Let’s try something unusual!

SONG 8 of the 10 Songs In 10 Weeks Challenge may feel extreme. However, once you do this, you should have a solid practical knowledge of how rhythmic separation can make your songs feel vibrant.

Today’s exercise is called…

One Sound At A Time

This exercise is great to:

• Understand rhythmic separation
• Practice precision editing
• Be a minimalist
• Have fun. Music is supposed to be fun, you know?

To push your muscles to failing point, this exercise will have you create a song with vocals and instruments where only one sound is allowed to sound at once, including vocals.

Start Here:

Start with a Minimal Groove

Write a drum groove or riff. Keep it minimal and staccato.

Build

This is where the fun begins.

• NO OVERLAPPING OF SOUNDS ALLOWED. Whatever instrument or vocal you choose to write next, they are not allowed to share the same moment in time.
• Feel free to go back to your groove and rewrite it. If you chose constant 8th note hi-hats, it’s not going to leave you much space for other instruments. You probably want to choose sounds that are staccato and with no reverb or long tails.
• If you don’t think this is possible, go watch a beatboxer.

Scissors are your friend

Writing like this can feel like you’re being strangled. Especially when creating vocal melodies. So, try this:

• Write and record your additional parts however you like.
• Cut them up in your DAW to create gaps for the other parts to poke through.

It might look something like this:

Finish your song!

Dial it Back

If you like what you’ve created and think it could be a release candidate, you might want to dial back the strictness of the rhythmic separation on some of the elements e.g. the vocals.

Have fun! 🤗

The foundation for this challenge

The book I’m basing this challenge on is Ra Wilson’s book, Write 47 Songs. If you haven’t heard of it yet, I highly recommend you get it. As the name says, the book gives you 47 exercises that serve as a practical roadmap for your artist development through implementation and self-exploration. So it’s a highly practical guide for artists who are just starting out in their songwriting journey, and it’s packed with exercises that are designed to help you put in the practice and level up in all the ways I mentioned before – from your lyric writing to your musical understanding, to developing yourself as an artist in terms of your sound and your artistic voice. All of that through implementation. Because it’s what you DO that counts. When you learn to play an instrument for example, you go to lessons and you spend most of the time DOING. Songwriting should be no different.

Are you new to this challenge? Watch the intro video here!

Wanna join alongside a group of artists?

If you’ve ever made a purchase with us (like joined any of our bootcamps, or got Ra’s book) you also get access to our free WhatsApp community where our artists hang out and support each other. There you can share what you make within a safe space and listen to what others share as well. This will make it way more fun and really help you with accountability.

If you decide to get the book (or you’ve already joined a bootcamp with us), be sure to send me an email so I can give you access to the community! My email address is sonj@artistspringboard.com

Have fun writing your SONG 8! 🤗❤️

I’ll see you next week for SONG 9 – hopefully I’ll be back to health!

Sonj