Co-Writing and Writing

It’s really hard to keep high standards in a co-writing session. Everyone in the session knows there’s a limited amount of time to make a song happen and so there’s a slant toward agreeability…because if you work for an entire afternoon and come out with a mediocre song, it feels better than having no song at all in the name of ‘we were trying to find something great’.

In a co-writing session you’re not just sifting through ideas, you’re also juggling the attitudes and emotions and energy of the room. There’s (at least) two games at play. The game of the song and the game of the people writing the song.

ie...Someone seems checked out and despondent so you incorporate one of their crappy ideas just to make them feel better. It happens all the time.

On the other hand…When you’re writing by yourself the exploring is endless. You can keep molding your bad ideas until they get better and better. No rush. No pressure or impatient on-lookers. You go into the abyss alone and follow the bread crumbs.

You don’t care how long it takes because the only goal is to create something good…while the goal of many co-writing sessions is to get something good enough to act like you have something good. You are more patient with yourself when you’re by yourself. You’re not annoyed by your own tinkering. And the freedom to tinker is what it takes.

You don’t have to go it alone…but when you do, you get back to just you and your imagination…and there’s a lot of great stuff there.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Writing and Co-Writing

When you’re young and starting down the path of songwriting, you write a lot by yourself. After all, you’re not very good and you don’t want people to know, you’ve gotta put in the work, write the bad songs so you can get to some better ones.

But once you get to the better songs you might want to keep writing by yourself because, ‘I’ve got this thing figured out, I don’t really need other writers’.

So you work really hard. Day after day for a couple years. Writing song after song sitting in your computer chair or in your undies on the edge of your bed.

Now you’ve got a few hundred songs that you need to start showing people.

On the other hand…once you’re just barely good enough or just barely bold enough, you’re allowed be a part of the songwriting community. You can just decide to start setting up co-writes with other writers.

And if you’re in Nashville or NYC or LA or are happy to write via Zoom from anywhere, there’s enough writers writing everyday to where you could easily have a few hundred sessions per year.

So now at the end of a couple years you’ve got a few hundred songs but ALSO you’ve got a few hundred people who have written with you. Who have experienced your talent and creativity. Who can vouch for you. Who can recommend you to others. Who like you. Who will respond to your emails. Who value your input.

Writing with others isn’t a requirement for success…but when you do, you get much more than a song.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Song Relationships

The songs will give you the boundaries of what you can do. They’re the boss. The songs aren’t your babies, they’re your parents.

If you hope to be a dance band and you look down at your set list and all you see are sad acoustic songs, your hopes are out of bounds. You need to get new songs or new hopes.

But like parents, the better the relationship you have with your songs the more they’ll let you do.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

For Dear Life

Hanging on for dear life…probably not something you actually want to be doing.

But metaphorically speaking…when you’re playing music with people or working with people who are so good that you’re hanging on for dear life just to keep up, that’s a pretty great place to be.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Another Round

First Monday of the month, hit the new Hum Love playlist on Spotify and Apple

Whenever Spotify and music streaming are in the news there ends up being a rehash on social media about how music streaming doesn’t pay artists enough.

But I’ve never read a post from an artist who has taken the time to outline how much per stream would in fact be fair, along with supporting information.

And if you’re an artist with a label deal it gets even more complicated because it’s likely you signed a contract where you agreed to give most or all of your streaming revenue until you recoup.

Should Spotify increase the amount paid to artists per stream? I don’t know. But you can only complain about it so long before you become responsible for offering a solution, accepting reality or become known as the artist who complains.

Your solution can’t just be ‘more’.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

21st Century Know It All

Derek was my first friend who had already read about it on the internet. He was my first friend with all the random facts.

If I started a sentence with, ‘Have you heard about…’, his answer was always Yes and then he’d proceed to fill in details that I hand’t even heard about.

If he started a sentence with, ‘Have you heard about…’, my answer was usually No. So he would eagerly tell me.

Now we’re all a lot like Derek.

The bummer part is that when we say we’ve already heard about it, we often squash the excitement of the person who wanted to share. And excitement is fun. Excitement is valuable. Excitement might even be more important than saying we’ve already heard about it.

»» Maybe the trick is to simply add our own excitement without squashing the other person’s.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple