It's Just Like Writing a Song

(water splashing) - Teaching songwriting is a little like teaching someone how to ride a bike. Thanks, Captain Irony. I know it’s a cliche.

• Riding a bike involves strength, balance, and coordination, not to mention courage. - You can teach those individual skills, but the learning comes as much from the doing as it does the teaching. In addition to the literal and the narrative, songwriting leverages all the things that we teach at Beat Kitchen.

It touches on melody and harmony, song form, rhythm. We can include things like sound design, and while it’s not strictly necessary to know how to operate a DAW, it sure helps. How is it then that songwriting comes so naturally to some people?

Well, like riding a bike, I think you can break it down into two components. There’s getting up and then there’s staying up. Starting, it’s wildly creative, irrational, forgiving, quantity over quality.

Finishing requires focus and perseverance. Both require courage. Either way, you learn it by doing it, but it’s a lot easier when there’s somebody running alongside to keep you from falling over.

I’m about to start assembling songwriting groups.