Tag: howto

Making a Song List

I’ve always considered myself a songwriter. It’s what excites me most about music! I love being creative and writing songs, but it wasn’t until 2020 that I started taking my craft seriously. I went from averaging one song a month to two a week. As I started writing more and more, I wanted to make a comprehensive list of my songs: a document listing the names and dates I wrote them.

What I did is simple, but effective. I used Google Sheets (which is free) and entered the names and dates of my recent songs. There were several open cells begging to be filled, so I included BPM, key, and genre.


Charting a song’s data was a great reward for finishing, and I never wanted to break my streak. Also, I noticed trends at a glance, like how much I loved writing in the key of C, that I wrote a ton of hip hop, and that I frequently used Bedroom Beats 2. These aren’t bad things, but if I felt like my sound wasn’t evolving or I wanted to do something new, I knew what changes to try.

Later on I started tracking what I offloaded, including where it was offloaded from, and the name of the sound if it came from a sample pack. You can go crazy with a list like this, adding chord progressions, modes, the alignment of the stars, and anything else you want to track.

If for no other benefit, I recommend keeping a list to hold yourself accountable. “Write more songs” is a hard goal to follow. “Write a song a month” is much better. You don’t have to quadruple your output, but you should challenge yourself and do more than you did yesterday. Going from a song a month to two songs a month is good progress. Don’t measure your progress against others, but only against yourself. Now working from a new list in 2021, I have a clear goal: write more songs than 2020.

Pre-save Summertime! Coming out September 10th:
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/latenightluke/summertime



Creative Offloading

Today I’m going to talk about something I learned in music school. It’s called “offloading” and it’s one of the reasons I was able to write 50 songs in 2020.

In songwriting you have these creative tasks: chord progressions, melodies, basslines, drum patterns, lyrics, sound design, etc. Offloading means to take one of these tasks and rather than generate it creatively, you offload it to a different source. This happens when you take a chord progression from another song, use a drum loop or MIDI pack, or anytime you load a preset. That’s offloading too since you’re offloading the sound design.

This is incredibly helpful for starting and finishing ideas. When you offload a task, you free up time and energy to focus on the next step. If you’re feeling uninspired, a drum or melody loop can be the kickstart you need. Rather than trying to create every piece of your music originally, it helps to decide what parts you want to write and what parts you want to offload.

You might hate the idea of offloading if you haven’t heard it before. It might feel like cheating. I used to feel that way, too. One of my buddies used to Google “Awesome chord progressions” and write songs that way. He even stole a progression from a YouTube ad. He wasn’t afraid to take inspiration wherever found it.

Over the years, I softened to the idea. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my biggest problem was my ego. I enjoyed being “creative” more than I enjoyed making songs. Offloading to me is about letting go of my ego and realizing that if I want to make captivating art, I need all the help I can get.

If you haven’t offloaded before, try offloading your least favorite part to write. If you’re a drummer and you love writing drums, offload the melody. If you love melodies and struggle with drums, offload the drums. If you’re really focusing in on sound design, design the sounds and offload the chords. For lyrics, you can even borrow rhymes. There’s a lot of possibilities and room to experiment.

If you feel guilty or think that it’s cheating, realize that it’s a collaboration. Pretend that your friend sent you the drum loop. They want you to use it. That’s why they made it, and honestly, that’s not far from the truth. Producer Com Truise said that sampling is “Collaborating at a distance.” And the big difference between sampling and using a loop (other than the legal difference) is that the creator of the Splice loop wants you to use it.

If you try to be 100% creative in every area of your song, you’ll write a lot less songs. And honestly, no one cares if you do “everything yourself.” They’ll only know if you tell them, and if you feel the need to tell people, then maybe you don’t believe in the song to begin with.