Dr Lou Article - Songwriting Saga

Song Writing Experience from a Non Trained Writer… ©DrLou 2012
Every songwriter fears that the ability to write songs will never go cold and the ability to write songs will stay with them for years and years. They don’t often understand how they do it; (hence the fear) they just somehow are able to come up with words, melodies, chord progressions, and even the actual sheet music. Overall, it’s a mystery to most of the artists and an amazing journey as addictive as good drug.
I can only speak for one artist, and that would be I as a person who always wanted to write music, poems, stories, films, books, etc. I always felt that “someday” I’d get around to it because I knew my thoughts were somehow interesting to others. When I took the time to describe something, I could add concepts and anecdotes that make the story interesting to some and funny to others. So there was a perceived propensity to write in general and that’s the first part; you need to believe you can write!
Writing songs kind of came out of the strange ability to write poetry and moreover from the first public exhibition of a eulogy that I wrote for my father in 1995. I picked up the pad and wrote his life’s punctuation mark, as if he was dictating it to my mind without a spoken word.
From that point on, and the reaction of that work from my family, I knew it was time to start thinking about writing music. I began to write in 1999 when I began to play the guitar frequently, in fact though I had actually written two or three other songs prior to that point, but didn’t really write them down.
Once I started to write songs, at first the music would reveal the words as if they were stuck in between the notes as they were played in my ear. As the melodies and chords were played, words seem to be right in there and all you had to do was to listen openly to the music and the words would “pop” out of the music, completing the verses of the songs, a process to write by like lines on a paper.
I used a method where writing was a path through the chords of the guitar, different each time, because as part of my guitar learning process, (teaching myself) I chose a “plan” or “path through the woods”; to allow me to set goals in learning to play and sing at a level, some day, that would be respectable in the music world. So it was with the songwriting, it became a journey, alone with my guitars leaving behind pieces of time in small captured moments of thought and emotion. To this end, an obscure journal has been left created, chronicling a path from dark to light, back to dark, and so on, just as life offers the hills and valleys that make it all worthwhile.
As it is, this process of writing your own music, creating a musical diary brings other benefits that one may not have thought were involved at the onset of such a journey; that being the camaraderie of other songwriters. And with that the inherent jealousy and scorn that is a natural part of being human. Each original songwriter is a complete package of what you might find in a sibling in any family.
The fellow songwriter actually loves the other’s music, even if it isn’t as good (in their opinion) as their own. In fact most songwriters don’t really think their songs are as good as other people’s songs! They are defensive about their own work because they fear that the other person’s work has everything that their work does not. They will outwardly show liking, but inside they are jealous of anyone that they think is better, which means everyone. As a result, many songwriters will not take the chance to even allow their music to surface publically. They’ll sit with them like some fine piece of jewelry and keep it all inside for fear that bringing it out will shatter it like a glass in the hand of a child.
This is why it is so hard for original musicians to make it in the world and gather a great community of original writers; they just don’t want to support the next person. They like the music, but they fear it subconsciously so they avoid the notion that someone else’s original music is getting attention. With that said there are some small communities of songwriters that share music and have a great time with it but it’s not as prolific as it could be and some of the groups are somewhat closed to new people.
All songwriters hope, deep down, that they’ll write the next Beethoven’s 5th, or Beatles’ Let it Be, but they fear the stark reality of the incredible odds, luck, and divine intervention that needs to be present to make all that happen. Yet they still sit in the cluttered bedrooms, smoky halls, and classrooms, dreaming, writing, strumming, pounding the keys, and closing their eyes and seeing all their dreams come true in some amazing fairy tale.
This is the good part; just writing, letting yourself have that time to be alone with your soul, your mind, your heart, and your musical instruments, is the true gift of life at its most supreme moment. Don’t take any of that for granted, and know that your music has to please YOU first, and if it does that, rest assured that’s the greatest prize. But even better, if you like it, then somewhere out there, there is someone who will like it too, and if that’s the best you ever do, they no one can ever say you wasted your life. Dr’s Advice: Go out and play your music, don’t fear the reaper, he’ll be there as sure as the mailman bringing bad news. This is your music and your life, you lived it, you wrote it, you did it, be proud, be happy, and enjoy the ride, after all, it’s what we do.