Inspiration

First off, I’d like to wish you all a very happy new year!

As some of you might know, I’m a self taught musician with very little knowledge about music theory. But this is something that has never stopped me from being creative or making the music that I love.

This blog post is all about inspiration. I’m writing with the hope of inspiring those of you who might feel like you don't know enough about music, or you don't feel good enough at music theory, to create and share your own songs.

Sometimes we can get so wrapped up in being perfect, or becoming an expert, that we end up not creating or sharing anything at all. The truth is, knowing a bit of music theory is definitely useful, but being a master of music theory does not automatically make you a great musician or songwriter! Everyone does things differently, and everyone starts somewhere. You've just got to go with the flow and make music the way that works best for you.

Step 1: Find Inspiration

Inspiration is the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative. It’s not something we can completely control, but there are ways to encourage those ‘A-HA!’ moments.

Inspiration is thought to occur more frequently during activities that facilitate neuroplasticity.

Some activities that increase neuroplasticity include:

• Exercise

• Reading books

• Meditation

It can be very hard to cultivate inspiration when you are waiting for it to come to you. Different things inspire different people and you’ve got to find the thing that inspires YOU. That means experiencing as many new or different things as you can (think life, changes of scenery/senses, films, books, music etc). 

Here are some tips on how to encourage inspiration:

• Seek boredom and tiredness
  As crazy as this sounds, some of the best ideas have come to me when I’m not trying to be inspired, but when I’m bored or I’m tired!
  

• Don’t be afraid of a blank page
  One of the things that can really throw a songwriter off is a blank page and lack of direction! A trick that works for me is to explore every feeling that you have in that moment. If that’s frustration because you’re uninspired and can’t write a song - then that’s a pretty great idea for a song!
  

• Write down anything. Yes, literally anything!
  You never know if one of those random ideas will resonate with you.
  

• Have ‘idea pools’
  A collection of songs that you love by other artists, lyrical ideas that you write down on the go, photos you’ve taken on a walk, a playlist of videos or songs that make you feel something. Voice notes are a great way to do this - I think they’re a really good way of capturing emotions and filtering them into your music.
  

• Familiarise yourself with melodies
  One of the ways I learned to create my own melodies is through learning, practising and changing cover songs to make them my own. Through doing this, I learnt what sounds good to me and what kind of melodies and song structures work best in pop music.

I’d love to hear the music you’re making, so please feel free to share it with me by tagging @hannahtrigwell.

Happy creating!

Love,

Hannah x