One of the most common struggles songwriters face is not knowing what to write about. I hear it from students and professionals alike: "I just don’t feel like writing," or "Everything’s great—what am I supposed to write about?"

This is where prompt-based writing (also known as writing to a brief) c...

For whatever reason, lyrics seem to be both the easiest way into songwriting as well as the most challenging. Easy because they access language that we already have - no need for harmonic or melodic vocabulary - but hard because there just isn't a lot of real estate to say everything you want to ...