The RedFaux Transmission

February Album Writing Month & New Song Writing Tools

February Album Writing Month is in swing now, but its not to late to sign up and face the challenge at FAWM.org.  Every year FAWM.org hosts a song writing challenge to write 14 songs in 28 days.  They offer inspirational ideas every week to get your creative juices flowing.  This weeks: 

"Write a song using rests in the melody, or come to a complete stop, to create emphasis, tension and/or humor.

Examples: “Kiss” (Prince), “Roxanne” (The Police), “Mah Na Mah Na” (Piero Umiliani - Muppets), "Blister in the Sun" (Violent Femmes)."

Also FAWM.org has just released a new song writing tool for collaboration called FAWM CollabPad.  You can get it HERE. 

I took the FAWM challenge last year.  I didn't get 14 songs written but I did get 5 written... and 5 is better than ZERO ;-)

- Until Next time... Over N Out

RED

New Free Song Writing Tools From FAWM.ORG

 FAWM.org just put out some new free online songwriting tools today.  They call the tool suite MUSE.  In the suite you have 4 online tools. Access them HERE

• PlotSpline
• Struxxure
• LyriCloud
• Titular

Given the fact that I recently did a post on finding lyrical inspiration, I thought this would be a good follow up.  I took a look at each one of these tools and they do seem like they would be useful in getting the creative juices flowing.

PlotSpline

Helps you frame your tense and sense of place to help you devise a plot for your song.  Below is a screenshot example.

I plan on trying this out because I know I get caught in the rut of always using "you" as if I'm scolding someone. heh.  And I usually use past tense.  This tool looks useful in challenging the songwriter into trying different tenses and places when writing.

Struxxure

This tool will spit out a random song structure for you.  I think this one will also be incredibly useful to pull the songwriter out of structure rut and get you thinking about new ways to structure your songs.

 LyriCloud

This tool allows you to type in a keyword and then it will create a cloud of related words for you.  In theory this is a neat tool, but I find this one to be a little weaker than the previous two.  I may use this as a starting point just to try it out, but I prefer to create my own cloud using the lyrical tool box method I wrote about a few posts ago.

Titular

This tool creates several awkwardly strung togethor words that are supposed to inspire song titles or subject matter.  I think its somewhat interesting, but I'm not entirely sure how useful it would be.  It might work for some folks.

These are very interesting tools that I think can ultimately be helpful to trigger some new ideas and help kick you out of writer's block.  Like anything you don't want to become too reliant on it, because then it becomes part of the rut... but these are definitely good tools to add to the songwriter's bag of tricks.

- Over N Out... til next time

RED
 

 

First day of February Album Writing Month

 This is the first day of the February Album Writing Month as sponsered by FAWM. Today's song challenges from FAWM were:

"Take a deep breath, hold it, and write down as many words as come to mind before you gasp. Now use those words in a song."  from the FAWM daily Tweet

and

"Write a song about the work-a-day world. One idea: express your elation (or frustration) about your own job (or perhaps lack thereof?). Another idea: write an ode to your favorite occupation or person who holds that occupation, from barista to tech support.

Examples: "9 to 5" by Dolly Parton, "Take This Job And Shove It" by David Coe, "This Place Sucks" by The Descendents, "The Old Dope Peddler" by Tom Lehrer. "

from the FAWM website.

Just to make things fun, here's my daily song challenge for you...

"Write a song or instrumental about the nature of life and death without refering to any specific religion."

- Til Next Time... Over & Out

-RED