I’ve mentioned several times that I have a folder with hundreds of ideas for songs. I started properly recording my song ideas more than 10 years ago, and since then it has steadily grown. (I wrote songs before that moment, but I was too young to realize that, no, you will NOT remember that great idea unless you write it down or archive it somewhere.)
I’ve also recorded a few of those songs ~3 years ago, culminating in 5 EPs to which you can listen on any streaming service right now. For those EPs, though, I didn’t pick my “best songs”, or my “first songs”. I knew I was very inexperienced when it came to recording and mixing, so I mostly wrote new songs on the spot to be my guinea pigs. Some of those songs were based on tiny little old ideas (that I wasn’t going to use for anything else), but that was it.
At the time, I simply “organized” the songs in the easiest way imaginable.
- I had this single folder with hundreds of songs …
- So I sorted them by date.
- And then I put each batch of 5–10 songs into a new folder.
- Until I had a folder with 30 subfolders or so, labeled “EP #9”, “EP #10”, and so forth.
Sure, this was much better than before. I now had structure and order. If I wanted to record some new music, I could just pick the next folder and look what’s inside.
But it’s not ideal, is it?
I mentioned recently that I want to get back to recording music. It feels like a waste to not turn these ideas into final songs available to the public. When it comes down to it, making music is by far my best and most practiced skill.
So I opened this folder again after 3 years, opened the first folder to see what I needed to do until I could record these songs, and decided this was a terrible plan. That first folder, as expected, contains a few of my oldest songs. Some recordings are more … “snippets” of songs. Some melodies are truly great and I’m impressed that 15-year-old me wrote that; others are very simplistic and meh.
Most of all, there is no coherent theme or sound between the songs. They were grouped by date. And, partially, by pure happenstance, because the “date” property of some files is wrong (because I edited or converted the file format later, or only recorded the idea at some later stage). There was no sense as to why these songs would belong to the same album, or why they had to be the first ones I should record.
Again, I’m not mad at my old self for doing this. It’s hard to organize literally 10 years of musical ideas across wildly different genres, instruments, etcetera. My “just put it in subfolders by date”-approach was a fine start. But now I needed to change this.
Older me has realized a few things.
- The biggest obstacle to recording these songs is time and motivation. It’s much more efficient to group songs that require the same setup or instrumentation in the same album. It’s much more efficient to keep albums small and focused.
- The second biggest obstacle is ability or physical restrictions. I don’t have a proper recording studio, or expensive equipment that makes everything sound good, or anything like that. The best I can do, really, is record a few simple live takes (with 1 or 2 mics) and pick the best one. That limits the type of music and how I should go about it.
By grouping similar songs, that I can record in my current situation, it becomes far more likely that I’ll actually create the album.
This has another benefit too. Because older me realizes that I should also consider the listeners. The “target audience”, if you want.
- I am very much a “jack of all trades”, which means my first few attempts at albums had wildly different songs and genres. This is nice for me, I guess, because of the diverse workload. But nobody is going to really listen to that album, because only 10% of it are songs that they like, and 90% are completely different types of songs that they do not like.
- Most people listen to music for a specific purpose (I want to chill, I want to dance, I want some background noise while working, etc) or because they simply like the artist’s general style/voice/writing (in which case they’ll give anything you do a try, as long as you stick to that general image).
By grouping similar songs, my albums can “really appeal” to some people, while others can safely ignore it because it’s simply not their taste. People can put on a specific album with nice songs to listen to while doing homework. For example, an album with my slowest, most soothing, intimate guitar-and-vocal songs. But they can put on a different album while, say, exercising. For example, an album with my most uptempo, loud, rock and roll songs.
The current organization basically had all those kinds of songs mixed together. When I open a random folder (say “EP #13”), I find a few rock songs, a few ballads, a few very soft singer-songwriter things, one melody that belongs in a musical, and one file literally called “Disney movie song” :p Yeah, there’s no cohesion there and everyone will just be confused by that album.
And so I spent a few hours regrouping them. Placing like song with like song. Actually naming EPs/Albums based on the genre/tone/theme of what’s inside. As opposed to numbering them, which didn’t even work, because some are called “EP #7.5” in a futile attempt to re-order some of the folders.
I also realized, however, that there’s an imbalance between music and lyrics across the ideas. I have 75% music, and only 25% lyrics. Many melody ideas of mine sound great—but I have absolutely no clue what the song would be about, not even a single word or phrase or title.
When I found some older songs that did have lyrics, I was … very disappointed. The lyrics were just bland, or cliche, or tried to squeeze in extra syllables all the time (don’t do that!) The oldest songs had themes that are not that important and don’t resonate with me anymore. They were written by a teenager in high school after all.
I’m a writer. I’m a storyteller. I’m a very practical and pragmatic person, which means I hate being melodramatic or being so vague/abstract with your lyrics that they become utter nonsense. I will never write those kinds of lyrics. The kind that’s like “oh I’m so sad look at how sad I am” or “oh wars are bad, oh wars are so bad, I’m very sad about it” :p
I’m way better when I write a story. Musical theatre songs, when they come to me, usually have all the lyrics already. Because they have a purpose. They tell a story, or a specific beat in a story, which makes them pour out of my pen easily. I’ll probably never (or rarely) write “singles” or “individual hits” that completely stand on their own. It’s just not my strength and not really what I’m interested in.
And so, as I reorganized the songs, I consciously attached stories and themes to the albums. Most are, inevitably, based on my own experiences and feelings. But that’s the emotional core that made me invent the melodies in the first place. The final lyrics will be mostly “fictional” stories, which are told from start to finish throughout the album.
These two simple acts (group by genre/type; attach story/theme to album) immediately gave me a much better plan for recording my music. Each album feels much stronger, and the right words/lyrics already started coming to me as I was cleaning up.
I wrote this article to maybe help others organize or structure music ideas. I also wrote it because this was by no means a trivial or obvious change, which always means it’s interesting to talk about it and explain it. I thought this would be a few hours of “clean-up”, but it ended up being multiple days of serious thinking about all the music I ever made.
I’d notice a song or two with a summer vibe, connect it with some other songs (from a folder all the way at the end of the list) that have the same vibe, and decide to have a “Summer-themed album”. Then, some time later, I’d think “why not create one album for each season? I have the songs for it”. Then I’d notice a song with just piano and vocals, remember I had a few more songs like that somewhere, and decide to connect those in a piano-based album. This went on and on until I’d made some sense out of hundreds of ideas.
Hopefully, I can put all these great ideas into practice and release more music again,
Tiamo