How to Write a Song

By Nina Hynes

For me a song usually starts with a feeling.
Once I start playing an instrument, any instrument, it appears
I play something repeatedly and a melody and a rhythm comes. I usually form words around that.
Sometimes I keep notebooks of phrases and words and if the lyrics don’t come automatically with the melody, then I seek out the pages and see if anything fits.

I often feel a song growing in me. A sense of urgency, a longing, a subject keeps coming back.
Before a song is written, sometimes I feel heavy, like there is something wrong with me. A darkness.
After the song comes, all is good again. I feel a glow.
Every experience is an inspiration to me. It could be an expression from an exchange with a shopkeeper, it could be something somebody says to me, a film.
Life can be heavy and a big struggle, that is always an inspiration too.

Music is an escape. It is the tourniquet and the opening of the floodgates in equal measure.
Triggers are everywhere and they dig out the undealt-with from inside me.

My musical inspirations are wide. I have studied sound so I am always attracted to sonic experimenters.
I always seek to find…