Songwriting – The More You Know, The More You Need To Learn

To master the craft of songwriting you must first embrace the fact that there’s always something to learn about it.

The more you know the more you need to learn.

I know of some songwriters that are either bored or restless with their craft. They complain that everything that they do all sounds the same. They feel that they’re not expanding and growing as songwriters.

In life, there are people that do things and people that don’t do things. Which category a songwriter falls into is not determined by genetics, it’s all determined by attitude.

As a songwriter, it’s determined by you and you alone.

One of my goals for 2008 is getting advanced musical theory and guitar lessons. I’ve mentioned this to a number of friends and they all ask me “why?”

My reply to this question is “why not!”

I have been playing music and writing songs since I was 12 (I’m 37 now) and besides learning clarinet and studying music theory and composition in high school I have not had any tuition in my life.

I am mostly a self taught musician.

It would be arrogant of me to think that I have nothing else to learn so I’m going to find out where my learning gaps are and I’m then going to fill them in with new knowledge.

Doing this can only make me a better songwriter and musician in general.

My advice to anyone regarding learning an instrument to help you with your songwriting is threefold:

1. If you’ve ever considered learning an instrument. Consider no more, start learning.

2. If you already play an instrument consider getting lessons for it no matter how proficiant you are. The more proficiant you are at your instrument the more important your choice of tutor will be.

3. If you already get lessons, make more of an effort to practise, find the time to do it. Challenge yourself with the lessons, try to feel your mind expand with the knowledge you gain from it.

Seek out books on songwriting, buy them and read them. Take notes and do what is needed to assimilate the new knowledge into your songwriting process.

Go onto the web and sign up to songwriting resources, forums, and communities. Ask lots and lots of questions.

In your research you’ll come across people you feel comfortable communicating with, keep in contact with them. Network and expand your relationships.

If you want to contact me and ask questions feel free to do so, just contact me through this blog and I will get back to you.

In short, get out of your comfort zone.

If you feel you have been spending precious energy complaining and not enough energy doing then stop, re-evaluate and change your attitude towards your songwriting.

It can be done, I know because I have done this for myself.

Reward yourself (and your songwriting) by embracing new knowledge and you will never, ever look back.

Until next time, happy writing,

Corey Stewart
Singer/Songwriter/Musician

Keywords: songwriting, songwriter, writing, songwriting tip, songwriting help, songwriting technique, songwriting blog, songwriting idea, corey stewart

Tags: Corey Stewart, Creativity, music, Songwriter, Songwriting, songwriting blog, songwriting tip, Songwriting Zen, writing, zen

Sunday, April 6th, 2008 Songwriting

2 Comments to Songwriting – The More You Know, The More You Need To Learn

Sanoittaja says:

April 8, 2008 at 6:07 pm

You are so right. The main thing is the keep moving. When you set down and start thinking that you allready know everything, uou are allready lost.

For me there’s one thing i want to do, and that’s learning english for expanding the audience ;P I gues it takes few yers outside of Finland for learning enought, but maby it could give allso new inspiration so allso writing on mainlanguage would going better