Springboards. Sparks. Influences and Inspirations. What are yours? What do you model your music after?

When it’s time to create your next song, you can always benefit from others’ works by extracting out the spirit, concept, or essence of the work and translating it through your own Voice and perspective.

As artists mature, they are still influenced by the music of their predecessors and contemporaries, but rather than copying, imitating, or emulating the styles of their heroes and teachers, they engage in the modeling process.

Just as researchers have methodologies, companies have business models, professionals have career tracks, and economists have schools of thought, musical artists can decide upon the approach they take to their craft, before composing any words or music. A consciously chosen approach can be based on a number of elements, including:

• timeless topics
• successful song-formulas
• proven assumptions behind song-crafting
• time-tested strategies for creativity and productivity
• undeniable grooves, moods, or vibes
• modes of storytelling
• a compelling perspective

Songwriters can extract the spirit, structure, or conceit of a great song and use it as a springboard for their own compositions. We can Song-Model.

A song-model is different from a genre, a sound, or a tradition in that it has nothing to do with how the music sounds or what it is made up of. It’s more like a mood encoded into the music and lyrics or a borrowed approach to the songwriting structure. A model exists apart from the actual content of the song.

Join the Song-Modeling discussion and JP explores three common qualities that have been modeled in countless songs: sex/passion, romance/imagination, and compassion/love.

 

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Are you inspired? If so, how did you get that way? If not, what do you imagine would inspire you? The word inspiration, like the word spirit and respiration, has its origins in the Latin word for breath. But the concept of inspiration has come to suggest much more than simply breathing.

Feeling inspired often implies some kind of altered state of consciousness in which all the clouds part and the heavens open up.Artists have used countless methods to get themselves inspired (and many have worked), but the promise of inspiration often comes with a catch. What might inspire at one point –a place, a person, an experience, a journey–might eventually lose its luster and lead to less than inspiring results. Increasing your ability to observe, on the other hand, never ceases to deliver valuable experiences. Observation, unlike inspiration, is available in every moment, regardless of mood, circumstances, or state of mind.While many artists have moments of intense inspiration, artists who sustain their creative edge usually end up relying on the power of perception to deliver new insights and material, rather than emotion or imagination.

So don’t get high, don’t get low, don’t go up and don’t get down, just be where you are and listen, look around, and let the moment bring your next song. Listen to this Soul of Songwriting episode to hear about various ways that you can use your gifts of observation to bring forth an abundant stream of good material and relinquish any unconscious expectations for finding inspiration somewhere or sometime other than “hear and now.”

 

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