Everybody wants be a great songwriter, I mean who doesn't. But in order to achieve that one must dedicate themselves to a daily regiment of writing a song a day. It has been confirmed by multiple sources that people who do the same thing over and over again every day get much better at it; including songwriting. Today, I'm going to cover a couple of reasons why you should pick up a pen and pad every day and try to write a new record even if it sucks. In fact, I recommend you write a song that sucks every day. Here's why.
Improves Skils
It's not about the quality of the reps it's about the amount of reps. Apply this to song writing as well. Writing a new song will sharpen your pen. In fact, it is actually pushing yourself to come up with ways to get better unconsciously. At some point you're going to write down a lyric and say “hey, that's kind of bad I probably shouldn't write that.” What your brain will now do is say “let's come up with something better” and guess what? Nine times out of 10 you will. Repeat this process daily and eventually those amounts of bad lyrics will eventually go down. It's a practice. It's a process.
There's a famous book called the War of Art, and I recommend that you read it. What you are going to get from this is why you should make songwriting a daily practice. This is something that I’ve implemented myself and can definitely say that it has made me a better beat maker, producer, songwriter, and engineer. My skill set wasn't developed overnight it came from countless hours of fine-tuning something over and over again. I even play a game where on the days that I don't feel like making anything I purposely go in with the intent to make something that sucks. What this does for me is now make it fun. The process of creating a record from scratch now becomes a game. I start to think about what sounds would not go well together, I purposely try to sing off key for the hooks and guess what? Sometimes I actually create something pretty fire. Imagine if this is something that you implemented on a day-to-day basis. Who knows, you may come up with something pretty fire your damn self
Ideas Come Easier
If you've ever had a chance to check out T-Pain’s twitch channel you'll see just exactly what I mean by ideas will come faster. I have seen T-Pain make a beat, record the chorus, the verses, and send it over to another artist to finish their verse. And I've seen him do this within a matter of 30 minutes. That sort of skill comes from constantly creating new records. Creativity is just like a muscle. The more you exercise it the easier things get. Just like playing a sport or just like lifting weights. The more you do it the easier it is for you to come up with ideas because you were actually making it easier on your brain to come up with something. I'll give you an example, if you are constantly writing heartbreaking songs because that's the mood you are in eventually you're going to get to the place where it's easy for you to make heartbreaking songs. Because your brain now knows what synapses to connect for you to create that type of record. And the more you do this in other genres and with other songs it's going to become easier for you to make those type of records. We all know that all the biggest artist have thousands of records in the vault and we all know that by the time we hear their album that we are probably hearing the best 15 out of that thousand. Implement this into your workflow the next time you are thinking about creating an album. You’ll thank me later.
May Find a Hit
Wayne Gretzky once said that you miss 100% of the shots that you don't take. This is very true with your song writing. If you are not trying to make as many records as you possibly can how do you know if you have a hit record? You recorded ten demos yesterday? That's great! Now can you do that 10 more times for the next 365 days? Who's to say that one of those records isn't the big hit record that you've been looking for? When artists are pitching themselves to A&Rs, producers, and/or record labels they need to have a healthy catalog. That catalog gives them a better chance of landing something rather than only having 20 records available. It’s simple math. The more records you have available the more you increase your chances of having something that they’ll like. I cannot recommend enough how important it is for an artist of today to have their own home studio. It doesn't have to be the best equipment ever but you do need a decent set up to create as many records as possible. Who knows? You may be the artist that becomes bigger than Lizzo and Billie Eilish put together. How would we know? You've only got 50 songs to your name…….
In conclusion, I'm going to give you a quote that my own mother gave me when I was a child.
“Writers write.” It's just that simple.
