Don't lose it, re-use it!
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@paulh1237 Jan 2022
I've been doing fawm for 10+ years now (crazy!). And in that time I'm sure I have on occasion stolen ideas/lyrics/riffs from my own previous attempts.
I think this kinda makes sense; I like to think my ability to take those ideas and turn them into songs I don't hate is better than it was when I was 18 and clueless, so why waste the nice idea on rubbish 18 year old me?
Do other people ever scour there back catalogues for inspiration? Or maybe I'm dooming myself to write the exact same song for the rest of time.. -
@kable Jan 2022
@paulh1237 Better yet: take your own tracks and redo them from the ground up! One of the oldest fears I had making music was having 'one shot' to get this idea right, and what if today's skills aren't enough to do the idea justice.
But that's just not true! Today's you is brand new, so instead of cringing at your old music (like I have), do it again, and better!
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@vomvorton Jan 2022
I've been thinking about this. I've got a couple of old songs with good riffs but bad lyrics, it seems a shame that they never amounted to much. Definitely considering a little self-cannibalisation, depending on other inspiration...
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@sunnymae Jan 2022
Oh I scour constantly! I have a whole file of "song snippets" I listen when I'm driving. Most of the time I'm like...what????? I don't remember most of them and they thrill me no end, so I totally concur. Those seedlings are not to be ignored. Many are hidden gems. On the other hand some will go with me to the afterlife. :0))))
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@scubed Jan 2022
I have quite a few bad songs with one or two really good lines. This coming week I plan to go through the old lyric sheets & collect the lines I like into a single document. I plan to scan through them occasionally during FAWM to see if any of them can find a new home in a better song.
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@bradbrubaker Jan 2022
I have ye olde pile of riffs, a drawer of pads of paper and napkins and discarded envelopes where I've written riffs. Every FAWM I unearth that in search of inspiration and usually flesh out one or two.
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@frenchcricket Jan 2022
IIRC from the Weezer episode of Song Explorer, Rivers Cuomo has a spreadsheet with all of his song ideas on it, categorised and everything.
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@kable Jan 2022
Fragments are a part of the music-making journey. Hold onto them, even organize them! Don't ever lose them!
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@jackketch Jan 2022
I've got fragments of songs going back to the first FAWM I did four years ago. Every year I trawl through them looking for something I can work up into a fully fledged song.
I have to admit that I did once use a song for FAWM that was 17 years old, but it had never been finished. FAWM gave me the opportunity to finally breathe life into it. -
@coolparadiso Jan 2022
Indeed! I keep a file of unused stuff or fragments and a file for ones used that could be better reused! Not common but have been looking more recently.
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@gubna Jan 2022
I kept old cassettes of me jammin for years. I had some from when I first started playing even which were horrible to hear, to later, when I was coming up with proto-jams. A couple years back I realized I was never going to go back to even listen to them, let alone try to use them for songs, so I let them go. That being said, I do have a "back catalog" of riffs from recordings that is more recent. Even the stuff from my current band project (2011 on), there are tons of things I could use. I may never listen back to it, but at least it's there. There's one that I thought I had somewhere, but the music file has alluded me. It was a great little chord progression and I've wanted to find it for some time without any luck.
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@jinxcat Jan 2022
I plan to mine the home recordings I found from my teenage years to see if I can rescue anything. It was me just singing alone in my room., and the lyrics/topics are crap. But maybe there's something in the tunes I can use.
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@timfatchen Jan 2022
I do scour. Most of what was really good to my ears ends up on albums anyway, but there are also-rans or meant-to-be-edited-and-never-dids that lurk on file. Mind you, in the scouring I find some that are so bad I end up scouring in a quite different and rather embarrassing way, but...nothing ever gets deleted. Nothing. Well, you never know...
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@nadine Jan 2022
I have a folder full of song ideas and riffs. I go through them every year, see if an idea pops up. Sometimes I just hit the delete button.This FAWM I'll try to redo one song from scratch. Let's see if that works.
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@chipwithrow Jan 2022
@scubed - I've had a similar idea about picking out lyric lines from previous songs. I think it was either last FAWM or two 5090s ago. I don't recall how much new music came out of it, but it was fun to go through the notebooks.
I have all of my lyrics from my first FAWM in 2008, but none of the demos. I can kind of remember how they go - they were all acoustic guitar songs. I considered re-working some of them in very different ways for this FAWM (my 15th).
I don't have any fragments or anything unfinished, though. Most of what I start, I finish. There are occasional ones, maybe one or two a year, that I get stuck on and just delete. -
@pbtaylorjr Jan 2022
I used to make songs as my given name, occasionally I would take an old song and re-record it, and on even more rare occasions I would re-work the song. Starting in 2022, I rebranded and rebooted myself, but I am using all songs written before as possibilities. My new albums are a mix of new songs and old. Usually I rework the older song in some way or just get a different angle on it such as not as fast or less distorted guitars or something. I figure the only time you really get "one shot" is when you're on a big label and you put out your album and there the song is forever...but then you have Taylor Swift. Sure, she is re-recording for reasons other than not being satisfied with the old takes, but she's still having a second shot at the whole beginning of her discography.
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@lastnightilie Jan 2022
I have absolutely no rules about when I started a song or first came up with an idea. As long as it was substantially edited/worked on and finished during FAWM I count it. Everyone has different goals for FAWM, but for me it's about finishing songs. I have no trouble starting songs all year, but have trouble finishing them. If I'm not going to finish those songs during FAWM, then when?
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@philkmills Jan 2022
I have song ideas that I've gone back to multiple times and created a different song on each visit. It feels as is there should be one *good* song to go with each of those ideas, but I haven't found it yet.
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@akokulit Jan 2022
I have a "bank" of melodies / short choruses I hummed on my phone during my travels. That's what I usually use when I get stuck during FAWM.
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@paulh1237 Jan 2022
@lastnightilie I totally agree - I feel like FAWM is the one month of the year I set real time aside to invest in ideas and flesh them out, and give at least some thought to the recording process, so if I can take those old ideas (perhaps as old as January 2022!) And put the real work during Fawm to flesh them out and get something finished that's a super positive outcome for me.
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@janeg Jan 2022
Love the suggestions here, especially about going through old lyrics and lyric ideas looking for good line or phrases to use again.
