Success – What’s Standing In Your Way?

 

© I.Woloshen

“Success” is a relative word, and your idea of it can change as you inevitably do. For instance, in my teens and 20’s (ugh!) I measured success by my position, my income and the number of friends I had. Well, the part about friends hasn’t changed much  But everything else has!

These days I define my success much more simply…I ask myself, am I doing what I want and love to do? Most of the time, I’m happy to say, the answer is yes! But it took me a long time to get here…

I believe that the largest hurdles we have in front of us are the ones we put there ourselves. Never mind what the “others” say, what are the things you tell yourself? Have you ever listened to your own thoughts? I know, that sounds weird and new-agey, but have you? What kinds of things do you tell yourself? Do you encourage yourself and keep a positive attitude, or do you tell yourself over and over “I’m a terrible writer, I can’t do this, I’m not going to make it”? Creative people, on the whole, tend to be extremely sensitive…it is that sensitive part of ourselves that gives us the insight to our own creative juices, but it can also be a burden. The downside to sensitivity is the old chip-on-the-shoulder syndrome when things aren’t going the way we’d like.

But knowing all of that, what can we do to get a little closer to our idea of success? Being songwriters, sometimes we lose our ability to come down to earth and establish some structure in our lives! But structure, organization, plans and work are all necessary ingredients! Here are a few steps you can take:

1. Identify – write out what your idea of success is! Sometimes we meander around the subject without really clearly identifying anything about it. What is success to you? You can give yourself a time line, if you like. “In five years I’d like to be…” Work your way backwards, all the way to what you can do today!

2. The Steps – what steps can you take to achieve your goals? Make two lists…one will be the more major steps (ie…I want to get a publishing deal, I want to record a CD…etc.), the other will be the little steps! I can tell you right now that the little steps will be the most important!! For instance, if you want a publishing deal, there are several things you need to do to make that happen. You need to identify the publishers who might be interested in your songs, you have to have a decent recording of your songs, you need to collect addresses, make a list of who you’ve sent to, etc., etc.

Perhaps your primary goal is to become a better writer. Well, that goal is never off my list! Again, you would benefit by sitting down and determining what it is that YOU NEED in order to begin achieving that. Do you need to improve your lyric skills? Do you need to be around other writers? A few visits to some open mics? Are a couple of piano lessons in order?

3. Be Prepared To Change – For heaven’s sake, if something isn’t working, let it go! It’s okay to move onto something else! Stubbornness and determination are admirable qualities, until they are just plain stupid!

4. Opportunity Meeting Preparedness – I’m sure you’ve heard that expression before. People who have achieved success weren’t just sitting around waiting for it to fall into their laps. Well, most of them anyway! They were able to recognize an opportunity when it hit them square in the face. You may think that is obvious…but you can never be sure exactly when it’s going to hit, or how. A little story, if I might: When I’m almost finished recording a song, I tend to make a DAT copy of it (digital audio tape) just so I can have it there to listen to for myself, and for whatever else I might need it for. A couple of months ago, my husband and I had a business meeting with an old friend in our home, not related to songwriting in anyway, just an investment opportunity. This friend brought his business partner with him, and we spent an hour or so discussing this new business. At the end of the talk, we started chit chatting about other things, and it so happened that this friend mentioned to his partner that I was a songwriter and had a studio downstairs. Lucky for me, I’d cleaned it that morning  So I invited them down to see the studio. I happened to have my DAT machine hooked up with the tape in it, and my friend wanted to hear the latest version of Catnip (a song he’d participated in recording). It JUST SO HAPPENED that his business partner was ALSO a songwriter and NOT ONLY THAT, but he had a line on a guy who was looking for material for an up and coming group, so I played him some of the songs…was that a coincidence? No, it was opportunity meeting preparedness  What comes of it doesn’t matter, but I was ready!

5. Critical Line – ever heard of this expression? It refers to the steps that have to be taken in order to achieve goals. Even at their jobs, most people spend a great deal of time doing the peripheral things that aren’t getting them any closer to getting the job done. Like sharpening pencils and tidying the desk, or getting distracted by something entirely un-job-related. Try to spend 1/2 an hour each day completely devoted to your critical line…doing something you need to do, even if it’s just a boring “little step”. Time is everything! So is discipline!

6. Discipline – is not one of my strong points. I consider myself a naturally lazy person, and have had to battle with myself most of my life to do what I need to do. This can be applied to just about anything in your life…but in order to succeed, you need discipline! Instead of throwing too much on yourself too quickly, take those “little steps”…see how important they are? But taking just one of those will make you feel better! And when you feel better, you’re likely to do more! It’s magic 

7. More Irons in the Fire! – I know you’ve heard quite the opposite…that you can’t have too much on the go, but I’m here to tell you that when it comes to writing songs, the more your songs are “out there” the better it is for you! I don’t mean that you should be careless about it, BUT, if you’ve ever listened to some of the stories of how songwriters got their music heard, most of them had quite a long trail of opportunities. Someone just happened to hear a recording in the other room that someone’s cousin was playing that just happened to be sitting on the top of a pile…you know what I’m saying? Great songs aren’t just AUTOMATICALLY HEARD BY ALL THE “RIGHT” PEOPLE! It can take years for a great song to get the attention it deserves! So multiply your opportunities…let other people perform your song, play them at every chance, let people hear ’em!

8. Diversify – You’ve heard the saying “putting all of your eggs in one basket”. Having any kind of career in music means you have to diversify. The statistics are that less than 1% of songwriters make more than $5000 a year from their writing. That means that more than 99% of us have to have some other kind of income. I teach guitar, write music for television, write and perform…when some areas are not as profitable or emotionally satisfying, others are! As long as it is music-related, I’m happy. If it comes down to employment (and it inevitably does!), try to find work that is related somehow to your music, or at the very least, find work that allows you to BE a songwriter, go to open mics, or run off to the bathroom and record an idea when you have one  Then again, a job that is completely non-music related is sometimes perfectly satisfying! I’ve met writers who LOVE songwriting, but also love their jobs. Wouldn’t that be nice? 

Okay, well there you have it…some ideas as to how you can achieve your idea of success. You know, half the time I write these articles as much for myself as I do for you 

IJ

More On Magical Melodies

 

© I.Woloshen

I went to a Songshop recently, put on by the Songwriters Association of Canada where there were a number of songwriters baring their souls and their songs all in the hopes of improving their craft. Sometimes as an observer it is much more obvious where the problems lie within a song…but when you’re the writer you can’t see the forest for the trees (ugh! sorry, little cliché there  One of the workshop leaders talked about hearing someone, who wasn’t a songwriter by the way, say that the highest note of the song had to be in the chorus! Is that true? Of course not…but he’d obviously made that decision after hearing songs for years and years. Defining a melody and how a great one works, will NEVER be that simple!

We get caught up sometimes in finding a neat little groove and getting those lyrics perfect, or having that lead guitar pop in at just the right moment…that we often neglect what may be the one thing that we might want people to most remember about the song! Think about all of those “great” songs that you listened to growing up…how often is the lead guitar riff the only thing you remember? While a memorable guitar riff such as Eric Clapton‘s first version of “Layla” (Derek and the Dominos) can stand out from everything else…for the most part, it isn’t going to carry the whole song!

The most difficult part, I think, about writing a melody, is keeping it simple AND unique at the same time! Why is simplicity important? Because MOST listeners out there will probably only remember the song in bits and pieces after the first listen. Test this out on somebody…play them a song of yours they’ve never heard before, and then afterwards, ask them to repeat something about it. Don’t tell them you’re going to do this beforehand, that would be cheating! What do they come up with? Melody? A line? A guitar riff? What a cool test, eh?

Let’s take a look at a couple of contemporary hit songs…I’m going to focus on Pop/Rock for the time being. Joan Osborne had a hit with the song “One Of Us”. Think about the first line of the chorus…”What if God was one of us?” The first three notes are about as simple as you can get…(F#, G#, A in the actual key) same length, major scale…you could find that same set of three notes in a thousand other songs somewhere. On their own, what they do is ascend (rise) to the most central theme of the song…God. And the word “God” is the highest note (okay, maybe that non-songwriter had a point!) But the next four notes really help to reinforce that melodic hook…C# C# D E. So simple and powerful. Now look at the whole chorus…that series of 7 notes is repeated all the way through except for the last line. So the melody is not only simple, it is repeated and reinforced throughout the chorus. And of course, lyrically, it has a powerful message!

Let’s take a look at another contemporary song…”If It Makes You Happy” by Sheryl Crowe. This is another example of a very simple melodic line in the chorus, but sung with such power! I teach this song to some of my guitar students…as soon as I sing that line, they know the song! When she goes from the first D up a whole octave in the first line, there’s the whole song right there! And look at the notes, very simple and straightforward (If D it D Makes D*octave You B Hap A py B!).

Let me tell you a little secret…your listeners, unless they are musical masters or jazz enthusiasts, do not have complex listening skills! As I said earlier, they will collect bits and pieces of a song, but won’t grasp the whole thing on the first listen. So it’s important for you to get their attention with shorter, simpler lines of melody, reinforced with great lyrics of course! If you look at Sheryl Crowes’ song again…the first melodic part is repeated…so it’s broken down into four lines in the chorus:

If it makes you happy D D D* B A B *up an octave
It can’t be that bad D G G G B A G A
If it makes you happy D D D B A B
Why the hell are you so sad? G E G E G G B

And although she doesn’t do it the first time it’s sung…the chorus is repeated twice after every verse! Again, she really reinforces that musical hook. Her performance is another very important element…think about how she sings it…it’s balsy, not pretty, which is her style certainly. But it makes you want to shout it, rather than sing it!

In listening to some demos recently, another point came to mind. There’s a real need for “flow” in your melody…it has to move seamlessly and effortlessly from one line to the next. One demo especially stood out as having far too many “blank” spaces or pauses…it lost something and had little impact as a result. This does not mean that your melody shouldn’t have any pauses in it at all…you’ve gotta breathe! But if you ARE running out of breath when you sing it, that’s a pretty good sign that it’s much too full. And if it feels like it’s dragging, the opposite is probably true…you’re not doing enough!

So now it sounds like I’ve told you two contradictory things…keep the lines shorter and simpler, and make sure there’s a flow…well, they really do compliment each other. Look at the two examples I’ve shown you again…and then examine your own!

IJ

Performance Tips

 

© I.Woloshen

I was in Grade 5 when I first performed in front of a big audience…in the school gymnasium at Christmas for parents, teachers and students. I was picked in an audition to perform half of the Christmas song “Good King Wenceslas“. I’m not sure why the teacher had two of us share the song…I was ready to do the whole thing myself! It was a definite highlight of my childhood…the first time I heard that applause, I was hooked! It wasn’t until I was older that I began to deal with things like performance anxiety (more of that later), or consider the idea of how I was presenting my material. These days, I’m very conscious of the connection I make with an audience, and the way the songs come across.

I have performed at many open mics over the years, and I find them to be the most difficult performances! There is no time to warm up…sometimes a song or two is what you need to get comfortable with where you are, but then it’s over! If it’s an open mic that I haven’t performed at before, that makes it worse! So many things can affect the performance…the people there, the sound system, if there is one, the room itself, and the other performances ahead of you. Over time, I’ve managed to make a mental list for myself of the things I have to remember when I’m playing, and the things I watch for in others:

1. EYE CONTACT – When I watch a performer with his/her head bowed down staring at the guitar or the floor, I feel disconnected from them. Not only that, but their nervous behaviour distracts me, makes me feel sorry for them, and I don’t listen to the song! Some performers say that they can better focus on the song if they keep their eyes closed the whole time…but what about the people you’re playing to? A performance is literally an exchange of energy between the performer and the audience…if you cut the audience off, they have nothing to return to you! If you find it difficult to look at someone, there are two things you can do. You can either look for the person who is most obviously enjoying your performance and feed off of them, or you can make a person up! Just look out there as if you were looking at someone who was smiling at you, and smile back! I do this all the time, especially if I’m in a situation where there isn’t much of an audience, or I’m in a room where no one is really listening.

I’ve sung at two funeral services…just less than 20 years apart. I was 20 years old at the first service. I had trouble looking at the family who was sitting in the front row, so I stared blankly at a window at the back of the church. I felt my performance was disastrous and underwhelming…my nervousness was more prominent than my song! The second one, I made a conscious decision to look straight at the audience, right into their eyes, and connect the song with each one of them. I was given so many smiles, mixed with tears of course, but it was a beautiful, and ultimately uplifting, experience!

2. ENUNCIATION – You may be a “music” person, not as concerned with getting your lyrics across, but you’d be surprised to know just how many people LOVE lyrics! When the mouth is dry and the brain muddy with terror, even the most wonderful lyrics can be reduced to an unintelligible mumble. Before you even GET to that open mic, practice EXAGGERATING your lyrics when you sing them. Hit every consonant hard, open your mouth WIDE. At first, it’ll feel pretty silly, but it will keep you conscious of getting your message across. When you want someone to hear what you’re saying when you are speaking to them, you make your voice a little louder, look straight at them and enunciate. Think of the same thing when you’re singing.

3. DYNAMICS – If you’re a guitar player, you’re likely to pound away at the strings when you’re nervous, completely dominating your vocal. Practice doing this: when you’re playing the parts of the song when you’re not singing, let yourself pound. When you ARE singing, pull the guitar way back, soften it up, make it weave around your lyrics. Not only will it help your lyrics stand out…it will create quite a dramatic effect to your performance! Try it out!

4. EMOTE – If you’re singing a happy song, remember what your kindergarten teacher said the first time you sang in front of your parents at a school event. SMILE!! If the song is more somber, don’t smile! Nothing more confusing than dark lyrics and a grin. They’ll think you’re on a weekend pass… Performing is very much like acting. You certainly need to “be yourself”, but you are also emoting and re-creating the topic of the song to your audience every time you perform it. Listen to the words as you’re singing them, and try to remember where they came from when you wrote that song!

5. ENERGY – I was told once by my music teacher that I moved too much when I sang. She told me it was distracting. Most of it was, of course, nervous energy. If you move around like Joe Cocker, you’re likely to distract from your song (unless you ARE Joe Cocker, in which case you can do whatever you like :-). But, having said that, music is a full body experience! Sitting or standing with your body as stiff as a board translates into negative vibes for your audience. Move around a little and that will help you relax and also release some of that nervous energy. As Gino Vannelli said: You gotta move 

6. BANTER – If there is a little story behind your song, tell it. Practice ahead of time just so you get the story straight! Two don’ts: Don’t tell the whole story, let the song say most of it. And don’t go on and on, umming and ahhing and losing your focus. But a little chatter between songs gives the audience a chance to connect with you on another level. It endears you to them beyond the songs. One of my most successful banters is when I talk about the nature of the bald eagle before I sing my song “Eagles Eyes”. People love to hear some of the facts behind this amazing creature. It relates to, but doesn’t give away the topic of the song. And almost every time I do that, someone will come up to me after and mention it!

7. GRACIOUSNESS – When you receive applause it is the greatest gift, so stay for a moment and soak it in! I remember a telethon I did once, where right after my two songs, I turned to run off stage. The host at the time was a VJ at MuchMusic here in Canada. She got a hold of me and made me hang around a bit…she asked me a few questions on air, and said “They’re applauding you! Enjoy it!” I’m sure it was my own nervousness that inspired the desire to turn and run…but what I was also doing was, in fact, snubbing the audience by not acknowledging their applause. I don’t “milk it” now, but I do allow myself and the audience a chance to enjoy those few moments! What else do we do it for?

IJ