The sheer number of things a songwriter can do at any one time is staggering, so there is really never an excuse for you to be bored. Here are a few amusing ways you can pass the time and get some quality practice in, and even get a few new song ideas in the process.
CREATE AN ATMOSPHERE
True, you can just clean the room up, spray it with your favorite scent, make a batch of cookies and set a tray of them next to your recording equipment and use other bribes to get you into the room at least. You can also pull down a chord dictionary or so, grab your instrument of choice and play each group of notes in turn, putting little pencil comments in the margins about how each sounds to you. Describe a scene this chord would blend well with, emotions it evokes, physical sensations like making you feel uneasy, happy, powerful, and so forth. These will help lots later when you need a certain sound and are just not sure how to create it-these chords may be a good starting point. You can run a scan disk and defrag on your computer-this will take hours-and in the meanwhile, clean out your keyboard of dust bunnies. You can then move on to your amplifiers, maybe even opening up the back and checking for loose connections so you won't get unpleasant surprises like that the night of an important gig on stage or in the studio. You can then hook up your instrument and "check" everything-that got you playing, at least. Giving your keyboard instruments a good cleaning wouldn't hurt, either-make sure you get those woolly bits out from between the keys and any corrosion off the battery connections. Of course, you then have to plug it in and make sure none of the keys are sticking anymore, right? You might even find some fun runs while getting the crud scrubbed off the key faces. If you do find any great sounds, make sure you write them down as you do, with a quick few words about how that riff sounds to you, and what it could be used for. You can do the same thing for a guitar or other instrument, even restringing one if you like-if nothing else, you now are ready to write the next time you are in the mood, and probably won't have to be concerned about these little details.
