Write Songs the 4-Hour Work Week Way

Write Songs the 4 Hour Work Week Way I wrote the article below for the Swedish magazine Interesting Times [pdf 37.18MB]. Article published August 2010 issue.

Songwriting is a craft. With most craftsmanship, both art and science must be combined in the right proportions to form a desirable end product. Over the last several years, I have come to the realization that I cannot write a song on my own without identifying the processes at play. I also found that songwriting is not an endeavor for the likes of the Lone Ranger. Collaborating with people far more talented than me yields results far beyond what I could accomplish as a solo effort.

However, like just about everything else I do in life, I always strive to do them more efficiently. After reading the 4-Hour Work Week and chatting with Tim Ferriss in San Francisco last February, I have come to realize that identifying the processes I use to do everything and breaking them down into their individual parts is key to writing a song in an efficient and elegant manner. Once I determine the processes that lead to success, I can see what parts are unnecessary to produce the desired results, thus shortening the songwriting process. and chatting with

In my search I’ve found that there are five basic steps to writing a song in a brief period of time.

1. Conceptualize in a Blank Space – 10%

I need to start with a blank canvas on which my inspiration can grow. Setting aside time for that inspiration is important to get an idea to germinate. My inspiration seems to come to me in four distinct times:

Walking – a beat develops and I can hum to the pace of my steps
Sleeping – actually dreaming that I’m writing the world’s greatest song. Sometimes this is merely another well-known song that in a dream state I claim as my own. Other times I dream up new songs that I have now written and recorded.
Showering – the white noise of the shower works wonders for me. Learn to take longer showers. I have yet to purchase a waterproof pad of paper and pen set that I can mount onto my shower wall. (Yes, they do have them)
Driving – many times I will be driving with the radio way down so all I hear are some words and a tiny amount of music. My ear doesn’t pick up the chords or the melody, so my mind fills in the gaps.

Sometimes I realize it’s a well known song only after the chorus comes. My mind was somewhere else completely building different chord progressions and melodies.

You are looking for a white noise area where your mind is allowed to wander freely. Singer and songwriter Sting calls this space the place where the walls of logic come down and your mind is free to make associations that it wouldn’t normally make when controlled by a rational mind.

Sting identifies this period as the time between settling into bed at night and falling to sleep. That time where strange thoughts that may not make sense in the real world are allowed to creep in and develop wildly on their own. I have actually found that when I am sick with the flu and cannot sleep – creativity strikes.

Always be prepared with a recorder; be it digital voice recorder, cell phone recorder or just calling yourself and leaving a message on your voicemail. I don’t write down musical ideas anymore. I just speak them, it is much faster.

I have learned to do away with the distractions of phone calls, emails, household responsibilities, unwanted noise and disruptions from my kids. Any interference threatens my creative process.

Sometimes I have forgotten entire songs that I have been building mentally when I hear music on the radio or hear my children screaming. A jolt to the senses wipes my cache memory clean.

I often wake up in the morning mid-dream with a song in my head. I jump out of bed loudly humming it while running down stairs – dashing for the voice recorder on my cell phone. The radio in the kitchen can erase everything that I’ve been building in my head. When that is the case, I hum loudly with hand-covered ears and rush over to the radio to stifle it. I grab a recorder and hum my tune into it along with any words, phrases or melody lines that will help me remember what I was thinking. Once it is recorded, I can relax and move on with my day.

2. Contemplate Internally – 60%

This is the time that I spend thinking the song through in my mind just developing the song. After I have made the initial recording, I feel freer to see where the song goes. I know I can always return to that first recording I made as a kind of “home base.” Many times what I come up with is better than the initial idea.

Most of the contemplation time is done strictly on a mental level. I find that my mind works and creates much faster than if I were to write with instrument in hand. Unless you are a virtuoso, your guitar or piano may be more restrictive than your mind; which can go anywhere it wants unhindered.

Once you get in the habit of writing a song mentally, you can think through a song anytime or anywhere without an instrument. I also work out the arrangement and voicing of instruments by humming the melody, counter melody, harmonies and percussion lines with different instruments in mind. The difficult part can be the remembering everything.

I find that recall isn’t a problem if I go through the melody five to ten times in my head. Then again, if it isn’t memorable, it may not become memorable to anyone else either.

3. Collect Ideas and Organize Them – 10%

You need to get feedback from great musicians. In order to get your ideas across and not waste time of accomplished musicians, you need to organize your thoughts into simple chords, lyrics or scratch recordings. If you are like me and don’t know how to read music or write guitar tabs, you’ll have to find other ways to communicate your song ideas to them. You don’t have to be the best piano player to get a great guitar player to work with you.

I sing, play piano and guitar and I use the little that I know to communicate my ideas to other musicians. Once I have a great guitarist work through the song with better chords than I can come up with, I’ll use his improved chords to build from.

There are a variety of helpful software programs out there that will notate MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) information in the form of notes sent between your piano keyboard and computer. This information can then be edited after the fact and printed out for musicians to read from if they prefer. I write faster by just recording the scratch tracks on a guitar or sing a few lines for the musician I am collaborating with. The key here is organizing your thoughts on paper. Do the best you can, then make the call. Always network up. There is no reason for you to get together with your pal who is just as good as you. The better the musician, the better they will make your song.

4. Collaborate with Others More Talented Than Yourself – 10%

I don’t want to spend too much time rehashing the last point. Take your organized notes and whatever you can play on keyboard or guitar (or even just your voice) and meet up with a key musician as soon as possible. Don’t wait until everything is perfect, because it won’t ever be. You need enough to get the creative juices going and to respect the time of the other musician. If you act professionally, musicians will be willing to work with you again as well as recommend other great musicians within their network.

I pay musicians $50 for meeting with me. Unless they are going to be a part of a choir or are a good friend already, I pay them something. If it is a group of people, I provide food and drinks – it is the least I can do.

Why? I want them to know I am paying them something for their expertise and that they have been paid in full. They will not be getting a cut of the song royalties if the music is ever recorded.

I also have everyone who works on or is recorded in any way to sign a simple release that states…

I hereby consent for value received and without further consideration or compensation to the use (full or in part) of all audio recordings made of my voice or instrument and/or written extraction, in whole or in part, of such recordings for the purposes of illustration, broadcast, or distribution in any manner.

Even if they are friends I have them sign. There are too many nightmare stories of songs that have taken off – bringing participants running to find legal representation to claim a piece of the pie (i.e. Pink Floyd’s The Wall).

Once I have worked with one musician, I ask them who they think would be great to help write or play another instrument. This has worked every time. Just because they are well known musicians doesn’t mean they have to cost a lot to hire for an hour or so.

Contact a well known musician number two and tell them that they were referred to you by Bob Smith of The Smithies as one of the best pianists in town. Let them know that you would be looking for about an hour of their time to write and possibly record one song to see if you are a good fit for each other.

The better the musician, the less time it takes for them to write and record the song with you. I’ve had musicians come in cold on a recording and leave 40 minutes later with finished tracks that we were both very happy with. To them 50 bucks is 50 bucks! They may get $100 for playing three or more hours on a Friday night at a club.

There is also a feeling that they are a part of something new. Your something may just take off. Trust me; musicians want to be recorded. They will love the opportunity to play your song for little more than recognition – save for a record contract that prevents them from doing so.

5. Campaign Your Creation – 10%

Writing and recording a single song (or even an entire album for that matter) is relatively easy compared to getting people to hear about you and your music. Even more difficult is to get people to care enough about your music to pay for a recording or get into their car to see you in person.

I once was concerned about people stealing my songs before they were done. It turns out that nobody has the time to do anything with your song nor do they care about it in most cases.

Your music will sell through your personality and your talent. There are a lot of talented musicians with no personality. Point here being you need to get one.

With portals such as iTunes and other distribution channels, it no longer is a question of how to get music out to the masses? The question now is how do I get the masses to care? The fact is, your friends and family will all want you to give them your CD for free. They don’t realize how much of your life and money went into your creative endeavor.

Out of the literally hundreds of thousands of CDs that flood the market every year, you need to stand out. Even if you are one of the best musicians in your area, chances are you still may have a hard time getting people to care enough to pay you anything for your music. So what do you do?

Without going into detail, I will tell you three things:

You have to be both unique and memorable.
You must connect to your audience on a personal level.
Read Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans.

Other things you should do…
Create a Facebook fan page and a My-Space page. Get a WordPress blog and write your thoughts on your blog at least once every week. Put lyrics up and get feedback or collaboration from friends and fans. Get a YouTube account and start playing your songs for your little video recorder and upload them to YouTube.

Post your YouTube videos on your My-Space and Facebook fan pages. Invite your friends to check them out. Do something crazy and get a little publicity around it. I don’t know what is right for you; the most important element is creativity.
(See my haggersville.com site) Note: The Haggersville.com site is down in preparation for the upcoming re-release

Don’t just promote; learn to campaign. A campaign is a series of promotions along a theme. String them together with some form of continuity. Be sure to have every appearance, gig and article revolve around the theme of your album or help build upon your brand. Without a plan to have a compelling campaign that has some semblance of continuity, your message will not grow to a crescendo; rather it will be watered-down in a sort of pointless, meandering progression of promotions without any focus on who you are as an artist or where you are going with your music.

Matthew Peters is a musician, filmmaker, author, speaker, life-hacker and entrepreneurial evangelist. His next book focuses on how he and his wife Fiona have hacked their housing by paying NOTHING for their housing for over 9 years. Matthew was able to live out a life dream by completing his last project – a music, film and cross-country treasure hunt titled Far From Haggersville created with the help of 32 musicians and cast and crew of 20.

http://www.thecompleteself.com/blog