, disjointed, and present impressions quickly in whatever order you remember them. We’re not worried about a correct timeline of events or topical organization at this point.

Keep writing long enough to really take yourself back to that moment in time. Once you’re thoroughly saturated in it and you’ve exhausted your memory of it, keep that free writing in front of you and

3. Improvise

Now use your instrument to search for chords, chord progressions, riffs, and little melodies that evoke the atmosphere and the feelings stirred up by your free writing.

Notate all of these musical fragments or record them. You may also want to tape yourself improvising in an attempt to evoke the scene through music.

Wrapping up

Depending on how much time you spend, you may or may not leave your writing space with a rough song draft. Either way, you’ve hopefully got some raw material for a lyric and some musical fragments that are all inspired by the same scene—they come from the same place.

Label the recordings and the free writing carefully; you may want to place them both in a folder to keep them together. All that remains is to take all that raw material, revise and edit, look for rhymes, and search for phrases that match the scraps of melody. In other words, you’ve got all the colored gelatin, and all you need now is a mold.