A Song a Week!

Not sure what triggered the insanity… what made me decide to push my limits… what inspired me to embark on a yearlong journey of deepening creative expression.

(Actually I do know. But more on that in another post.)

For now, the important thing is that earlier in the year I made the decision to say YES to the call of my Life Purpose and commit to the process of becoming a professional musician.

One of the ways I chose to accelerate that process is making the commitment to write, record and POST a video of a new song every week… For a YEAR! (Actually I’m giving myself 2 weeks off… so it’s 50 songs in the next year).

I’ve heard of other people doing the song a week thing. Not sure if anyone has actually been crazy enough to commit to posting the weekly songs on YouTube!

I’m like that. Once I decide to do something I go all in… Plus, I was worried that if I didn’t have that level of public accountability I wouldn’t follow through.

Aside from my tendency to enjoy biting off way more than I can chew, there actually were and are a few reasonable intentions behind this experiment.

Here are 5 of them:

1. Become a better songwriter: I figure if I write at least 50 songs in the next year, I’ve got to get better at songwriting. That’s the hope anyway!
2. Become a better musician: Spending several hours a day playing music is bound to improve my guitar playing, singing and handpan playing. Right?
3. Understand more theory: To write songs fast it is really helpful to understand a bit of what is happening on the music theory side. I’ve had a pretty serious block to learning music theory… worried it would crimp my creative side. That feels a lot like a limiting belief to me. And the little bit of theory I’ve learned has, indeed, made it easier to write songs. Chalk that up as a win!
4. Improve as a performer: The skills needed to write songs are a lot different than the skills needed to perform them. Forcing myself to record and post the songs publicly will give me the opportunity to watch and evaluate and improve on my performances. By the time I get to the end of the year, I have a feeling I’ll be cringing pretty hard when I watch the first few weeks of songs I posted! Ouch!
5. Stretch into different styles: Writing a song a week would get pretty boring if I kept writing the same type of song over and over. And since these songs are not meant to be final, polished versions… or even songs that will ever be played again, I feel a lot more freedom to experiment with different styles. Which should be pretty fun.

But the NUMBER 1 reason I’m doing this… The NUMBER 1 thing I’m hoping to get out of this is…

GETTING OVER PERFECTIONISM!

Let’s be honest here:

There is NO WAY that I can write, record, edit and mix a new song then record, edit and post a video of that song every single week and expect all of those parts to be perfect.

Something (and often many things) will suck! Pretty much guaranteed!

In some cases the song itself might just be lame.

In other cases, some aspect of my performance might not be up to my expectations.

I’m a total newbie when it comes to recording, editing and mixing so I’m sure there will be a LOT of imperfect pieces there.

Same with the video recording and editing. Lots of oopses there I’m sure.

And all of these will be beautiful opportunities for me to confront the demon of this inner perfectionist that has felt like a ball and chain around my neck my entire life.

So for the next year, you’ll get to follow along as I take this journey into a much deeper commitment to music and creative expression.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do Maybe you’ll enjoy it more than me… You know… since you won’t be confronting your perfectionistic demons each and every week.