Six hours after sitting down to hammer out my next Songwriting Class assignment, my brain is tired, I’m very hungry, and I feel only marginally closer to my goal. I suspect that if someone else were around, I’d discover that I was a bit cranky, too.
I am diligently following processes professor Pat Pattison recommends online and in his book Writing Better Lyrics
All of this creates great sympathy to my middle school and high school piano and composition students, and it has offered me some opportunity to reflect upon what it takes to learn a new skill.
- Identify what you want to learn and how to get there. Being able to write effective lyrics has been a goal of mine for at least 10 years. Now I am carving out time from my professional life to do such. I had a student who wanted to learn to play piano so she could learn Für Elise. She started with me at age 7, and several years later she learned the whole piece and played it quite well.
- Commit and follow through. I committed to six weeks of this course, but my initial commitment did not envision the level of work this is taking. It reminds me of the piano student wanting to learn a favored piano sonata, only to discover that the development section is more difficult than the exposition. That’s where follow through comes in. Yes, it’s more work, but we commit to reaching the end goal.
- Listen to experience. My first lyric writing assignment was attempted with no help from the optional reading. While I could fulfill the assignment’s raw objectives, the process made me acutely aware that I lacked the tools necessary to create the artistic output I desired. This time I am following processes outlined in the book Writing Better Lyrics, and I feel much better prepared to complete the current assignment. Now, if I could get all of my students to follow the effective piano practice processes we cover…
- Avoid cramming in too many new skills. Currently I am cramming in a lot of new skills, and it is really uncomfortable. I imagine that everything I am trying to master now would be much more fun, sustainable, and effective if I studied it over the course of a semester. I don’t think any of my piano students would put up with this level of discomfort in learning so many new skills at once. As a piano teacher, I am reminded of the importance of assigning pieces that introduce new skills incrementally.
- Quiet your judges. Inner judges are one of the most destructive forces I’ve seen in middle and high school students. These are the voices in the head that say, “You’re no good at this,” or “Who do you think you’re fooling – you’ll never be able to do this.” As a composer, I once went through a 12-18 month dry spell while listening of my judges. I try to teach my students to ignore the negativity of these voices and pull out only what is useful. If your judge offers something like, “Your melodies don’t even compare to Mendelssohn’s,” the only useful information is that it is time to go and study more Mendelssohn.
- Craft takes time. This is something that I learned from studying composition in my twenties. Even after years of counterpoint studies, analysis, performing, improvisation, and (of course) composing, I am aware of holes in my craft. I know it will take a lot of practice before I am comfortable with lyric writing. Likewise it takes a lot of time for a new pianist to reach high ability. We must be patient for our craft to develop.
- Celebrate past and future growth. Perhaps this is the most important point made here. Artistic growth is like climbing a very tall mountain. For every rise that you successfully crest, another, even higher, rise comes into view. This can lead to two types of artists: the artist depressed at never reaching the pinnacle, or the artist invigorated by new heights just climbed and future heights in sight. Teach yourself and your students to be the latter and celebrate past and future growth.
Lunch is long over, and it is time to return to my assignment. I’ve got my story line, potential key words, some ideas for effective repetition. Rhyming dictionary comes next. And then I start to tackle the actual lyrics … although it might be tomorrow before I get to that. (Sigh.) Learning new skills does take patience.