How Songwriting Bridges Ideas and Execution
I’ve learned a lot about my own creativity in my decades of life as a professional songwriter. One of my biggest lessons early on was around inspiration. When I started writing songs, I understood very little of the process, so I assumed I’d just wait for inspiration to strike and then, if all the other elements were in place, I would write a song. It turns out that inspiration is something that can - and should! - be regularly tapped if the hope is to treat creativity as an important part of our work. That being said, our inspiration is only of value to others if it’s then executed upon. Songwriting is a great alchemist in that it teaches us to turn our ideas (aka inspiration) into finished songs. Below are a few of the lessons that writing songs can teach us about the path from idea to execution.
Transformation of The Abstract into The Tangible
What I love about songwriting as a form of expression is that it enables us to take our abstract ideas and feelings and turn them into something tangible. And by “tangible,” I mean something that can help us to connect with and move others by its very existence. This transformation, however, applies to bringing any idea to fruition, whether via a physical prototype or a new service or process inside of an organization. The key is moving from the abstract to the concrete, and songwriting is a great example of this kind of transformation.
Demonstration of Project Follow-Through
Think of songwriting as a mini-innovation process. As a song progresses from a rough idea (maybe just a title or a general outline of a story) to rough recording (into a smartphone in the writing room) to demo to finished studio recording, it mirrors the prototyping of physical products and/or iterations of all kinds of innovations. The key is that an idea isn’t enough. It’s the follow-through that takes an idea through the necessary rounds of improvements until it’s out in the world in its final fully formed state. Ideas without these subsequent steps tend to stay vague and unrealized. It’s only by applying the discipline that songwriting teaches us that we can go beyond the vague to the concrete.
Reinforcement of Action-Oriented Creativity
I think it’s important to state that creativity isn’t solely about dreaming and inspiration. It’s about building. Taking a song from an idea to a finished recording trains our builder’s mindset so that we think in terms of bringing our ideas to completion. There’s very little in a working creative’s life that is passive. It’s about taking positive and consistent action on our ideas in order to bring them to life. The more we appreciate this active approach, the higher the yield - and quality - of our output.
Conclusion
Looking back on my three-plus decades of writing songs, I can safely say that the times when I’m most fulfilled are when I’m turning my ideas into finished creations. Ideas on their own can, in fact, feel overwhelming as they rattle around inside our heads without an outlet. It’s the flow state that we can achieve by digging in and turning those ideas into finished products that I find myself going after again and again. Songwriting can teach us how to do this in a way that allows us to then apply those same lessons to any and all of our creative endeavors.
Bio
Cliff Goldmacher is a GRAMMY-recognized, #1 hit songwriter, music producer and author with recording studios in Nashville, TN and Middle River, MD. Through his studios, Cliff provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual, live access to Nashville’s best session musicians and studio vocalists for their songwriting demos. Find out more. You can also download Cliff’s FREE tip sheet “A Dozen Quick Fixes To Instantly Improve Your Songs.”
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