Looking to spread some last-minute encouragement!

“No one writes songs–plural. They write one song, and then another.” - Jeff Tweedy (Wilco)

"What usually happens is I start doing a cover, and then I start forgetting the words a bit, and then I forget the music a bit, and it turns into something else." - Shane MacGowan (the Pogues)

"write about what you know" - my dad

"Music is the shorthand of emotion."
-Leo Tolstoy

"Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself."
-Miles Davis

“If it sounds right, it is right.” - me

after playing my new tune for my friend ron davies, whose songs have been recorded by everyone from david bowie to dolly parton, he told me the song would never make it because it didnt have a hook. i answered that the final lines of each verse were the hook and he said its not good enough. its not a hit. i amsered that i knew it wasnt a single, that it was more of an album cut. he laughed and replied that nobody intentionally wrote an album cut. if a song doesnt have hit potential, dont waste your time writing it.

@billwhite51 I get that advice in a general sense, to always put your best foot forward, and in the direction most likely to lead to something great. But there is certainly value in writing music that's personal, or just for fun, or just to express the thing in your mind so you can offload it and make way for the really good thing beyond it. I can see if it's your job to write music for people who are putting so many of their marbles into making hits though, that makes sense.

I think what I'll take from this is "don't settle for something less than what you want to make." :-)

"Songwriting's a weird game"_ Keith Richards

@seanbrennan that sounds like Shane - its a hazard when anyone drinks like he did

"So, instead of shooting arrows at somebody else's target, which I've never been very good at, I make my own target around wherever my arrow happens to have landed. It's like... you shoot an arrow and then you paint the bullseye around it."

-- Brian Eno, "Another Green World"

@seanbrennan that quote is 🤌

It's me to a tee

Somebody posted this in a similar thread a couple-three years ago:

The Three Laws of Art
1. Create: The worst it can do is suck.
2. Create Again: Bad art happens to good people.
3. Just Create: Art is cheaper than therapy.

Whoever posted it originally, thank you!!!

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” ― Ira Glass

"Writing is staring at a page until your head bleeds" Douglas Adams

I can't find it so I'm going to paraphrase - but I remember reading somewhere that Michael Stipe said that everybody can write great songs - they just have to write two hundred bad ones first.

Good artists borrow. Great artists steal. Therefore, steal liberally, but make sure only to nick that which moves you.

Richard Ashcroft, from The Verve, says you can come up with an idea in your head while walking to the store or doing chores, form the whole thing in your head, then forget about it later on. No need to write it down. It keeps your writing and music making chops strong. There's no need to make every song you come up with. Sometimes it being just for you is enough.

Love that Glass quote, @elesimo - I read it in his lovely, avuncular voice.

“Regard your limitations as secret strengths. Or as constraints that you can make use of.”
― Brian Eno

"Forget your hands"

My friend taught this to me, I think he learned it from someone at Berklee. Sometimes we have a tendency to fall into muscle memory, or only thinking of musical ideas in shapes and patterns that we are already familiar with - forgetting your hands means to think more abstractly

Rather than figuring out a bassline by picking up your bass and falling into habits, figure out the line without your instrument - hum, scat, whistle, something that isn't the instrument and forces you to think of the melodic or harmonic structure differently. Instead of sitting at the piano and coming up with a progression, use your DAW's piano roll and draw in the notes - you may come up with new voicings, harmonies, and rhythms that you would have never played naturally

When writing lyrics I shoot for three nouns per couplet.

Ira Glass is the second cousin of the composer Philip Glass (a huge hero of mine); this is my favourite Philip Glass quote, which is *perfect* for FAWM:

“If you don’t know what to do, there’s actually a chance of doing something new. As long as you know what you’re doing, nothing much of interest is going to happen.”

Philip Glass, in his book “Words Without Music” (p.128)

@headfirstonly I love that concept! Great quote!

@fb2studios the "Writing is..." quote is a favourite of mine; looks like it originated with Red Smith or Paul Gallico, although it's often attributed to Hemingway as well as Douglas. And Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche came up with something similar nearly a century earlier, which blows my mind...
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/14/writing-bleed/

"Sh*t in, sh*t out" 😀

Yip Harburg (who wrote the lyrics to “Over the Rainbow”: “Words make you think thoughts, music makes you feel a feeling, but a song makes you feel a thought.”

"Don't be afraid to write crap. Sometimes it's the best fertilizer."

Not exactly about songwriting, but a bunch of different musicians have been credited with saying: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture".

I can't pinpoint it to any one person in particular, but I just try to keep in mind the importance of being bored. Boredom sparks creative thought. We don't give ourselves opportunities to get bored anymore; we can always flip on the TV, listen to Spotify, browse social media, doom scroll through reddit, play a video game, text a friend, whatever—anything to fill the space. I feel it's harder and harder to allow emptiness and silence into your life, with a million programs and devices and bots and people constantly screaming for your attention, always giving you something to keep you occupied.

I try to make it a point to do things in silence. I don't listen to music on headphones when I go on walks anymore. I don't put on a stand-up comedy special while I cook or do the dishes anymore. I don't scroll reddit in bed at night anymore. I just try to allow myself to be bored, whether I'm peeling vegetables or walking to the grocery or lying in bed. That's when my brain starts coming up with fun little ideas to entertain itself, and some of those fun little ideas happen to be musical in nature.

Dont forget to fill your cup

Not a quote as such but I’ve been learning quite a lot about voice leading and I think it makes a big difference, especially if you work out the moves on say the piano first and then translate it to guitar.

"You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.'"
—Frank O'Hara

I saw this on post by BFMeadowlark on reddit musicproduction: "Music is magic. Stop making tech demos and start casting spells."

@elesimo - thanks for the Ira Glass quote. It comes at an ideal time for me.

I came across another one today I found relevant-
"Even if you don't win you learn. So there's no losing. You win the fight or you learn." -Renzo Gracie

also @halfwalk I was just thinking on this yesterday! I wholeheartedly agree; this is so important!!