Feeling the Love - What is Success? 2/25/18

Many of us would envision ourselves being creatively successful as possibly when we see our name on the marquee.  Or, having a show at the local gallery or maybe being the guest dancer in a big production.  Possibly being rich and famous, written up in newspapers, magazines or on TV.  These are definitely big measures of success but only obtainable for a small percentage of people. 

For most of us, our measure of success needs to be something else.  It needs to be something that makes us happy and brings satisfaction and fulfillment inside.  It’s not how many likes we get on Facebook.  It’s not the fleeting oohs and ahhs from friends.  Of course, these comments are nice but they don’t stick around and usually we get needy again pretty quickly as to our self worth.  I’ve noticed that many highly successful people, those on TV and in the movies seem to have a high need for external approval.  That begs me to question, is what we think of as the highest levels of success really success at all?

We all see that many people who become rich and famous don’t seem to be any happier than most of us, in fact, many seem to be less happy.  They can no longer go out in public as they will be bothered by someone, fans, press, etc.  Many rich and famous people seem to have more problems with relationships, drugs and alcohol and many live short lives because of it.  Fame seems to bring even more problems.  No doubt most stars have some talent but are they more of a product pushed by the media and greedy corporate executives?  At some point a new product comes along and they are history.  Nashville says you’re only as good as your last song.  Is success like the flash of a falling star in the night.  Many still crave fame and don’t handle the new kid on the block well.  Also are you truly successful if you can sing or dance, but can’t manage other things in your life?

So this leads to the question, What is success?  Are we still a success if no one knows about us or what we do?  Are we a success if we don’t make a lot of money from our pursuits?  Are we a success if in some areas we excel and in others we are a complete failure?  Are we a success if we don’t hold high degrees or haven’t mastered our craft?  Is being successful different for each person?  I think we have to deeply contemplate and answer that question for ourselves. 

For myself, this has been a frustrating question for some time but I think I’m finally starting to come to terms with it.  As a high achiever, there’s always been a lot of frustration because in my world there is always someone more talented, prettier, wealthier, etc.  Being highly accomplished in some areas doesn’t translate over to easily achieving competence in other areas.  Actually for me the areas that didn’t come easy was even the more frustrating because I thought they should be easy to achieve. 

Some people seem to be very accomplished in one area and that’s where they seem to stay, but for me I’ve always had a lot of interests I pursued.  I’m one of those jack of all trades people and master of none types.  I also have this left brain right brain competition always going on.  I was highly accomplished in being an independent business entrepreneur and painting, but I struggled with my music production.  I was just average with singing and playing a musical instrument.  I found my life in the arts many times frustrating as there were always people better and I had high expectations of myself.  I did not acknowledge that many of these people learned their instruments early on and have had fifty years of playing somewhere, while I was doing tax returns and budgets for businesses. 

Many times I was extremely hard on myself and didn’t give myself credit for the areas I did excel in.  The things I excelled in sometimes became back burner items as I moved on to remedy my weaker areas that weren’t good enough.  This usually kept me on the treadmill of not being good enough overall.  Then I would feel needy and crave approvals from others.   There were times when I was criticized, especially when it was not constructive and that was agonizing.  I didn’t have the confidence to let someone’s casual misspoken words roll off my back and it resulted in me feeling very angry.

 But one day I realized that no matter how much approval and feedback I received it did not remedy my inner most feelings of being inadequate in that area and maybe even overall.  I wasn’t finding the joy and the satisfaction in my pursuits.  I didn’t have the inner confidence I needed.  I do know it’s possible to find the love.  I know when I paint a really good painting and I frame it and hang it on the wall, I feel that sense of happiness and satisfaction.  But the things I struggle with, I feel like a failure and sometimes I’m a total failure because I haven’t excelled at everything.  It’s a high hurdle and an impossible unrealistic standard to live up to.  It has been a life long struggle, but I’m starting to come to terms with it.  Awareness of the problem is half the battle and changing the narrative is a big part of the resolution.

So my new personal measure of success is to

1.  Seek inside for my personal approvals first.  Do I like it? 

2.  Learn to self-critique before seeking it outside. 

3.  Develop my confidence, acceptance and satisfaction inside.

Also, it’s good to be aware of those on the outside who may be approving and evaluating your creations.  Many times approvals from others don’t really tell us if our creations have the quality we might desire.  Many times people who chime in do not have the expertise to tell us much other than their preference or what they personally like.  People who may criticize your work may also have the same problem in that they are not qualified to evaluate what you have done.  Many people can’t give you helpful constructive criticism, it’s more of their preference or bias.  Also many times in the arts, you run into frustrated  creative people who delight in fending off their competition.  It’s good to know who you are dealing with and avoid certain more negative persons.  I remember a famous quote not exactly but something like this “before you make an appointment to see a shrink, make sure you aren’t in fact surrounded by crazy people”. 

At a certain stage though you do have to take some risks to find out more about your work and to see where maybe things could go.  Otherwise, like me you have a lot of framed art just hanging on your own walls.  I was on a social media site and feeling frustrated with my songwriting not going anywhere, I took a song I had composed and wasn’t happy with, just the lyrics that again I didn’t feel the lyrics were very good and I put them out there and offered to anyone else who wanted to put them to music.  The site has a lot of better musicians than some sites I had been on and I was shocked to find out they thought the lyrics were actually quite good.  Three different guys did their take on the song and I found it quite interesting and eye opening.

Just recently I was contacted by a music professional a teacher, music magazine writer and composer who has produced some albums who was interested in the lyrics I was putting out and said he thought my lyric writing and music was pretty good.  I was getting better feedback than I had been giving myself credit for, so sometimes you need to put yourself out there to learn more about where you’re really at.

       

Some Tips for Finding Your Unique Voice In Songwriting 2/23/2018

1. Get away from trying to create what you think others want to hear. In the beginning, you just need to learn to write well, so write where your heart goes. Write what you know in your unique style. Write songs you want to sing and play and that make you happy.

2. Listen to your songwriting heroes, but then go your own way. Listen to other artist's for ideas and inspiration, but then do your thing.

3. Spend some alone and undistracted time (no emails or cell phones) just being with writing your song.

4. Don't be a perfectionist or a procrastinator. Just set down and write. Write lots of bad songs.

5. Get feedback and allow people to be honest. Don't be offended by people's judgments or comments but really listen and see if their comments have any merit or benefit to you.

6. Contrasts keep songs interesting. Long and short lines. Loud and soft parts. Staccato and legato. High and low notes. Key changes. Plan each song to be different in some way.

7.”Show don't Tell" a song. Write like you're writing the details of a video to be made or a movie script to be acted out. Lots of verbs, actions, adjectives, details, colors, imagery. Just telling about your feelings or something that happened can get boring.

8. Be open to trying new things. Don't get in a rut with your songs.

9. Disadvantage of only natural talent. It'll only get your so far. Some famous person said it's 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Practice and persistence is better than talent. Average people learn more from failure than success.

10. See the Big Picture Always - Learn to analyze your songs and ask questions such as What is needed to make this song work? Does it need more emotion? More energy? Is the vocal melody boring? Critique your own songs first.

11. Learn to present your songs in a unique way. Say lyrics in an interesting and unique way.

12. Keep your songs simple and singable, especially the chorus.

13. Work with others to expand your boundaries. Working with others or bouncing ideas around can create more energy, ideas and focus.

14. Do something every day, even just 15 minutes. Write a couple lines or a song title, or research something. Work productively and then take breaks. Especially when you're stuck, do something else and relax.

15. Know what you want from songwriting, have long-term and short-term plans. Most importantly, enjoy what you're doing. Write the songs you want to sing in the car or play at the open mic night. Compare yourself and your progress only to yourself a year ago or a month ago. 

16. You need to sleep on some songs and give your subconscious time to work it out.

17. Always have a pad of paper close to write down song ideas when they strike you or record ideas on your phone.

Building and Assessing Your Creative Self

Building and Assessing Your Creative Self  2/22/18

There is no one on this planet quite like you.  Many times we look to others for approval and to judge if what we do or create is truly worthwhile.  However, this external validation is fleeting at best and doesn’t help us truly develop a solid foundation in our creative sense of self.  Many times the validations we do or don’t get from others is laced with problems.  A lot of times it’s just that persons opinions, likes or dislikes and has nothing to do with the true quality of your work.  Many times that person is not qualified to access what you’ve done.  That person may bring their own frustrations and even jealousies to your attention.  So you end up with a false sense of the validation of who you are and what you’ve created.   We need to learn to look inward first before turning outward for feedback.  A lot of likes on social media might just be your friends being nice or not wanting to offend you.  What do you really learn if everyone says everything is likeable?  Again external stroking of your ego doesn’t build internal confidence, it just assures you are going to be dependent on continued support.  We see this many times in talented, rich and famous people who need so much approval from their fans to keep their confidence boosted, otherwise, inside they are fragile and loose it when fame and fans move on.  Building a strong internal sense of who you are and your ability helps you progress in your capabilities and your journey.  Then external feedback and likes are nice but not required.  You are looking for your own internal satisfaction and happiness in what you do.   You learn to expand your boundaries and talents.  So I highly recommend learning the technique of Self-Critique as follows:

Self-Critique Technique  Create your own written check off evaluation sheet from valid sources. 

1.        If you wrote a song or did a painting first evaluate the creation technique.  Did you follow the recommended formats or design principles?  Truly assess your strengths and weaknesses and where you could improve in any of the areas. 

2.       Write about what you like or dislike about the project.  Would you sing or play this song over and over?  Would you frame this painting?  If you don’t like it then probably no one else is going to.

3.       Finally if and when seeking mentoring or collaborations, be very careful to only seek out qualified, non-biased sources for valid feed-back.  Collaborations are like a marriage or a relationship and you must be able to work with that person in a meaningful way.  Check out the expertise of and disposition of mentors.  In many cases it’s worth a fee to obtain objective  qualified help. 

Songwriting Inspiration – Where Does It Come From? 2/20/18

Songwriting Inspiration – Where Does It Come From?  2/20/18

Some songwriter’s will tell you they only write when the heaven opens and rains a song down on them. And I am sure it does happen occasionally.  But there may be long dry spells in between.

 If you talk to your best songwriters you will find that they approach songwriting  totally differently.  More like a job, a craft that can be developed.  Show up every day at 9:00 am with your coffee and write for an hour and learn.  Read everything you can get your hands on.  Look at hit songs and analyze them, what makes them great?  Take a songwriting class, they even offer some online or join an online or local group.  And it’s gonna’ take time, probably years and you’re probably not going to make a lot if any money.

If your only goal is to be rich and famous, forget it because I’m 99% sure it ain’t happening.  You have to love it and just want to do it for yourself.  If you find people that like your songs that’s even better.  But you will run into your share of frustrated musicians, narcissist egocentric people who can’t understand why the world never recognized them as rock stars.  They carry a chip on their shoulder and many times they will not be encouraging or even nice.  Many times musicians critiques are just their biases, likes and dislikes and will not have much value in truly analyzing the quality of your craft.  And maybe they’re not really qualified to do that.  You have to take what is helpful and positive and have a pretty thick skin.  If you are lucky you may find a mentor you trust who will be qualified to judge your work in an unbiased way.  And with all that in your life, writing songs and creating music may still end up just a hobby.

So back to the topic, where to find inspiration.  The answer is everywhere.  Your life, the people you hang out with, your spouse, neighbor, strangers, things you read online or in the newspaper, see on TV, from other songs, books, movies, poetry, the weather, etc.  The key is to start looking for inspiration and have a system of organization where you can retrieve ideas, notes, stories when you have time to write.  I use Microsoft OneNote.

I visit several web-sites where others write songs and I look for ideas there that I might incorporate into my own songwriting.  Inspirational quotes are great.  I read stories about people’s lives and problems and sometimes get an idea from that.  I also go to writer web-sites and they have daily prompts and I can read what others have written.  There’s a site called 365 Day Prompts, which has a prompt for everyday.  I have gotten ideas off things people posted on FaceBook.  

Pat Pattison has a web-site called objectwriting.com where he gives you a daily word and many people write using all their sensory perception which helps you be a better writer in that you show rather than tell in your songwriting. 

Ideas are everywhere. 

Writing Interesting Songs 2/20/2018

Writing Interesting Songs

After writing about 260 some songs since 2012, that was six years ago, I'm continually looking at what makes an interesting songs.  I look at other good and great songs to see what made them tick. I mainly write lyrics which is only 50% of a good song as the music and melody more so has to be good. A good melody can support not so great lyrics, but rarely the other way around.  Although, people have mentioned rap where there is just a back beat and the lyrics are key.  A lot of what people consider an interesting song is subjective as people have different preferences, whether they like instrumental only music and what song genres they like.   I believe a good song does the following

1.  Makes someone feel the emotion of the song happy, sad, angry, etc.

2.  Makes someone want to dance or tap their toes.

3.  Makes someone say I can relate to that, I understand.

4.  Makes someone hear the lyrics and say I love that saying

5.  Makes someone say that's my story, my life or that’s what's happening right now.

The listener identifies with the song in some way and it touches their heart, their emotions and their psyche.  It draws the listener in.

I used to just write songs mostly mediocre and sometimes even bad, just to write and that is necessary in the beginning.  Now, I try to ask myself why would someone be interested in this song and/or topic.

In folk and country music, maybe even pop, the lyrics are very important.  In folk or country music they usually tell a story or bring a concept to life in a logical way.

The Song Title

Strong and interesting titles are very important.  The title has to immediately grab your eye and make you want to check it out.  In the world of advertising it’s that slogan or interesting label you see first that makes you want to take a second or a longer look.  I’ve been doing FAWM (February Album Writing Month) for several years.  Everyone posts songs from all over the world they have written and we all comment on them.  I usually scan the song titles daily to see if one grabs my attention and then I will listen to the song.  If the title doesn’t stand out I usually pass over the song.  Finding good titles is key to your writing a good song.  I look for them all the time and keep an alphabetical listing of good titles I find to have available when I want to write. Song titles come from everywhere in daily life.  Title of books, movies, poems, ads, a spin on an old cliché (Time Wounds all Heals), a play on opposites (In the Out Door), etc.  Although, titles are not copyrighted and you will find many songs with the same title, try to make them your own.  When writing your song many times the title becomes your chorus, what they call your hook, the simple summary of what your song is about.  The title usually is repeated in the chorus a couple of times.

The Song Lyrics

Now that’s you’ve got an eye catching title, the next step is to write interesting lyrics. Some things to keep in mind

1.      Verses tend to be more detailed, versus the chorus which is general, usually a simple sing a long section.  The first two phrases of Verse 1 needs to grab  attention and draw the listener in quickly.   Remember, there are so many songs out there and people’s attention span is short, so they’ll just say next and move on if you writing is dull or rambling. 

2.     The first verse should immediately define the characters, the scene, the time and place.  The who, what, when and where.  So you have four to eight phrases to do just that.  The listener should know what’s happening in that first verse. 

3.     So you learn to say a lot in each line and the lines need to be interesting and maybe even clever.  The lines need to show and not just tell about feelings or your thoughts.  It’s the difference in saying “he was so in love with her” or saying “she woke to a dozen red roses sitting by her coffee”.  The first phrase just tells something, whereas the second line paints a picture.  The difference is using adjectives (dozen, red), action verbs (woke), nouns (coffee, roses).  Think of each line as painting a pictures or a scene in a video you are recording of the song.  Similes and metaphors are interesting ways to show information in your song phrases.

4.     The second verse for many people is much more difficult, I’ve heard it called “stuck in second verse Hell”.  But maybe it’s just because the song is not well planned out.  In the beginning maybe I just started writing, but now I am much more methodical about planning my song in an outline sort of style, so I already know what I’m going to write in the second verse and possibly the following bridge.  The second verse adds more information and develops your story more.  It should progress logically and sequentially in some order from the first verse.  Again you need what Nashville calls some furniture,  using words that show and dress up lines and not just talk about feelings or what is happening.  A little telling is okay and don’t worry it’s what tends to happen normally without even thinking, we automatically go to telling.  So focus of trying to show and paint pictures in your lines.

Another interesting way of showing is conversations between your characters or having a conversation with the listener.  Think of George Jones singing “He said I’ll love you ‘till I die” or starting the song with “Good morning, darling”.  The singer is having a conversation and that’s interesting to the listener. 

5.      You don’t always need a bridge, but if you have one it should not look like another verse.  The bridge should be shorter and show a different perspective or a moral to the song, or a positive, hopeful insight to wrap up the song.

If you want to progress as a songwriter you need develop daily habits of writing.  That doesn’t mean you have to write a song every day, but you should collect some interesting titles and keep a list, you should write a few interesting phrases, maybe as a start on a song.  Pat Pattison’s objectwriting.com is a great place to develop your skill of showing and not telling.  Every day a word is posted and people write about the word using the senses of seeing, hearing, smell, touch, taste, internal senses (my heart was racing, etc) and movement (kinesthetic).  This practice helps you write in a show me way.  In addition, on the site is an area to practice metaphor and simile writing, which is a good daily thing to do, learn how to develop interesting metaphors.