a thought about not being satisfied

L

Layla Nahar

New member
I had a realization about why myself and perhaps others have trouble with not liking what they write. I'm a late beginner - I'm finally sitting down to really do music after years of dreaming of it. My problem is that I know what sucks when I hear or read it. All those people who started writing songs when they were 15 were probably just happy that they wrote a song, and by the time they became critical writers thier craft and confidence would be well developed.

just a thought
 
While a more developed writer may have the craft down (may being a key point), I'm sure there are many "seasoned" writers who continue to be self critical and self doubting.

I can't speak for all, but I know I am my own harshest critic (in every aspect of music). Many of my peers think my writing or my playing is better than I often think it is. That's OK, cause I continue to drive myself to be better - although I still think only 1 out of every 20 songs I write amounts to more than a pile of crap.

Layla, the main things to remember are:

1) Have fun doing it - enjoyment is it's own reward (and perhaps the true measure of success)
2) Don't get frustrated (just get better)
3) Be the best you can be - as long as you know in your heart you are giving your best effort, you should be proud of the results of that effort.
 
i've just bought the latest pj harvey album (its ace) and the liner notes are basically polaroids of her, plus lots of little reminder notes and scribbles that she wrote whilst making the album...it seems that even 'the pros' have to beat themselves up a bit, remind themselves from time to time whats important and overall, self-edit.

if its good enough for polly...
 
I believe that we as composers are always our worst critics. I know that I am. And it is not wholly unnatural to feel that way. I worry that people will see through my writing and discover me for the sham I really am. I worry that they will recognize my efforts as trite. However, you cannot nurture that inner voice. That's exactly what kept you from writing till now. Every person has a unique perspective to offer the world. It is your job as a composer to find that perspective and communicate it as clearly as possible.
The biggest obstacle to overcome is the fear of failure. Don't worry about failing. Worry about never making the attempt.
 
Quieting the Inner Critic

A person's inner critic is extremely detrimental to the creative process. Being able to let go and momentarily suspend judgement is the first step in an attempt to obtain a state of mind where the musical ideas flow and the inner critic is temporarily silenced. I say temporarily, because usually this is the best that we can hope for. Letting go is obviously easier said than done. Generally, the more pressure you put on yourself, the more you will cut yourself off from your own source of creativity. This inner critic is both the product of your conscious mind, which tends to be extremely critical and judgemental, as well as possibly your subconscious mind where deep rooted feelings of self doubt might linger.

Quieting this inner critic so that creativity can flow can be such an issue for some, that an artist might be pushed to resort to alcohol or other substances because he/she feels that they've been more creative during those times when they happened to be under their influence. Although these substances can create a state of mind in which the inner critic gets subdued, dependence on them can be an artist's greatest weakness and will eventually lead to their downfall. While they may muffle the voices of that inner critic, the might also weaken one's skill, self discipline and dedication to their craft.

The first steps are the most difficult. Usually the excitement that is experienced when one first opens up and the ideas flow is quick to fade when that inner critic pops up once again and judges the ideas. According to the inner critic they are too this, too that... or simply, "this is no good". They are dismissed before they are given the chance to develop.

There is no easy way around this. Although some don't have such issues, these issues are not uncommon. The only way past this is to suspend judgement. Don't identify yourself with what you are creating for a moment... it's only one of many expressions you are capable of. Just go with it, let it manifest itself. Create it and then move on. It could take months or years to smooth out the process. But you must remain hopeful and have a positive attitude about the whole thing, because negativity will only sabotage you in the end. Forget about any worries that you might not have the talent... or creativity... just take the ball and run with it. If you like it, wonderful... if not, just move on. If others like your stuff then great, if not, it's ok. There are always those who will, because of their own deep seated issues of self doubt, try to rain on your parade... or place themselves and their own abilities upon a pedestal. Nonsense, all of it! Enjoy life... savour it... and it will be reflected in your works. Be true to yourself and enjoy the process.

Grigorios ;)
 
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Grigorios, Great Post! I'd like to add that quieting the inner critic is a process that can be learned through disciplined practice. Stream of consciousness writing for a few minutes every day has helped me keep my productivity up and limit the effects of those discouraging dry spells.
 
layla...

hey ...it's like this...

write one...
play it ...
get feedback...
change it....

or not...



play it some more...
re-write it...


or not...

put it in the can (done)....

and move on to the next one...

being prolific doesn't make you a good writer...
but, practice and patience brings self satisfaction...

I got a couple of tunes that I am pretty proud of...
it took a few years to get there though....

but,...
that's enough for me man...


Joe
 
Yep, is better to try to focus on quality, better to have 3 good ones tghan 30 so and so ones!!

I have recently started to be better att finding the good parts and finish songs. Before I usually had a good verse, melody or chours but they nevr made it into a complete song because I grew tired and got anew idea!!

Discipline is important.

Then again, sometiimes I write a song fromn scratch in 10 minutes.

Weird stuff, music!! :)
 
While it's better to have 3 good songs than 30 bad songs, you have to write the bad ones to learn how to write good ones.

Anybody that thinks the 1st songs they write are good are fooling themselves - they just won't know it until they write enough to actually create a good song.

While there may be rare exceptions, I suspect that any respected writer has a whole lot of crap that they try to learn from and then forget about.
 
We watched the Beatles Anthology DVDs, and George and Ringo discusssed the challenge of songwriting while in the same band as Lennon/McCartney. George in particular pointed out that Paul and John had a chance to get all the crappy songs out of their system by the time he (George) started to write songs. Then George and Ringo wrote some bad ones and a few good ones. I guess the point is that producing creative works takes practice, and there ain't nothin' wrong with writing something bad. Just don't make me listen to it!:cool:
 
mikeh said:
While a more developed writer may have the craft down (may being a key point), I'm sure there are many "seasoned" writers who continue to be self critical and self doubting.

I can't speak for all, but I know I am my own harshest critic (in every aspect of music). Many of my peers think my writing or my playing is better than I often think it is. That's OK, cause I continue to drive myself to be better - although I still think only 1 out of every 20 songs I write amounts to more than a pile of crap.

Layla, the main things to remember are:

1) Have fun doing it - enjoyment is it's own reward (and perhaps the true measure of success)
2) Don't get frustrated (just get better)
3) Be the best you can be - as long as you know in your heart you are giving your best effort, you should be proud of the results of that effort.
Click to expand...
I agree. Great advice. :)
 
I started writing as a teenager; I think there might be something to what you're saying. Of the dozens of songs that I poured out during high school, probably not one was actually good and listenable. But I learned a ton. I'm still learning.
There's something cool about your first songs; you can't quite bring what's in your head into reality, and sometimes you end up with a tune that's completely different from what you envisioned in a very cool way. As I become a better and more experienced songwriter, I find I get a lot closer to what I initially envision with my songs, which is not always a good thing. It's a trade off.
Part of becoming a good songwriter IMHO is getting comfortable with the process, and with how crappy things are at various stages of songwriting. It's knowing when a particular idea might be good but just not happening for you, so you put it on the backburner for a while. It's about knowing when you have something worth pursuing, or something that's just never going to work out into a good song.
What's more, you get comfortable with the ratio of good ideas to bad ideas that are going to come out of you. A lot of professional albums have 10-12 cuts on them, but there may have been 30-40 cuts demo'd as candidates for the album. Now imagine how many songs weren't even good enough to get demo'd!
You just have to sit back, take this songwriting thing easy. Maybe you have a verse and a chorus, and you need a second verse but it's not coming to you. No prob. Put it away, work on something else. Let your subconscious chew on it.
 
Layla,

I think I have a little differnent perspective on this that was offered above and similar, yet different from yours. I've been going through a rare (for me anyway) period of self doubt in regard to songwriting. Here's my theory on it (btw I can't claim ownership of this idea, I read this in a discussion with another songwriter). I think for a lot of us who are learning, our critical listening skills grow at different rates and at different times than our actual writing skills. In other words, you get better at distiguishing what makes a good song and recognize it in other's work, but can't quite get it there yourself. I think this causes internal dissonance and that "not satisfied" feeling. At some point, if you keep at it, you writing skill will catch up with your listening skill and there will be peace again...temporarily, until the cycle starts all over. It think of these as songwriting growth spurts. I'm in the middle of one now. The only thing to do (for me anyway) is to keep on chugging one step at a time. If one does that, one is bound to keep improving.

Well, that's my theory anyway.

Also, as mentioned already, not every song every writer writes is a great song. Even the pros write some not-that-great songs. They just write more and have a higher % of good vs bad. It's all in the doing. I heard on Nashville Star one of the performers when they did the original song portion. Well this particular contestant bragged of wrting this particular song with a VERY successful hit songwriter. I was all a twitter waiting to hear this masterpiece. It stunk. Seriously it was a terrible song. It happens. Just keep writing. So will I :D

:)
 
It seems to me that this is a difficult balance between complacency (as jag illustrated) and crippling self doubt. In another thread Aaron talked about keeping your creative head in one box and your critical thread in another, and jag made a brilliant point that these heads grow at different rates.

The only answer must be time and experience. I cringe when I recall my earliest efforts (Phoebe or whatever she was called thought Smelly Cat was a good song :)) but what I find really painful is that in five years time I'll look back at the stuff I'm posting now and cringe at that!!
 
I really appreciate everything you guys are saying. Lykdwidk$*%&^@ (I caint spell that to save my life) I'm really glad you understand. Something that's really tough for me is that I recently started seeing a guy who is - essentially what I describe. & he just does this stuff for fun, and its personal, and its really good. hell. I had someone tell me today that he thinks that people who start young just get used to throwing stuff away because they know they can write another one, and if that doesn't work they can write another one. This guys message to me was to let the songs write themselves, don't try to force them to be what I hear in my head, and to thow stuff away and move on to the next, then after I've done X 10 times and Y 10 times, that 11th time it'll be just "ok, I'm gonna use x & y here & get that effect" something like that - so that's my mission. Its still pretty hard, but I'm working on it on ALL FRONTS! (and thanks over and over again, you're all so supportive - I really do appreciate it)


ps: Garry - You don't like Smelly Cat? What about the video? that didn't do it for you??

pps: I started writing songs about two years ago becuase I had two really quite decent songs come to me out of the blue - one while I was waiting for the bus, the other while I was brushing my teeth. The toothbrushing song even came with a guitar riff and a solid drum groove. Its kind of like winning the house the first time you go to Vegas, I guess. You keep expecting it to be just that way.
 
i didnt read everyone's posts, only some so this might be repeating whatever someone else has said but o well....

im almost 18...i've been playing music for about 3 and a half years. ive learned a lot in that time but i dont think ive scratched the surface of what i can do. i'll just keep learning, but what i have to keep in mind is that my music isnt ever good enough to be compared to some of the greatest songs ever written and until it is, im not satisified. what makes a great song isnt easy to determine, but its not necessiarly the most popular. i just know i cant be satisified with something unless it can be compared to my favorite music. when i reach the level of the people i respect and admire as musicians, then i can say that i know what im doing.

you have to always enjoy playing though, i know my songs are not at that level yet so i can never stop writing. you just gotta play and play and play and write and write and write. knowing that you will get better.

ive found that writing a truely great song requires you to listen to something most people dont and see things from an angle that most people dont. you have to be open to the weird and mysterious. the odd things in life are what make life interesting and keep us from all going insane. i cant remember the exact quote, but it said something like...

to admit we understand Edgar Allan Poe is to admit our own abnormality. i bring this up because its important for people to realize things about themselves, and if you cant understand the most peculiar things in life, you'll never understand yourself and what makes music do whatever it does to people's senses.

i probably rambled there, and no one will understand it, but o well...
 
you have to write the bad ones to learn how to write good ones.
Click to expand...

I totally agree. I tell my writing students the same thing; if you write often, you'll have numerous duds, but you can't get to the good stuff without first getting the duds out of the way.

I use a sports analogy -- Jordan (insert other great athlete here) missed many, many shots and played poorly in many games. However, he would not have been as great as he was without those horrible games. They motivated him and made him work harder.

I have kept all my songs in a binder -- over 100 of them -- I'd say 1/4 are decent. I keep them to remind myself that you have to kiss a lot of frogs...

Just keep writing, all the time, and don't get comfortable. Challenge yourself to push the boundaries of your own writing. Study/copy the songwriters you respect. From there, you can develop your own style. If you still love writing after producing some real garbage, then you have much potential. That is, good writers love to write ANYTHING. Laugh it off and move forward.

Now stop reading and write...

G
 
And Theres Your Song! Joe Did Nail It!

joro said:
layla...

hey ...it's like this...

write one...
play it ...
get feedback...
change it....

or not...



play it some more...
re-write it...


or not...

put it in the can (done)....

and move on to the next one...

being prolific doesn't make you a good writer...
but, practice and patience brings self satisfaction...

I got a couple of tunes that I am pretty proud of...
it took a few years to get there though....

but,...
that's enough for me man...


Joe
Click to expand...
YEP..JOE DID NAIL IT! AND THERES YOUR SONG TOO!!!
 
Layla Nahar said:
a thought about not being satisfied
Click to expand...
Hey, if Mick Jagger couldn't get no satisfaction, what chance do the rest of us have?

My problem is that I know what sucks when I hear or read it.
Click to expand...
Good songs are like pornography in the sense that no one can define what it is, but we all think we know it when we see it. (Or hear it, in this case.) But that isn't necessarily so.

The reason songwriters and other artists are their own worst critics is that we're the only ones who know what we were attempting to achieve in the first place. We set out with a goal in mind and then we judge the finished work by how well it achieves that goal. But our audience doesn't share our goal. The listener reaches into our work and takes from it what he or she wants. The only thing more rare than an artist achieving his or her exact goal in the finished work is a listener who interprets the work exactly as the artist intended.

That's kind of liberating, don't you think? It's also the reason I second Joro's motion to get feedback on your work. But don't ask people to tell you whether or not they like it; ask them how it makes them feel and what it makes them think about when they listen to it.
 
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