What to do?

[zedad]

Mainly i write about 3 songs a day sometimes more. I can write a song in a couple minutes. The crazy thing is these songs just hit me and i write em out in a few short minutes thinking nothing much of it. But the craziest part is people actually really like em. I can put a song out in five minutes and people will read it and tell me im a genius, or ill randomly enter it in some writing contest and win. So im in a hardcore band, were christian, the names Benevolentagious. I know your jealous of our awesome name but thats ok i would be too . anyways i just have songbook after songbook filled up with songs, what should i do with them? i mean i can only really use a few of them for cd's so for the rest should i perfectly perfect and critique and then market them to a label? i dont know i was just bored so i posted here. I will speak with you all some other time through my fingers. ( typing :P)

[HeyHeyMyMy]

Hey, welcome to the board.

That is great that your ideas flow like they do, especially if they're as good as you say they are. Who is telling you that you're a genius? I generally like to go by this rule: always be wary of excessive flattery. Take it with a grain of salt. People who like you as a person will pretty much always tell you they like your music. They don't want to hurt your feelings. The fact that you've won some songwriting contests does lend some weight to their statements though.

I have no idea what avenues exist for the "Christian Hardcore" songwriter. I'm assuming they would be the same as those for the regular songwriter. So, if you do a search in this section of the BBS you will find lots of discussion on the topic of getting your songs out there.

Here, try this one: http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/sho...d.php?t=128330

[radiorabies]

Originally Posted by HeyHeyMyMy

Always be wary of excessive flattery.

I agree with that 100%. I've been writing for about a year and people were always telling me my songs were good etc. Which for me, got really annoying as nobody honestly told me if they were actually crap. Although one day, somebody told me that my music wasn't their cup of tea and I was over the moon about it.

[GoldFalcon]

Be hyper critical of yourself. Compare your stuff objectively to others writing in your genre. Measure the reaction of people who don't know you, especially other muscians and songwriters. Are you often asked to do encore's? Do you often get invited to play your songs? Do people approach you asking to buy merchandise from you? Do other songwriter's enjoy listening to your stuff? Are the songwriting contests you win national or local?

Most people that believe they can write songs can't. I'm not saying you are one of them, but you should validate your talent by performing these songs. A great way to validate them are to ask people to pay you to play them through gigging. People get a lot less flattering when they have to pay you.

[radiorabies]

Me personally, I'm quite strict upon quality control. The amount of stuff I've written that'll never see the light of day is unbelievable. It's probably that reason why it takes me so long to write a song.

You can be to strict on quality though, my brother started to help me out with writing etc. and the stuff he's saved and open my eyes to...

I'd love to read some of your lyrics. better still, have you got a demo?

[mikeh]

As others have said you need to decide what you have that is good vs. average and then perhaps work on re-writes to try to make that which is good better.

It is great that you have a high level of creativity to be able to turn out so many songs (and apparently a large amount of confidence(. While quantity is good, you need to learn to define quality (no writer beleive everything they write is good (most admit the majority is crap).

You mention you can create a song in 5 mintues. While on rare occasion the muse can hit that effectively, I think it is safe to say that most writers can go back and improve those "5 minute songs".

I agree that one must take the compliments of friends for what's it's worth. These compliments can provide the confidence and motivation to continue to tap into one's creativity, but should never be considered a true validation of and I quote your word "genius". Candidly, I would never be pretentious enough to even whisper that phrase.

However, if you truely believe you are that good a writer, you should prepare some demos and shop your work to some publishers. That would help give you a true assessment of the quality of your writing.