Free guide · Songwriting
Finish more songs
I had 297 voice memos and a handful of finished songs. The ideas were never the problem. Finding them was.
Every session started with scrolling past New Recording 331, 332, 333, giving up, and starting something new. That's not a talent problem. It's an admin problem. Here are the first three steps of the system I use to fix it.
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1. The clear-out (one evening)
Set a 45-minute timer. Start from your newest memo. Give each one 15 seconds, then name it the moment you know what it is: "Late train riff", "Chorus, sad, Am". Bin nothing. You're sorting, not judging. Most people find a song they'd forgotten in the first 40 memos.
2. Give every idea a stage
Five stages: Inbox (not listened yet), Ideas (a riff or a line), Half written (a section or two works), Finished demo (the whole song exists), Released. When you sit down to write, you don't ask "what now?". You open Half written and finish one.
3. Write down what's missing
Before you close any session, write one line next to the song: "needs a bridge", "verse two is weak". It turns "where was I?" into "right, the bridge", and it's the single biggest reason songs get finished.
The other four steps cover putting every take of a song on one card, the weekly finishing session, the five-point test for when a song is finished, and how to get it heard.
They come free with songdrafts, the board I built to do all of this in minutes instead of evenings: every voice memo on one board, every take of a song stacked on one card, key, tempo and lyrics next to the audio, and a finished demo sent as one link.
Join through this guide and you get 3 extra months free on the yearly plan.
Get songdrafts and the full guideOwen, songwriter and producer (TEZ, 2 million+ streams)