Filippo Faustini is a guitarist and producer based in London. He graduated in Modern Guitar at the Conservatoire in Frosinone (Italy) and then he completed an MA in Composition for Moving Images at City University (London). He is the guitarist and producer for the London-based alt rock/ambient band, Alice in the Cruel Sea. Filippo is also the co-founder of a recently formed music production company called Music Brewery where he works as producer and mixing engineer.
We briefly mentioned “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen earlier. Aside from the religious references, it was also originally a poem Cohen wrote and published before the song was ever recorded. Try writing a poem purely on pen and paper, without worrying about melody or rhythm at all. Once you’ve got a solid draft, try setting it to music. Ultimately, you might need to be inventive or make some changes to make everything flow nicely, but this can produce good results.