Song Writing - Day 2

Day 2 is an embarrassing day.

I did not do my homework, and making matters worse, almost all my other classmates did.

We were told to go back to come up with a song of our own - just like that ! I thought that was impossible because we were not even taught the fundamentals yet.I even expected no one to have a submission. But as it turns out, all the intuitive-feeling-perceivers had something to show the next day ! Some have been working on a song for a while and I find what they did really impressive.

Without spoiling what was actually taught today ( hope some of my readers do sign up with Inch Chua at Thunder Rock), I really want to talk about Creativity.

Inch asked me what creativity was to me, and, in a moment of hubris, I answered "Production".

I think it's fair to equate creativity to actual results because we're surrounded by people who think they can create content but have no balls or courage to actually launch anything. These songwriters tell the whole world that they are going to create something but nothing really happens for the next ten years. Maybe the creative process requires incubation but I would really narrow this down to being afraid of failure.

Creativity to me will always be about results. If you have a creative piece of work, let's put it in the market and start measuring sales and go through reader's reviews. Otherwise, what makes you think that you have any value to the world. You could be a poseur, just like thousands of poseurs trying to pursue a creative field today.

How can an inspiring songwriter use the lack of inspiration as a proxy for lack of talent ?

Ok, so I get to play the bad example today. I did not produce. I failed based on my own personal standards.

I have no idea how to put melody to a set of four chords. I could have tried doing some shit, laughed about it, but internally I was worried that I might end up humming an unoriginal tune. This caused me to self-handicap, I preferred to submit nothing instead of looking foolish. Why show the world your genuine lack of talent ?

All in all, the Gen-Y Millenials taught me a good lesson today. There is a lot of talent amongst young people, one guy even had a full fledged song which Inch was helping to troubleshoot even before I left.

Who knows ? One of them may be the next big thing in the music scene.