Songwriting is a form of art, as much as performing a song is. I believe that as an artist you should always try to create something unique. Something that has a voice, that hasn´t been heard before.
I have had many difficulties, finding my own voice as a songwriter. As many other songwriters, I have spent much time listening to other artists, analyzing their songs, soaking in their lyrics and phrasings and understanding their arrangements. There´s always influences and I believe that no human is every truely original.
We live in one world together, we exchange ideas and we trigger new thoughts through conversation and contemplation. Isolation is not the source of ideas, but merely a method of processing. We can never truely take the credits, can we?
Realizing this humble fact took away much of the pressure from me. I stopped trying to be original so hard. I also stopped trying to make a song sound a certain way. Once you let go of expectations, you can bring to life songs, that are authentic. You can always tweak on them later on.
I think listening to music all the time, can be a barrier as well. Music is a very strong force, that sits in your brain for long. You can´t be free of it for a while. This is a good thing on the one hand, as it means you constantly carry a certain music catalog in you that you can pull ideas from, on the other hand, the subconcious music library might hinder you from creating something new.
I have found that reading poetry, or biographies helps me more that listeing to songs. Writing poems is sometimes the groundwork I lay, before actually thinking of writing a song. I am more honest in poems. They are more flexible. However, those songs often result in slow-tempo works.
I have not yet found a fountain for happy songs. I am happy and I love to laugh…on an everyday basis. I love kidding around, but I have a hard time expressing humour and happiness in the form of a song.
So, if you have any advice for me on that, please feel free to share YOUR personal habits and techniques. I am super excited to learn from you, with you and for you! We gotta stick together, don´t we?
Yours,
Katie