PHASE ONE:
Orginally ran from April-June 2020
A very simple challenge, in which we set ourselves a weekly deadline to write a song.
The song doesn’t need to be recorded or produced to a high standard. It doesn’t need to be complex. It doesn’t need to be particularly good even (by your own standards… for who else’s standards matter?) Maybe just use 3 or 4 chords?
But it has to be finished to point where you stop working on it, and potentially where you could play the song live from start to finish, and you have to reach that point within a week.
For the deadline, we found it best to work Wednesday to Wednesday. Whilst a Friday deadline can seem appealing, your weekend plans can delay getting started on the song, keeping you perenially on the back foot. When Wednesday comes, it’s pencils down and leave that song be! It is done!
To this end, we use a Submission Box on this website. We found The Submission Box a useful mental tool for closure on these songs. An imagined line in the sand past which there is no more tinkering and no more obsessing.
Then; rinse and repeat. Move on. Begin the process again. Write another song. Just do it. No production values… keep it simple. To the point where you can play it through. Maybe you wouldn’t mind playing it live to a friend. Then submit it to The Box by deadline day.
Move on. And do it again. Do it all again! In the original Phase One of the challenge we did for 10 weeks in a row. If you do this, you will be amazed at how much easier you find the process with each passing week, how much easier you find it to get started, and also to finish, to walk away from your creation and say “that’s a song!”
That’s not to say you won’t come back to them all at a later date, and obsess, nitpick and overproduce them – we are songwriters after all! It’s in our nature. But we can indulge in these habits with a catalague of 10 songs to work from and learn from.
Check out our Weekly Submissions to hear what other participating songwriters came up with!