How prolific are you?

PolarityMan

Just wondering how prolific people generally are? So how many songs have you written?

For the band I'm only counting stuff that's finished as I have no way to count the random demos and ideas that got abandoned (there's probably hundreds)  but I reckon we have done 56 finished songs broken down as follows:

Released

41

Recorded but unmixed

5

Played live but not recorded 

4

Xmas Songs

6

Part of what got me thinking about this is that I was watching a youtube video about songwriting and the guy said that basically you need to write hundreds of songs to get 1 good one and given that the "hit rate" of getting from an instrumental demo to a finished song is prob around 4:1 I reckon I have prob written several hundred in the past 10 years.

Grumpyrocker

I have a folder with something like 100 songs in it. I've recorded about ten of them. And while I used to have them on my blog, I've never released them in any wider sense.

Dan_Halen

I used to write a bit but it never grabbed me and always felt like a chore. What sounded great one day, come back to it the next and I'd think it was crap and never finish it. I know common sense would be to see it through to completion (i.e. a fully written song) so you can revist, revise, improve etc but was much easier to consign it to the cast offs pile. I guess it's like anything, the more you do it the easier it becomes.

The other guy in my old originals band was prolific and would have a couple of new songs every week at rehearsal. A lot missed the mark but every so often he'd stumble on an absolute belter. Over a few years that built up to quite a solid sounding set and a decent album.

I've always thought that was the reason for the old difficult second album syndrome. A band gets signed but by that point they've been together for months or, more likely, years and are signed on the strength of a demo/live set or similar. However, that demo/live set is almost certainly the culmination of cherry picking from months or years of their best work. You've effectively got a new band where their first album is already their greatest hits e.g. The Darkness. Time comes to release album no.2 and you're trying to write stuff that's every bit as good as your best ever work with much less room for error and a record label on your back.

I'm sure it comes easy to some but would be interesting to see how much stuff someone or some band who are prolific cast aside.

timmypix

Not enough! Been in a writing rut for a while, and I know the solution is to just force myself to work on the half-baked ideas I've got floating around, but I'm always worried I won't do them justice so they sit rotting on my hard drive. 
We aren't great as a band either - me and the other guitarist are the main writers, but we've both been in a rut/not been giving it the time it needs, so rehearsals for the last year were just us jamming the same ideas over and over with little progress. It was nice to see each other and play loud, as we are all mates, but we probably would've been better just going to the pub for all we got done!

Paul_C

I don't write songs as such (though I did many years ago) just ambient/weird instrumentals, and having honed my methods over four years I can churn them out pretty quickly

All of which explains my 290 pieces on YouTube from 2018/19, my 32 Bandcamp albums from 2020 and the big one - 100 albums in 2021 (I did have four months at the beginning of the year where I was locked down and not working) filled with 940 tracks.

I've taken some time off after that, and I'm accumulating gear with the intention of doing things a little differently this year, though it will still be similar to the nonsense I've been making previously

ewal

It's about habit - like a lot of things - running, cycling, etc - I'm not good at keeping at it. I lurch between being reasonably productive and long periods of total laziness. I should be writing things at the moment, but for a number of reasons (mostly attitude and mood) I'm not.

So all that adds up to not very prolific at all...

Teetonetal

I have written or contributed to around 200 songs in total, which spans all of the bands I've been in over the years as well as my own solo stuff.

Whether any of it was any good is a moot point!!

I think two of the bands I was in were quite good, but the writing approach was very different.

For the first band, everything was written as a collective, all ideas jammed though based on a riff or groove that one of us had written during the week. We had hundreds of discarded ideas but maybe got to 20 decent finished songs over 3 years.

For the 2nd and, we all wrote complete songs, either individually or in pairs, which were then tweaked by the band collectively. This band got signed to a small label and pushed out 4 albums (2 with me, 2 without). I can't think of many songs that got discarded once demoed to the band - I guess as they were often complete, then everyone self filtered. 

These days, I hardly write anything anymore. No ideas, no inspiration, no time. Mostly I just have other things I'd rather be doing. I think here there is a Johnny Marr (?) quote "inspiration strikes, but it has to find you working" that I think is also true.

The really sad thing for me, is the one or two songs from bands that were either short lived or that never recorded, that I think were decent and I can't really remember them at all.

In total of my 200 I reckon only around 50 have been recorded in anyway.

bertie

very,  according to Mrs Bert.....................................


oh wrong forum, sorry

imalrightjack

I'm mid-40s and started writing as a teen.  I wrote a lot of stuff, some good/some bad.  I always found if I put my mind to it and had at least an initial spark, I would tend to get something I was happy with.  In my thirties, largely through some crap life circumstances, I put it on the back burner and I had writer's block for years and years.  Mid-last year I decided to just force myself to write one day and hit a good run.  I've demo'd (to an acceptable but nowhere near finished) I think 13 songs since and set up a band to play the material.  I think writing an album worth of material in that time period, while managing life and it not being my main focus, is pretty good going for me - especially following the prior drought.

This is what I've done so far:

https://soundcloud.com/redfordissent ;

The songwriting has generally improved with each, as I find a groove again, and the vocals likewise.  I was never a good singer but feel I am getting more comfortable as I go.  Shame I'm mid-40s, eh?

Musicwolf

ewal said:

It's about habit

I agree completely.  I've been in bands which were prolific rattling of one album after another in quick succession.  I also went through a period where I wrote and recorded two albums worth of solo material in the space of about 18 months, but then I'll get out of the habit.  This usually occurs when I get into a covers band and my focus shifts from writing to learning and performing.  I don't 'need' to write, I just need to have a reason to play.  I once went to back to the last thing that I'd been working on only to find out that it was 4 years old.

PolarityMan

Musicwolf said:

ewal said:

It's about habit

I agree completely.  I've been in bands which were prolific rattling of one album after another in quick succession.  I also went through a period where I wrote and recorded two albums worth of solo material in the space of about 18 months, but then I'll get out of the habit.  This usually occurs when I get into a covers band and my focus shifts from writing to learning and performing.  I don't 'need' to write, I just need to have a reason to play.  I once went to back to the last thing that I'd been working on only to find out that it was 4 years old.

Replied to this one but I think I see a similar sentiment in a few posts...the "habit" part really is important. Sometimes I'll get a song out of no where just noodling around and the whole thing will be done in an hour or 2 but that isn't by any means the usual method. Normally I have maybe 1 part, or none and just have decided to try writing and it really is a case of putting in the time and doing the work.

PolarityMan

Paul_C said:

I don't write songs as such (though I did many years ago) just ambient/weird instrumentals, and having honed my methods over four years I can churn them out pretty quickly

All of which explains my 290 pieces on YouTube from 2018/19, my 32 Bandcamp albums from 2020 and the big one - 100 albums in 2021 (I did have four months at the beginning of the year where I was locked down and not working) filled with 940 tracks.

I've taken some time off after that, and I'm accumulating gear with the intention of doing things a little differently this year, though it will still be similar to the nonsense I've been making previously

In the nicest possible way I think you are stretching the definition of the word writing though. I think I would compare those more to an improvised solo or a jam. I kind of view that as a different skill. 

ewal

Yeah - I need to have motivation too. There have been periods where I have had absolutely no other creative outlet and have set about writing and recording complete songs. Then other times when I was in a band and needed to write ideas and demos, because no-one else in the band was. And most recently playing in a band where I'm not the main song writer, so don't have same drive. But context is huge too - I thought previous lockdowns would be ideal opportunity to really focus and get some songs written, but it didn't happen - mainly because I wasn't in right mood (still the case...)

PolarityMan

I think if you force yourself to do it you would be surprised at how small the inspiration part is of the process. I think another thing that's only really happened in the past few years is that I've really tried to tighten up my songwriting so instead of 8 min prog epics with long developing sections I'm going for 4-5 min more accessible stuff with highly functional sections.

In some ways it's more difficult as it's easy to sound very cliched etc but on the other hand you never really have that problem of not knowing where to go next with a song because you already kinda have a map for it (or maybe several possible maps but at elast some sort of direciton).

Cirrus

47 finished/recorded and "Out in the world" as a solo artist - 3 albums and 2 EPs

34 with my last band - 2 albums and 3 EPs

And trailing around that, a cloud of hundreds of ideas ranging from finished songs that just weren't released for whatever reason, songs that I went off, to just a verse or chorus or riff, and thousands of little snippets of ideas recorded on my various phones over the years.

axisus

Hmmmnnn, during my 58 years on the planet I've written about ....

6 acoustic instrumentals
A few electric guitar instrumentals
A few piano pieces
A few Chapman stick pieces

It could be said that I'm not prolific. 

MagicPigDetective

Not very, but it's improving. I've been playing for 30 years, and last year I finally recorded my first full song, and it was one I wrote when I was a teenager. Since then things have improved, I'm getting to grips with Reaper and I've got one more song almost completed, two others that are 2/3 there that I need to go back to and finish, and two new ones I've recently started on. I must have come up with hundreds of ideas over the years but never noted or recorded them, so at least now I'm starting to see some end product. Motivation is difficult, especially as I'm always trying to work out the technical elements of Reaper and EZDrummer. They're all instrumentals though, I really need to face up to trying to write lyrics and do some singing. That's the next challenge. 

Supportact

Hard to work it out but roughly:
Releases: 5 albums, couple of EPs

Recorded/demo but not released: maybe 100 songs? 
Got a book with about 170 completed songs in it, there are others from before the book though. 
Plus the usual bits of ideas, phone recordings, random riffs etc. 

Agree with the notion that it's best to write a lot and not worry about quality at the time, and then edit it down when you're not in creative mode. 

Lestratcaster

Not kept count but have probably written (with others) around 50-60 songs. Most didn't make it to being released, but the ones that did:
Released 3 EP's and contributed to the writing of another one (didn't play on the recording).
Loads of unfinished song ideas and riffs/chord progressions that just never got developed.

roberty

I went through a phase a long time ago of just writing any old shit, maybe 3-4 songs a day. I think I got to about 200 or so back then. It was a useful exercise. I found that even if a song didn't work, there would be an idea or an approach that could be borrowed and developed upon in another. Later I was gigging weekly with some other songwriters, and there was a bit of friendly competition between us, we'd all want to turn up the next week with a new and better song. It was healthy. By contrast my writing is very slow and deliberate these days

Snags

Not sure any are "finished"

Didn't really start doing any writing until a couple of years ago, and it happens in fits and starts around Life. 21 'complete' in the sense that they've been played as either a demo to a collaborator, or performed live (solo - open mic type stuff), although of those I'd say probably two will never actually see the light of day because the moment has passed.

Recorded, mixed, 'released' a big fat zero, because I'm still getting my head around that. There are a handful on Soundcloud, but they're all shit and exercises in learning, and I ought to expunge them.

Haven't done anything constructive for months, then last night got some "me time" to practice for a thing on Wednesday, and found all sorts of ideas popping out. Annoyingly had to park them all because I only had limited time, and needed to work on the more pressing issue of actually working out what to play live in my only practice time.

So yeah, actually having (making) the time to just play with freedom makes a big difference.