The 10-Minute Restart

Sometimes a song gets stalled. Maybe you have a good title line or a hook, and you're excited about it for awhile, but suddenly...nothing.

Your enthusiasm vanishes, the song can't find a comfortable groove, the ideas are flat and muddled. Ick.

When this happens to me, I have to reboot.

That means I put the original idea aside, for at least a whole day. Instead of working diligently on it, I completely drop it.

Then, a day or so later, I devote ten minutes of creative "prime time" (for me, that's first thing in the morning, around 9 a.m.) to the song.

And here's the really important part.

I don't go back my original idea. I start completely fresh, with new chords and melody and rhythm. In fact, I try to make it as musically different from my original idea as I can. (Often I recycle lyric ideas, but usually just the title line.)

Usually in that "10 minute restart", a new song emerges that is much better than the first.

Try it next time you're stuck.