Are You Making Your Songwriting Too Easy or Too Hard?
By Jim Bruno • May 9th, 2011 • Category: InspirationThis article contributed by Jim Bruno of SongClasses.com.
A common mistake that songwriters make is being too hard or too easy on themselves. Although this is often true of beginners, it happens at all levels of ability and experience. It happens to everyone to some degree or another.
A friend of mine had the pleasure of conversing with Bob Dylan after a performance at Radio City Music Hall. Bob expressed his own insecurities about his excellent song ‘Watching the River Flow’! I’m talking about Bob Dylan! The most lauded songwriter in modern times and even he has doubts. So don’t be overly concerned if it’s happening to you.
We all have these two ‘voices’ in our head. One is saying that we suck, that we’re fooling ourselves, that we couldn’t write a grocery list much less a song worth hearing. Meanwhile, some of us are prone to hearing the other ‘voice’, the one that’s saying we’re geniuses, that our songs will set the world on fire, and we’re already working on our Grammy acceptance speeches and choosing our clothes for the Kennedy Center Honors!
So what is it? Are we losers or winners? How can we tell? Well, it’s not easy. First we have to come to a realization of what is reasonable to expect from at this stage of our songwriting evolution. That’s not to say that we should shoot low. We have to always be pushing ourselves and raising our personal bar.
Of the two challenges mentioned above, I think the more dangerous of the two is thinking that we can’t do this, that everything we try to write is inferior, what some folks call ‘killing the baby in the cradle’. Why is this one more destructive than the other? It’s because if the song is never able to grow a bit, and if we’re never able to hear it, we’ll never know if it’s going to grow up from an ugly baby into and ugly adult! At least wait until it’s an ugly adolescent until you kill it! Seriously though, you have to give yourself permission to fail. I’ve been writing since the 1960s and to this day, to get five good songs I have to attempt to write twenty to thirty. It just comes with the territory.
Try this…Think about your favorite songwriter. Now listen to everything they’ve written. If they have any kind of catalog at all, you’re going to hear some clunkers in there, or at the very least, some songs will be not as good as others.
So how do you know if you have too high opinion of everything you write? Maybe it really is all that good. I mean how wrong can your mother be? This is also a trap that beginning songwriters fall into and I think that it’s also a manifestation of insecurity. That’s not to say that what you may be writing isn’t great – it may well be – but don’t fool yourself. Be willing to look at your work with a detached and critical eye. It’s always important to rewrite your work and to analyze every word in every line.
A good friend of mine, Chuck Prophet, is an excellent songwriter and a recording artist. He told me that he never quits rewriting the song until it’s actually recorded. He often goes into the studio with unfinished songs and finishes them in the course of recording. You may not need or want to go that far, but in the end it becomes a balancing act. It takes awhile to know how you can make it better. It’s not easy, but the more you learn about the art and the craft of songwriting, the easier it becomes.
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Jim Bruno is a San Francisco Bay Area based published songwriter and currently teaches Songwriting at Foothill College in Los Altos, California and at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley.
Songs he’s written have been recorded and released by Shawn Colvin, Mary Lou Lord, Cliff Eberhardt and Laurie MacAlister. Songs he’s co-written have been recorded and released by Chuck Prophet and Thad Cockrell
As a performing songwriter he has performed with or opened shows for the following artists: Shawn Colvin, Timothy B Schmidt, John Gorka, Charlie Musselwhite, Joe Ely, Greg Brown, Mary Lou Lord, Steve Forbert, Bill Morrissey, Big Twist, and Cliff Eberhardt. He’s performed at the Greenwich Village Folk Festival, the Udine Folk Festival in Udine, Italy and has toured five times in Europe. He also played bass, guitar and sang in the Shawn Colvin Band for a number of years and often performed with Shawn as a duet. He recently released his own album of all original songs called ‘Alright Alright’.
He’s negotiated and signed numerous song publishing agreements. Among others these publishers include Bug Music and the Welk Music Group in Los Angeles, and Largo Music in New York. In addition to his having his own publishing company, Jimmy Bruno Music, as a songwriter he currently has a music publishing agreement with Universal Music Group. He is an affiliated Publisher and Songwriter with BMI and the Harry Fox Agency. He’s also a voting member of the Recording Academy.
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We forget that when we listen to “everything” our favorite songwriter’s ever written…we’re not. We’re only listening to everything our favorite songwriter ever RECORDED. They may have written 50 songs for each one that made the record. Songwriters in Nashville who are writing for publishing companies — some of them, maybe most of them, write every day, even twice a day. At the end of the month, the company will let them demo maybe only 5 of those songs, or fewer. The publishing company usually has publishing on the rest…but nothing is done with those songs.
We forget that we learn from writing. I often bring a “piece” of a song to a collaboration or reuse a line or melody. Sometimes it may be years to find a home for that a little gem of a hook or chorus or concept or set of changes or melody or lyric phrase…but if I hadn’t written that gem while in the process of writing an otherwise mediocre song destined for nowhere, that gem wouldn’t have been created.
Sometimes we think our songs in progress seem to suck because we’re comparing them to the best 1% of full-time songwriters’ output and we forget that we need to produce, get some feedback, refine, practice, and keep doing. Go up to bat. Not that I don’t wrestle with most of this stuff–I’m talking to myself as much as anyone. Just started reading “Talent is Overrated” and I think it’s going to kick my butt. It’s about focused practice vs. inspiration and aptitude.
Hi Ruth,
Thank you for commenting! All excellent points!
It’s all about putting the effort in. I cringe when I see the songwriting process portrayed in film. It’s always about inspiration and not about perspiration. I understand that the former makes for a more interesting movie but novice songwriters come to think that that’s how it works when in reality it’s more like a wrestling match than an epiphany!
It’s important to remind ourselves that songwriting is work. When it’s going well it can be satisfying work but work none the less!
As songwriters we need to enjoy the work. It’s the road and not the destination that needs to be embraced. If you do that you’ll reach the destination of a great song!
Regards,
Jim
Very complete article! A pleasure to read it… I want to Comment that since starting my own blog, I’ve seen that I get more ideas about themes and more ideas to just sit and write. I’m getting into the habit of writing everyday! Also, trying to “force” myself to sit and work on either an old song or melody every other day. I believe that working on our own projects and songs is sometimes harder than to work for a client…
Thank you, Jorge, for your comments and your insights!