Songwriting Challenge | Ten Turds (Patreon)

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Hi Everyone,

In this lesson I'm walking you through the process. The process. This is a great way to get into writing music: practice writing a bunch of crappy ideas as quickly as possible. The more you write, the more you see your patterns, your go-to's, and your habits. The more you write this way the more you get to be surprised by a cool idea that pops up. The more you write this way the more you confront all those "I'm not good enough feelings" and learn how to just move onto the next thing.

This writing method is called the "ten turds" method because so many of my songwriting students have been so afraid to start writing music because they think, "what if I write something bad." I'm here to tell you, most of the music that you'll ever write - and that I'll ever write! - that your favorite artist writes - won't live up to your standards. And thats ok. Because when you get into writing and focus on just doing the work, you get better at writing and you learn how to lean into the good stuff.  This technique is designed to get you out of your own head and just practice writing stuff no matter how good or bad you think you are at writing.

Basically, everything takes practice and songwriting is no exception. This is an exercise that sometimes rewards you with something cool. Sometimes it doesn't. But the more you write like this, the more you'll be prepared for when that one cool idea comes along! Essentially, if you are feeling afraid to write music, start with "ten turds" and you might surprise yourself that at LEAST one of them is actually maybe kind of cool. And then maybe you'll want to write ten more.

I've been doing exercises like this for years so don't get hung up on needing your ideas to be as long, polished, detailed, lyrical, or clear as mine. Start with whatever you can. If you only get a chord progression or an interesting melody or a cool sounding "thing" just record it and move on!

I've provided my ideas as a gesture of vulnerability - you don't need to share all ten with me - in fact - don't share all ten on the community forum. This is a private process thats just for you - I'm just doing it publicly because I want to encourage you to write music. 

However, if you want to talk about how the process went - what feelings came up, how long it "actually" took you, or if you got one or two cool ideas you're really excited about, please share whatever you're comfortable with on the community forum! 

Also, if you really love some or all of your ideas, you don't need to call them "turds." I just use that language to set the bar really really low. 

Perfectionism is just fear in disguise. No one likes doing things they aren't good at immediately and songwriting is just one of those things you can NOT instantly be good at. So, setting out to quickly write ten "turds" is a way of bypassing all that fear. It takes practice, and this is a way to begin practicing! I hope you enjoy.

Check out the Lesson Archive for more Songwriting lessons