Just think, as songwriters, every time we write a song we start off with a blank page.
It sits there and it waits patiently for us to pick up our pen and pour out our songwriting ideas from our hearts and minds onto its surface however, a blank page can mean one of two things to a songwriter.
It can either be either something to be fearful of, a scary journey into the unknown or, a doorway to infinite songwriting idea possibilities.
Let me ask you this.
Are you free to create whatever you want, whenever you want without second guessing, self-censorship or prejudice on your part? Or, are you a songwriter that feels shackled by the belief that you must obtain some sort of quantifiable result every time you put your pen to paper?
Which headspace would you rather be in?
I know that I’m asking a lot of questions here but as songwriters, this is something we face every time we sit down to write a song and as our answers to these questions are automatic and unconscious, we wonder why at times we don’t write anything.
This is when we start blaming things like songwriters block.
So, try this simple exercise the next time you sit down to write a song. Look at that blank page in front of you as your friend and playmate.
You see, just the very thought of sitting down to write a song means that there is possibility that the muse will knock on your door and ask if you can come out to play.
It just takes a shift in our perspective
We need to remind ourselves that writing a song can be one or more of these three experiences:
A linear experience – You come across a possible song title that jumps out at you and after writing the first line of the first verse, a first draft is suddenly completed from start to finish.
A puzzle solving exercise – You take a piece here, a song title there, a bit of a verse here and a half written phrase there and, after discovering the common thread that connects everything, a song is eventually completed.
Like incubating an egg – You finish writing a chorus but find you can’t go any further however, after leaving the half finished song for a period of time something triggers in your mind and the song magically completes itself.
Sometimes you start writing a song from the beginning and work forwards, sometimes you start a song from the middle and work outwards and sometimes you start writing at the end and work backwards.
When it comes to songwriting, it doesn’t matter where you start, as long as you start somewhere.
Just remember, a blank page is not proof that you’ve not written a song. It’s merely the doorway to an infinite world of songwriting idea possibilities and all you need to do is have the courage to walk through it, regardless of the outcome.
So get out of your own way and allow yourself to be free to create.
Okay, take a deep breath… How is that blank page looking now? Let me know if shifting your perspective towards the blank piece of paper works for your songwriting process.
One of my guilty pleasures is my love of the music of ABBA.
I always felt that if you wanted to study perfect pop music then study the song catalogue of Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. To say that I have the utmost respect for these two songwriters is an understatement.
Now while Benny has been the musical director of his own Orchestra of late, Bjorn has been recently elected to the role of president of CISAC which is the umbrella organisation of copyright collection societies around the world.
It is in his role as president of CISAC that Bjorn has been an outspoken advocate for the rights of songwriters.
…the streaming economy that now dominates the music industry has put songwriters at a severe financial disadvantage. Low payouts, split among teams of writers, mean that even the composers of major hits make a relative pittance from streams despite the clear importance of songwriters and producers in crafting the material that propels the careers of star performers.
He extrapolates the above quote further in a very recent TEDx talk he gave called Rebalancing The Song Economy where he offers three ways in which the song economy can be made fairer for the creators of the currency that the music industry today is built on…
SONGS!
Here’s the video of Bjorn’s TEDx talk. Enjoy!
Well, what did you think of that? Even though Bjorn Ulvaeus made his fortune through writing songs for ABBA in the “good old days” he still has the humility and humanity to advocate fairness and equality for songwriters doing it tough in this new music industry TODAY.
Awesome! Makes me want to love ABBA all over again.
Musicians don’t retire, they just change direction and get more picky and choosy about what they want to be doing plus…
They don’t give a fuck about what people think of them and their music anymore.
Right now, we’re approaching the halfway point of May, which means that we’re almost at the end of the 2020/2021 financial year, which means it’s almost tax time (something that I’m preparing for at this moment) plus, it’s been just over four months since I turned 50.
For me, turning 50 was the start of me looking back on my life and asking myself questions such as…
Am I getting too old for this music caper?
What have/haven’t I achieved to date?
What am I going to do next with my music/life?
Now, to some, these questions are necessary because self reflection is an important part of growing as an individual but I reckon in my case, this line of self talk has been designed by my inner critic to derail and sabotage any attempt of me taking some sort of leap of faith in 2021.
This is of course cleverly done under the guise of “being realistic” which as we all know is the nemesis of all optimists like myself.
I’ve noticed that as they get older, there are some musicians that turn to genres like Country, or Blues, (or Roots, or Urban Folk, or Americana, or whatever the fad/flavour is for this year) as a means to “musically retire.”
While all of the above-mentioned genres have their place to fill inside the wonderful musical landscape that we all live in, retiring to these genres would be for me the musical equivalent of putting on a dressing gown, slipping on some comfortable slippers and watching TV for the rest of my life.
No, I don’t think so, not for me…
If I was going to musically retire, I want to become an ambient musician. I would be retiring by composing and performing ambient music, soundscapes and the like. I want to walk the path that sonic pioneers like Brian Eno has been walking on for decades.
That’s where I see myself in the latter stages of my music career.
However, besides my post-birthday contemplations, I was also inspired to write this because of a YouTube video created by brilliant ambient musician Bill Vencil from Chords Of Orion and Chords Of Orion – Longplay called “You Will Become An Old Musician (Bring It On)” a perfect response to a negative comment he received about how some musicians are supposedly TOO OLD for YouTube.
I had been following Chords Of Orion for a fair while now but it wasn’t until I saw the above video that I decided to really get into what the channel was about… Ambient Music and the creation of it.
Anyways, what I’ve gathered from all of this is that there is no such thing as musical retirement. Music (and the creation of it) transcends age and therefore it also transcends the self imposed limitations around age that I sometimes put myself through.
I am so glad I am the age I am, with the knowledge and experience that I have and the ability to create music with all of those tools at my disposal. I look at 2021 and beyond with excitement knowing that there’s going to be some wonderful music yet to be created.
Robert Fripp said it best when he described music as the “…wine that fills the cup of silence.” I say that for me, the best is yet to come.
Peace,
Corey 🙂
PS: As I’m writing this I have Brian Eno’s “New Space Music” humming along in the background and I’m loving it. It’s so conducive to creation, I’m surprised I didn’t click onto this before.
For a little while now I’ve been thinking about starting up another band to showcase my increasing portfolio of songs that haven’t seen the light of day.
I’ve been testing the waters, keeping one eye open and ear out on the local music scene and even re-joined the board of SCALA (Songwriters, Composers And Lyricists Association), a local/global songwriters association, just to see if the concept of getting yet another band together has some merit.
I mean, I must be some sort of masochist, a glutton for punishment. Another band?
Well, what can I say, I’m really a bass player by trade and right now I’m really missing playing bass to a live audience.
Currently I’m with The Ides Of March playing yacht rock covers and other forgotten hits from the past but the bass playing spot was already taken so I sing and play acoustic guitar and keys instead
I play bass and sing for The Synchronicity Police, (a three piece Police tribute outfit) but those gigs are few and far between at the moment so it doesn’t really count as consistent bass playing in my book.
I’m also filling in as the bass player for a local soul band Soul Sensations and although it’s been a lot of fun and all, I can’t guarantee that I can devote the time needed to become a full member of that band.
This is because I’ve made up my mind… I’m getting the band back together.
Well, I’ll be getting back together with my FIGJAM partner in crime Darren Zaza on guitar in the first instance, but we are looking for a drummer and a keyboard player to make up a four piece that hopes to create music that is the lovechild of The Police and The Badloves.
If you want to hear what the music might sound like, check out my album “Seeing Stars” from SoundCloud below…
I’m pretty excited about all this though because it means that I’m now ready to get back into playing live regularly and consistently so I can expose myself and my songs to a listening audience again.
Awesome.
So, with that being said, if you are either a drummer or a keyboard player or, you know (of) someone who plays drums or keys who’s looking for a band to connect with, then contact me and we can chat about what happens next.
I’m a firm believer that when it comes to songwriting, the originality in your songs comes from the fact that you wrote it in the first place, not from any external source.
To reinforce this belief, I found a video of a TEDx talk by author and artist Austin Kleoncalled “Steal Like An Artist” in which he talks about how art can be put into one of two categories…
Art that is worth stealing
Art that isn’t worth stealing
He also talks about his poetry writing technique called “newspaper blackout” which is blackening out unimportant words in old newspapers and how this seemingly original idea actually has a 250 year history attached to it.
He finishes off the video with some quotes by Pablo Picasso, TS Eliot, Steve Jobs and David Bowie which all extol the virtues of “… taking the
things you’ve stolen and turning it into your own thing” rather than
just copying ideas for copying sake.
Anyway, I reckon you’re going to either love or hate this video plus, you’re going to pick up a fantastic songwriting idea generating technique as well.
Well, what do you think of this video? What do you think of the whole concept of “Nothing Is Original” in songwriting?
Comment below or contact me about it. I’d love to hear from you.
He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure
James Lane Allen
When it comes to writing songs, nothing blocks the flow of songwriting ideas more than two small but very powerful words…
FEAR and DOUBT.
The fear comes first. I’m talking about the fear of…
Not being good enough
Being ridiculed by online trolls
Being found out as not being an expert
Not having anything to say
People not liking my output
Exposing myself too much
People not liking me and my music
With the doubt following soon behind it making me…
Play down my achievements (false humility)
Sugar coat my message to please others
Writing songs that lack confidence and conviction
Second-guess everything that I do
Strive for the unattainable, the perfect
Become an expert at procrastination
Not finish anything
I know that at one time or another, we’ve all experienced this dance between fear and doubt in some form or another.
I continue to do so every single day. In fact, fear and doubt have been the two main reasons why I haven’t gotten as far with my songwriting as I could have.
One of my main regrets in my life so far has been to let fear and doubt get the better of me over the years.
I’ve imagined many, many times what I could’ve achieved if I had not let fear and doubt get in the way of my professional and personal progress as a songwriter. Have you felt this way too sometimes?
Well, the next question to ask is… “What do we do about it?”
For me, I find doing these three things help a lot…
Acknowledge the fear
Encapsulate the fear
Take action in spite of the fear
Acknowledge that having fears and doubts is an essential part of being a songwriter.
In fact, both are essential parts of being a human being.
Used wisely, fear is a great mechanism for assessing risk and therefore it needs to be exercised carefully but not all the time. You do need to train yourself to not feel the fear in creative situations but to embrace the play that creativity brings to the table.
I do this by just recognising that I have these fears and doubts and I have the courage and skill to deal with them when they arise.
Encapsulate your fears and doubt by writing them down.
The fear and doubt lists demonstrated above are from my own journals and already from that list I can see how silly these fears and doubts look on paper.
That’s what I find to be the beauty of writing these things down, I get a much more realistic perspective of the situation and I feel more detached from the fears and doubts because I have physically plucked them from my mind and put them down on paper.
Just take action anyway, plough through the fear and doubt.
Once you’ve written down what your fears and doubts are, the desire to create overrides the fear that comes with creation and you end up doing what you most want to do at that moment… CREATE!
If I find that if I’m feeling a fear and doubt attack coming on, I open up my journal and write down what I’m thinking and feeling.
This is essential for clearing the block that was preventing me from writing a song in the first place as I recognise that, most of the fears and doubts that I concoct inside my head are just that… INSIDE MY HEAD.
They are not real, they are not based on any facts, it’s just me being a little more vulnerable and overly cautious about my abilities as a songwriter and what I have to say at that moment.
How do you deal with your fears and doubts when it comes to your creativity? Feel free to let me know as I’m always fascinated with the stories of others faced with the same situation.
I, like many, many songwriters have a problem with my songwriting process…
It’s called “perfectionism” and along with an extremely over-zealous inner critic, this problem has plagued me my whole songwriting/music career.
I have tried many times to snap out of it and to some extent have been temporarily successful numerous times over the years but at the end of the day, my default songwriting position is of being paralysed by too much choice.
My main curse is that I don’t finish things. I absolutely love to start things but I’ve never really finish things… Songs, tasks, projects, activities. I rarely finish things to the standard that I’d would like but then again, maybe that’s the problem.
Maybe, I set impossible standards for myself.
Anyways, I stumbled across an article all about this very problem of perfectionism in songwriting and the author was going through the very same issues as I am, right now.
I realized that finalizing and sharing my music was the part that scared me the most. I was afraid. I was afraid of marking something complete because then I would have to answer to my own work. I could and would be held accountable for the result, which my perfectionism was never going to be happy with. If I was going to wait until I was 100% happy with something, I was going to be waiting a very long time.
BINGO! Therein lies my issue… Fear of being accountable for my work, fear of being criticised and the fear of having to answer to trolls online.
He goes on by offering some suggestions as to how to get past this fear and for me, the first things that I need to do is to stop setting outlandishly unreachable goals for myself. My goals should be smaller and happen more often.
Maybe what I need to do is to stop looking at my songwriting process as a series of sudden bursts of productivity and try to create a songwriting process that is more streamlined, organised, consistent and sustainable.
More than ever, good music needs to be written and shared with the world so why should fear and doubt in my own abilities get in the way of me sharing my music with the world?
David Silverstein finishes off his article with a simple quote from Leonardo da Vinci…
Art is never finished, only abandoned.
I’ll be using this COVID-19 downtime I find myself in to finally conquer my songwriting fears and doubts. I hope to be finishing a lot of songs.
Do you have the same issue? Love starting off projects but don’t take it to completion? Let me know what experiences you’ve had with this and how you managed to work around it. I’d love to hear from you.
Since the mid nineties I have had a very keen interest in studying meditation. Around that time I was exposed to a number of philosophies of mainly the new age kind through the bands I was in and through the company I kept.
This created a healthy environment of wonderment and questioning about what life is about and what makes human beings (especially me as I point the finger inwards) do the things that they do.
Out of all the books I read, the people I had spoken to and the philosophies I was exposed to, it turns out that for me, Buddhism was the only thing that really made sense.
Now, there were periods of time where I was right into the study and other times where I had let it lapse but if I was ever asked what religion I adhered to, I would answer Buddhism. However, there was always one thing that confused me about Buddhism and my relationship to it.
I have never seen Buddhism as a religion but more of a method of living.
Now, some schools of Buddhism seem to have a more religious or doctrinal approach to them while others not so but all I wanted to do at the end of the day was practise this method of living without any of the superstitious or religious overtones.
It wasn’t until very recently however, that I discovered that my “Buddhism without the religion” actually has a name… Secular Buddhism.
Now when asked about my religion (mainly through other religious people who knock at my door from time to time) I can reply “I don’t have one, but I am a Secular Buddhist” (much to the amusement or confusion of the questioner). According to Wikipedia, Secular Buddhism is…
“… a broad term for an emerging form of Buddhism and secular spirituality that is based on humanist, skeptical, and/or agnostic values, as well as pragmatism and (often) naturalism, rather than religious (or more specifically supernatural or paranormal) beliefs.”
It’s also referred to as Western Buddhism or Buddhist Atheism. Once I found a name for my rediscovered path, everything else just started to make sense.
Therefore, my Buddhist study would be of a secular nature and my meditation and mindfulness study would come from the disciplined Zen Buddhist tradition of Japan.
In future posts, I’ll be writing about what I discover on this particular path but in the meantime I’m just happy to “be” in this very moment.
Let’s look at the word SONGWRITING for a minute. The dictionary meaning of the word is the “… writing the music and words of songs.”
Now that should give us a clue but I think the definition it goes deep enough. I reckon the meaning of the word SONGWRITING should be something like…
“The process in which a song is created using words and melody”
The word itself is comprised of two words, song and writing. The song part is the end result of a process and the writing part is the process itself.
Get it… Without the writing there is no song.
It seems like a simple concept doesn’t it? But it’s amazing how many songs aren’t written. They are started but never finished.
You see, you can talk all you like about verses, choruses, middle-eights, bridges, pre-choruses, the length of the intro and hooks and so on but without the physical activity of writing the song, all of that theory is meaningless.
Introducing the Songwriting Process
Personally, songwriting is much, much more than the song itself. The act of writing a song is a whole process in itself. It’s a discipline, a meditation and for me, a way of life.
Without a songwriting process, a song (being the end result of the process) would not exist at all.
If we, as songwriters didn’t have our own songwriting process, then all of our thoughts, feelings and songwriting ideas will become random, haphazard and lacking in organisation.
How would you be able to maintain a creative and sustainable songwriting environment with all that disorganisation going on?
Pablo Picasso once said that “… inspiration exists, but it has to find you working” and I think that sums everything I’ve been trying to say in this post nicely.
In future posts I’ll be writing about how you can create, adopt and manage your own songwriting process and in turn write more songs rather than just waiting for inspiration to come your way. Plus, I’ll be giving you insights as to how I write my songs.
What does songwriting and the process involved in writing a song mean to you? Feel free to let me know as we all have something to learn from each other.
When I was five years old I asked Mum and Dad if I could have piano lessons.
Now, Mum and Dad didn’t have any room in the house for a piano nor, was there enough money to buy one in the first place but that was okay with me… I still had my imagination to play with.
All through my primary school years I was constantly writing stories and poems then, I was making up songs to go with the poems and drawing pictures to go with the stories. Back then I was an unstoppable ball of creative energy.
It wasn’t until I reached high school though that my interest in music really came to the forefront. The school that I went to had a very good music program which I was most keen to get into. It was there that I could really begin to immerse myself in all things music.
The instrument that I wanted to learn was the saxophone, mainly because back in 1983 it was a pretty cool instrument to play. However, they were all snapped up by other students so the next best thing I thought to learn was the clarinet, which I continued to play until I left high school in 1987.
Most of my recess and lunch times were spent in the music room practising my clarinet and teaching myself piano. It was an environment in which I really felt I belonged to and through music theory lessons, I was introduced to sheet music, manuscript paper, treble/bass clefs and a vast array of notes for my imagination to play with.
It was around the same time that I wrote my first song. This was after my best friend Andrew showed me an “A” chord on an old nylon stringed classical guitar which was given to me on my 13th birthday by my Dad (perhaps to compensate not providing me with a piano all those years ago).
This inspired me to teach myself the guitar at home which allowed me to become immersed with music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Add to that the thrill of writing a new song with each discovery of a new chord and my life was pretty much complete.
All of my school friends were budding musicians, my whole life at that time seemed to be revolved around music, it couldn’t get any better than that.
When I left high school music became something that allowed me to escape the day to day pressures of living. Music made my growing up into a young adult a more tolerable experience.
I started up bands which seemed to endlessly rehearse but never played any gigs and at the same time picked up the bass because I could never find a bass player for these endlessly rehearsing bands.
Wherever I was working at the time I’d carry around a small notebook and pen and scrawl down song lyrics and songwriting ideas at every opportunity. I spent the rest of the time daydreaming what it would be like to play music professionally… That was my idea of Heaven on Earth and it was my goal to find it.
Sydney
My first taste of being a professional musician came in 1994 when I joined a band that was going to relocate to Sydney called the “Chocolate Dogs.”
After playing some awesome warm up/farewell shows in Adelaide, we went to the promised land in convoy with swirling romantic notions in our heads of making it big, bolstered by the fact that the biggest band agency in Sydney at the time had decided to put us on their books.
Love Rears Its Ugly Heard (Living Colour) – Chocolate Dogs @ Revesby Workers Club 1995
We decided that nothing would stop us. “We’ll play as a cover band first to get some money coming in then we’ll start an originals band afterwards” we said to ourselves, “yeah sure, we’ll be able to do both.”
Wrong!
The reality was that after being shunted around every corner of Sydney playing in every shitty dive you could ever imagine, the agency dropped us after 18 months on their books. We didn’t know this but at the time but we were “that band from Adelaide” that played the venues that no-one else wanted to play at.
We then tried to make a go at playing our own stuff, the real reason why we all went to Sydney in the first place but with no real Plan B in place, poverty knocking at our door and band members arguing over royalty splits on income not yet realised the band split after one gig.
That experience was very painful, so much so that I gave up playing music and tried to have a go at living in Sydney as a “normal person.” I got a job at Aussie Home Loans and moved up the ranks pretty quickly, found love and moved in to my girlfriend’s place in Leichhardt.
All was going well but I started to feel the music calling at me. It was then that I started missing being a musician, writing songs, performing live and connecting with the muse.
On a whim I went to a weekend songwriting workshop in North Sydney and from there my love affair with music started again. I met up with people who would become the founding members of “Hot Fridge” and “Giffeaux” two bands that saved my life from the beige coloured glasses of mediocrity.
Brand Spanking New (C. Stewart) – Hot Fridge 1998Nine Lives (J. Gifford) – Giffeaux 1998
I did however, become pretty obsessed with everything and playing in two bands and trying to hold down a full on relationship and a full time job took a real toll on my mental health.
I had a nervous breakdown in late 1999 and as a consequence of that I came back to Adelaide with my Dad (he flew up the day before to rescue me) and all of my belongings packed into my Mazda 323 station wagon.
The prodigal son had returned with his tail between my legs and the dark cloud of shame and failure hanging over his head.
Back Home
Even in those really dark times, music never left my side. It would knock on my door but I just wouldn’t let it in. After a few months of not leaving the house (I was living with Mum and Dad at the time) I decided that I’d had enough. Not having music in my life was like living with an amputated limb.
The next time music knocked on my door, I opened it and embraced it with open arms and from that moment on my life became a process of rebuilding.
I was still working casual day jobs but I was also in bands that now had some drive and determination and were wanting to go somewhere. Bands like the Heather Frahn Band, FunkStar and Orangutang
I started to find myself in situations that turned into great opportunities for advancing my music career.
In 2006 I had another opportunity to really make a go at playing music professionally. “Yes it’s a cover band” I said to myself, “but still, I’ll be doing nothing else.”
So, I ran with it and FIGJAM was born. We got our demos together, got out and about and networked like crazy, we played everywhere and for the first time in my life I felt that I was in control of my musical direction plus, I was making a living out of what I loved.
As well as playing in two other original bands at the same time “Liars Bench” and “Soul Trader” I was a self employed, professional musician and I was loving it.
Wanna Be The One (S. Betts/C. Stewart) – Soul Trader 2006Hand It To You (M. Parker) – Liars Bench 2006
And even though I was doing what I loved at the time, I still came across the same type of ungrateful, difficult, tight-fisted and clueless client/customer that you hear about but think “Nah, I’m a musician, that won’t happen to me.”
But as the years went by and the novelty of being a professional (cover) musician wore thin, I started to realise that in my drive to make a living out of music by playing covers interspersed with the occasional originals gig now and then, I was forgetting the real reason why I wanted to play music in the first place.
I was starting to burn out.
There were however, some bright lights during this time. I finished and released my debut CD “Seeing Stars” in 2012, I made the decision to start building a home recording studio so I can do all my future recordings in-house and I got married to my long time partner Mara who I met at a Liars Bench gig.
But all in all, it was decided that my main musical project FIGJAM would wind up at the end of 2015 and in the vacuum left by that decision had given me some time to think. I realised that I had made pretty much the same mistakes that I made in Sydney all those years ago.
I realised that I didn’t have any balance in my life anymore and that trying to play covers to fund your own music is not as easy as you might think.
Full Circle?
So where am I now? Well, I’m doing a lot more songwriting and recording plus collaborating with other songwriters and getting myself reacquainted with my blogging through Corey Stewart Online with more projects to be launched down the track.
For a while I had taken a long break from playing live but now I’m performing with a band called “The Ides Of March” plus, I’ve returned to the board of SCALA (Songwriters, Composers and Lyricists Association) because what better way to ingratiate yourself to the original music scene than to join an original music association.
Have I come full circle? Well, I reckon I have but I’m certainly looking at where I am and what I’m doing musically with a fresh pair of eyes and ears and that’s got to be a good thing.
What I will say though is that despite everything that has happened in my life so far, it’s comforting to know that music has never let me down, its always been there to pick me up, dust me off and be the means for me to get on with my life.
And with what has happened to me in recent months with Mara’s passing, I’m in need of some music therapy more than ever.
I would hate to think of who and where I would be if I didn’t have music in my life. It’s been there for me for as long as I remember and now, I just want to work on being true to myself and my chosen craft so I can create a way in which I can honour and repay the muse.