Five times Ivor Novello Award winner Mike Batt is a bastion of British songwriting, penning many iconic hits including Bright Eyes for Art Garfunkel and The Closest Thing to Crazy for Katie Melua.
The composer, arranger, producer and conductor is also known to millions for his creation of The Wombles group, following the success of the seventies’ children’s TV series.
Here, he shares his views on writer’s block, offering advice to songwriters suffering from the distressing affliction…
I know I had a pretty hardy upbringing. I often arranged through the night with coffee and cigarettes (I don’t smoke any more), sometimes arriving at the 10am session with the score only just finished. I’d be just in time for three copyists to tear it into three chunks and copy it so the orchestra had their own separate parts.
Meanwhile, I would start recording two other pieces I’d have written before midnight. Quick decisions became a way of life – perhaps even spilling into other parts of life.
That was all mostly to do with arranging rather than songwriting, but the same applies to songwriting if you believe it. It’s a bit like if you believe in Santa or fairies, they exist. I just don’t believe in writer’s block. Therefore it isn’t.
My advice to songwriters who can’t write anything on a given day, is to just write something. Some shit. A crap verse. It might lead to an interesting chorus that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t written the crap verse. The skill is – either then or later – (maybe by listening to your mates or your girlfriend, but ideally by yourself) to identify what’s what, throw away the bad bit and build on the good bit.
Deadlines are great. Ask a journalist if he or she has ever had writer’s block. I bet eight out of ten will tell you they write their best stuff with an hour to go before they have to file their copy.
The best incentive for me to write is to book a 70 piece orchestra for either eight weeks away or next week, depending on the size of the job. It concentrates the mind. Are you going to turn up without anything written? No. The phone goes. Do I want to go out to dinner? Love to, but I’ve got a session in a week’s time, sorry. If it’s in six weeks’ time, it’s, ‘Yeah, sod it, let’s go out to dinner’.
If the session is tomorrow even I’m not quite stupid enough to build up that kind of adrenalin by wasting the pre-midnight hours and relying on myself to come up with some genius piece at 4am, then arrange it before 10am.
I have been in that situation, where I have a 10am session with rhythm and strings and everything and the song isn’t even written yet at 4am. Trust me, you write quickly then.
But my main point is this: just put something on that blank paper to stop it from being blank. Blank paper (or software) is exciting but it can also be intimidating. I was once working with George Harrison. He had done a guitar solo on my Hunting of the Snark album. He rang me one night and I said, ‘So when shall we write this masterpiece then, George?’. His reply was worth bottling. He said, ‘Well, actually something crap would do to start with’.
Enough said.
Read Mike's blog at http://madhouserag.com/
The composer, arranger, producer and conductor is also known to millions for his creation of The Wombles group, following the success of the seventies’ children’s TV series.
Here, he shares his views on writer’s block, offering advice to songwriters suffering from the distressing affliction…
I know I had a pretty hardy upbringing. I often arranged through the night with coffee and cigarettes (I don’t smoke any more), sometimes arriving at the 10am session with the score only just finished. I’d be just in time for three copyists to tear it into three chunks and copy it so the orchestra had their own separate parts.
Meanwhile, I would start recording two other pieces I’d have written before midnight. Quick decisions became a way of life – perhaps even spilling into other parts of life.
That was all mostly to do with arranging rather than songwriting, but the same applies to songwriting if you believe it. It’s a bit like if you believe in Santa or fairies, they exist. I just don’t believe in writer’s block. Therefore it isn’t.
My advice to songwriters who can’t write anything on a given day, is to just write something. Some shit. A crap verse. It might lead to an interesting chorus that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t written the crap verse. The skill is – either then or later – (maybe by listening to your mates or your girlfriend, but ideally by yourself) to identify what’s what, throw away the bad bit and build on the good bit.
Deadlines are great. Ask a journalist if he or she has ever had writer’s block. I bet eight out of ten will tell you they write their best stuff with an hour to go before they have to file their copy.
The best incentive for me to write is to book a 70 piece orchestra for either eight weeks away or next week, depending on the size of the job. It concentrates the mind. Are you going to turn up without anything written? No. The phone goes. Do I want to go out to dinner? Love to, but I’ve got a session in a week’s time, sorry. If it’s in six weeks’ time, it’s, ‘Yeah, sod it, let’s go out to dinner’.
If the session is tomorrow even I’m not quite stupid enough to build up that kind of adrenalin by wasting the pre-midnight hours and relying on myself to come up with some genius piece at 4am, then arrange it before 10am.
I have been in that situation, where I have a 10am session with rhythm and strings and everything and the song isn’t even written yet at 4am. Trust me, you write quickly then.
But my main point is this: just put something on that blank paper to stop it from being blank. Blank paper (or software) is exciting but it can also be intimidating. I was once working with George Harrison. He had done a guitar solo on my Hunting of the Snark album. He rang me one night and I said, ‘So when shall we write this masterpiece then, George?’. His reply was worth bottling. He said, ‘Well, actually something crap would do to start with’.
Enough said.
Read Mike's blog at http://madhouserag.com/
