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THINGS CREATIVELY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE DON’T DO

9/27/2022

Creatively successful people have healthy mental habits. They not only have mastered their art, but they have learned to master their habits, attitudes, and emotions. They understand this mastery allows them more creative space in their mind and spirit. Check out these things creatively successfully people don’t do so you too also become a master of your creativity and destiny.

Give their power away. Creatively successful people don’t blame circumstances or other people if they are not having the success, they feel they should be having. They rest all the responsibility for their success squarely on their own shoulders. They empower themselves and it drives their creativity to improve their art.

They don’t shy away from change. Creatively successful people don’t try to avoid change. They understand that change is inevitable and welcome it. They believe in their abilities to adapt.

THINGS SKILLED SONGWRITERS DO DIFFERENTLY

9/13/2022

Throughout my 15 years as a professional songwriter, I’ve noticed there isn’t always a large difference in talent level among creative people. Why, then do some songwriters seem to have an over abundance of fans buying their music while others struggle to sell the first song? The answer is there is not a huge difference in skill most writers process, but there is a little. And that extra 5% makes a big difference. I absorbed that the skilled songwriters share some common mental habits. The good news is that these habits can be adopted through practice. Here are some traits that can help us over the hurdles to accomplishing our songwriting goals.

Skilled songwriters write whether they feel inspired or not. I think this would the one single thing I am keep telling all writers. To keep writing. Don’t wait for inspiration, and don’t even wait for a reason, excuse or a topic to write. Start writing and the inspiration comes.

SIMPLE WAYS TO UNLEASH YOUR OWN CREATIVE SONGWRITING POWER

9/6/2022

As a professional songwriter, I am asked often how I walk into a co-write with superstars create songs “on-demand?” Well, I didn’t start out doing this, but I’ve learned a few tricks over the years that’ve allow me to train my creativity and tap into it anytime, anyplace. The good news is, you can do the same too! These simple strategies go a long way in the songwriting business.

Make it clear that you mean business. Developing a writing routine shows yourself and others that you are in your creative zone. By sticking to a fixed scheduled you remind yourself and others around you that you are doing it professionally and not for fun. Not only do you need to show others when it’s okay to interrupt your writing and when it’s not, but also, your own creativity needs trained as well. Studies show that writing at a regular time each day allows the subconscious to be prepared to create more easily “on demand” than when you have no set routine.

THE SINGLE BIGGEST DISTINCTION BETWEEN PROFESSIONAL AND AMATEUR SONGWRITERS

8/30/2022

In my mind, the single biggest distinction between a professional and an amateur writer is their way of thinking. Here are some of the most significant differences I’ve observed over the years in my day to day life as a full-time songwriter.

Amateurs think “Somebody is going to steal my song.”
Professionals think, “I’m going to write my idea better than anyone else. If they write it better than I did, more power to them.”

Amateurs write when inspiration hits and only when it happens, and they brag about it.
Professionals write anyway.

Amateurs think about what they want to write and what they personally feel close to and write about that whenever the inspiration hits them.
Professionals also think about what audiences want to hear.

FEED ME – GREAT SONGWRITING NEEDS CONSTANT INSPIRATION

7/26/2022

Do you feel like your melodies sound dated when you’re writing a new song? Are you in a songwriting rut? It happens to us all. We start rolling and write a bunch of songs we really love, and then one day we wake up and everything starts sounding the same. Every new idea we create seems familiar. And worse, those ideas may sound like melodies we heard years before! That’s the most horrible part. There had been times I wrote a brand new song and played it for my artists and they showed me the “original” version of that song. I was very sure I hadn’t copy, and when I was so frustrated of what is happening, a psychologist friend of mine told me that human brain tend to keep the audio in the memory for an unbelievable amount of time and no matter if we remember it or not, when we want to write, subconsciously we might write the melody that we don’t remember and we are not even aware of the fact that song ever existed or we ever had heard it. But it already is registered in our subconsciousness.

THINGS THAT KEEP ME KEEPING ON AS A SONGWRITER

7/5/2022

Failure is not failure. Most great people fail many times before they succeed. Just imagine the world if all those people whom we now know as successful had gave up in any of the first of hundreds of times that they failed. Imagine if Steve Jobs just gave up any of the times that his marketing ideas reached to a dead-end road. Can you imagine the world without Apple products? Imagine, if Dr Dre had given up on Eminem when the whole hip-hip industry at the moment had told Dre to leave alone the white boy because he is not good enough. Even when Eminem’s first album failed so bad, but instead Dre and Eminem just worked on their craft and they gave birth to the Rap God we know today. Can you imagine our current world without Eminem? Can you imagine the world without Bill Gates and Microsoft? Even let’s go one step further, can you imagine the world without the Thomas Edison and electricity? All these people had failed countless times but at the end of the day, they made an impact that changed the world, in some cases forever.

Just think about it, each of us – songwriters – might become one of those kind of big people in one point in our life but that definitely will not happen if we give up when we fail. It happens, learn the lesson and move on.

THE OVERCONFIDENT SONGWRITER

6/28/2022

I was talking to a songwriter and he was telling about his story of when he walked into a certain PRO office like he owned the place, because he knew that his songs were better than anything they had in their catalogue. When he demanded a meeting on the spot, they escorted him out of the building. He was shocked. Then, he went across the street and tried that same plan out at another place with the same result. At the end of the story he claimed that someone else actually escorted him out of the whole city. While that part stretched believability, I’ve seen the first two routines in action several times.
Songwriter Dude, I’m sorry if you wind up hearing your story and seeing yourself here, but I have to say that your plan is a bad one. You don’t own this town. You don’t own your PRO. And, nobody here owes you anything. You didn’t build the town, or the PRO, or any of the artists involved, or in general you still hadn’t generated even a cent from your music for yourself or for anybody else.

I love your confidence though, but it is not going to get you anywhere in this industry. You may be a very talented songwriter. I am not here to judge that at this moment, but you have to understand where you fit into the big picture before you will ever be welcomed into the fold.

CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGHLY CREATIVE PEOPLE

6/7/2022

A different breed. Over the past 15 years of writing and working with artists, producers, and co-writers; I’ve noticed certain traits in myself and others in the creative community. We are wired differently than the other 95% of the population. We are the creative types. I’m not trying to say I am different but what I’m saying is that there are certain things I absorbed while working with these people and maybe these behaviours grown in me too, because I started being in this create environment from tender age of 12.

When inspiration strikes, they forget everything else but their creative work. They tend to lose all track of time and even forget to eat. This is something very common that we are in studio and out of nowhere we realise it’s 3am and we still hadn’t eaten dinner and not planning to leave the studio any time soon until the project is wrapped. And interesting part is that everyone is perfectly happy with such arrangement!

QUICK WAYS TO LOSE A CO-WRITER, AND A FRIEND, AND A DATE!

5/31/2022

As I mentioned a couple of times by now, co-writing is like dating in some levels. It also can be a bit similar to a friendship. There are unwritten rules and manners for both friendship and dating. It is not much different than co-writing. There are several quick ways to lose a co-writer, or a friend, or a date.

Show up with nothing. No ideas, no grooves. Zero. You’d be amazed how many times this happens. Who shows up for work unprepared to do anything? Would you show up on a date and tell your date that you don’t give a single damn about being there? Well, showing up unprepared on a co-write session basically is telling your co-writers that you don’t care about being in the room with them. No one who wants to be around for a while. Come in prepared with lots of ammo and give your best every day.

THINGS I WISH MY AMATEUR SONGWRITING SELF HAD KNOWN

5/3/2022

I started writing songs when I was 11 years old. They were predictably bad, but heartfelt. Many were dedicated to girls in the neighborhood that I wished would notice me. If I could go back and talk to that little old guy, I would tell him, “Hey buddy, being a real songwriter is hard and stressful. It will take way longer than you think it will to succeed. But it will be the best job you can ever imagine”.

If I could go back and mentor my teenager songwriting self, I could help him avoid a lot of the unpleasant moments and tons of disappointments he experienced and help him succeed much faster. That exactly is what I am doing with the writers I am mentoring now, and it is one of the main reasons I am writing this blog.

I had done mistakes, you read these, and don’t repeat my mistakes!

WHAT KEEPS YOU GOING?

4/19/2022

For some reason, people often ask me what keeps me going? How do I stay motivated to write when I get so few songs cut in relation to the number of songs I write? I have come to believe that motivation is an internal force, not an external one. I don’t believe in “motivation”, at its core. Or some kind I can say that I don’t believe the motivation comes from any outside factors. I’m not more motivated to write if I get more cuts. I’m motivated to write by some internal force that will not be denied. There is a part of me that IS going to succeed no matter what. The part of me that write at least one new song every day, regardless of how many cuts I get. I just keep writing for matter of writing and when I write, every time I just try to write the best song I’ve ever written, and I don’t think of what to do with it next. When I think this way, I have nothing to be worried about and I can write with no stress nor any pressure.

LEARNING TO THINK LIKE BLAKE SHELTON

4/5/2022

Songwriters, do you think like an artist? One of the tricks to getting cuts with major artists like Blake Shelton is learning to think like they do. It’s not really all that hard, but it does take some time and effort which if you ask me, it totally worth it to spend that time, energy and effort to learn to think like some of the greatest writers and build your career’s foundation. In essence, songwriters are mini speech writers. We are trying to put words in the mouths of celebrities, and they will sing them out loud for the world. If you were trying to write a speech for a major political candidate, you would try to get to know that candidate as well as you possibly could. You want your words to sound very natural coming out of their mouths because literally the whole world is listening to it – essentially, these words must sound so natural, pure and relevant that sound like they wrote it themselves. To pull that off, I try to read a lot of interviews with artists I want to aim to pitch songs to.

WHO CAN STOP YOU FROM WRITING SONGS?

2/1/2022

I think that’s a valid question for every songwriter to ask themselves from time to time. We all had been there, thinking about it and we all will come back to thinking about it. On occasion, I hear songwriters say things like “It’s not really worth writing a song if I can’t get a publisher to listen.” Or “Why bother writing another song no one will ever hear?” Or even “It’s so hard to get on the Billboard Charts or make money with music these days”. When I hear those comments, I challenge the writers to examine their motivation for writing. So, I’ll ask you the same questions I ask them. Maybe they will cause you to think about your own motivation. Would you keep writing if you knew you’d never make a dollar with your music? Is your motivation solely based on money, or would you keep writing for other reasons even if it never paid off? Could lack of publisher interest make you give up? Do you really want to give them that much power? Does the size of the potential audience for your music factor into your decision to write?

QUESTIONS ABOUT CO-WRITING ETIQUETTE

1/25/2022

Once in one of our sessions a songwriter asked me, “If I don’t like the way a song turns out with a co-writer, am I free to take the idea and write it with someone else?”. It was very easy to answer her question as it’s pretty obvious and I was kind of surprised seeing that she didn’t know the answer, but on the other had the answer to such question is not written anywhere as a rule or anything. Maybe because it’s just simply too obvious, and no one ever cared to actually make it clear for anyone who might not know. The answer to her is; No. Not really. Generally, once you write an idea with someone, you are in it for good with them. It’s considered as a very bad form to take your idea and write it one your own or with someone else. And it would probably destroy your relationship with writer #1. If you are in such situation and you really don’t like the result of what came out with that writer but you really like the topic, I would suggest that the better approach is to see if you can get your co-writer to agree to bring in someone else to help you fix it or make better, while the writer #1 is also involved in the process. If he / she agrees, then the three of you could sit down and hopefully get it where it needs to be.

THE SCARIEST MOMENT IN SONGWRITING

1/18/2022

I believe that the scariest moment for any profession is the moment before you start. And the exact same goes for songwriting too. Most of us have voices that play in our heads. Those voices often tell us that the task at hand “can’t be done”. “You aren’t good enough”. “You can’t handle this”. “Songwriting is not something you can just do if you aren’t born with it”. You know the drill. It is the rare person who has never heard those voices. The negative self-talk keeps us from starting. If you don’t start, or don’t try, then you can’t fail. Or so “they” tell us. So, we drift through life taking the easy road because these nameless voices don’t believe in us. When you think about it, it seems silly, doesn’t it? Letting nameless, internal voices change the course of our lives? And giving up on something we are dying to do because we can’t summon the courage to just give it a try. And this is not just about songwriting. In fact for anything in life, whenever we want to start something new, we hear voices telling us that it is impossible and it scary and this and that. And they only shut up when we get into it, start doing what we wanted to do and start getting results. Show the voices “who the boss is”.

SONGWRITERS AND EXCUSES

1/11/2022

If there is one thing that I have learned in my journey through the music business, it’s that I’ve never made one dollar from excuses. Yet I lose count of people around me, usually newbies or unsuccessful seniors in the business who keep making excuses to justify everything rather than just taking responsibility and accepting that they could change the situation simply by working harder – or in some cases simply just by “working” instead of waiting for someone else to do their job for them. “It’s harder than ever to get a cut” “You have to write with the artist to get a cut” “I write songs that are too deep for the market” “People don’t understand my music”. These are the excuses I’m hearing on a daily basis and yes, they may all be true. But the fact remains there is that, if I write an amazing song, someone will notice. Will they notice my average songs? Not unless I have some special connection. Will I be able to sneak a “decent” song through and get it recorded? Not likely, unless I wrote it with the artist and, even then, that is a longshot.

SONGWRITING IS ADDICTIVE

12/7/2021

Time after time, I see the warning signs. It takes a trained eye to spot them, but even simple statements thrown out in casual conversation can reveal that a songwriter has crossed over from social songwriting to having a real problem. When you get the hang of writing songs, it really is addictive. You want it or not, there are times you would find yourself thinking of songs ideas when you hear even random words from people around you. My friends are talking about their life, relationship or even simple things like when they are talking about football or politics and I hear songs in my head. When that happens to you, you would know it exactly is the definition of addiction. There are lots of things an addicted person says or does that would tell you about their situation. When you hear statements like these are a dead giveaway: “I think I need another guitar” or “That would be a great song title” as will as “We should write that” or “I woke up and wrote that chorus at 3 AM”. They sound innocent enough, but they reveal a deeper problem. Much deeper than what they look like. This person is addicted to songwriting.

PUT YOURSELF IN POSITION TO SUCCEED IN SONGWRITING

11/30/2021

Many writers struggle with the idea of getting themselves in position to succeed. In fact, I see two extremes play out. Sometimes writers adopt the idea that “all I have to do is write a great song” and they believe they literally don’t need to do anything else at all. Others go to the extreme of trying desperately to “meet the right people” while ignoring the fact that they don’t have any great songs to present to those right people when they finally get to meet them.

So, I find myself continually preaching the message of putting yourself in position to succeed. Meaning you have to put yourself mentally in the right place to start seeing the signs of success and getting to understand what you need to do to take your songwriting career to a whole new level. This is what I’ve learned from these mentoring sessions. Here are my suggested steps for putting yourself in position to succeed – in order of importance.

IF YOU WANT A MUSIC CAREER, BE OPEN MINDED

11/16/2021

On a daily basis in this business I come across musicians, songwriters and artists who are trying to make a name for themselves in the industry, but it is interesting to see how a big percent of them forget the most basic attitude: to be a bit open.

People who fall into this category are mainly the ones who are either asking for opportunities, or they already have a little exposure to the industry, but they are not involved with any of the major players. Either way, they are considered as not very professionals, although some of them have a real talent in them which unfortunately they don't know how to use it to climb the ladder.

Here I am going to mention a few of the examples I have encountered with, in person and tell you why I consider them as narrow minded.

REASONS NOT TO QUIT WRITING SONGS

11/9/2021

Many of us struggle with voices in our head saying things like “You’ll never make it.” or “You’re not good enough.” And, most of us, at one time or another, have thought about throwing in the towel. I can consider myself successful at this point of my career but believe it or not, I still hear those voices occasionally and once in a while I ask myself “What the hell are you doing by writing all these songs?”. But as an answer to myself, those voices, and your stinky thoughts, here are few reasons that encourage us not to throw in the towel.

If you were born with the urge to write, you will probably never feel complete if you give it up. Most writers are not able to just walk away without feeling regret and emptiness. Writing is part of us. Creating is in our nature. Without them, we are just some bodies, moving around, pointless and aimless. If a none writer read this might not understand what I mean by saying “writing isn’t just part of us, but we ARE the writing”. We can go by not talking let’s say for a month or two, but not writing for a week can drive us insane.

DISCIPLINES IS A KEY FOR SETTING YOURSELF UP TO SUCCEED

10/12/2021

One of the biggest lessons I have learned in my years in the music business is that nobody wants me to succeed as much as I do. My publisher, my co-writers and my song pluggers all want me to do well. They are heavily invested in my success. But, at the end of the day, I’m going to have to do most of the heavy lifting if I’m going to succeed. They will help but they will do what they can do, and that’s my job to do “my job”. If they were up to do what I am supposed to, they didn’t need to work with me from the first place. And to do my job, I need to have a very strong discipline coming from myself, because in this industry we don’t really have such thing as “boss” or someone who force us to do anything. Everything, including all success or failures come, are direct reflection and consequences of our own actions. The way I always explain it for my mentees is, “We need to have a military level of discipline, and there is no commander to force us. We have to have it from inside our own will power”. Here are a few things I try to do every day to keep myself moving in the right direction:

DO SOMETHING REAL.

9/28/2021

One time, I was playing a songwriter show in Tehran and had one of the funniest, yet most profound experiences of my musical life. After the show, the hotel’s entertainment booking person wanted to have an “after party” with all the writers who played and some of her special guests. So, after the show, we head over to the hotel’s cafe to hang out, shake hands and talk to the people that brought us there. The other writer who had played the show with me was a big pop producer who had also written several hits. We were starving, so we ordered some food and continued to schmooze. Before our food came, Mary, the booking person, brought in 4 guys that were in a band she was working with. They all had facial tattoos and piercings. They were dressed in leather and either wearing bandanas on their heads or had spiked up mohawks. Chains from their wallets to their pants. Metal spikes on the boots. You get the idea. I’m not judging. Just describing.

ARRIVING IN LIFE AND SONGWRITING

8/31/2021

The longer I live and the more I write, the more I realize that there really is no “destination” in life, unless it is death.

Short of the grave, we are all still on the journey, trying to figure out the world and our place in it. In regard to writing, we all – or most of us anyway – have hopes, plans and dreams. We have places we want to go. Things we want to achieve. Accomplishments we want to grasp before we leave the planet. There is no aspect of my music career that has gone according to my plans. I’ve determined that I may not be smart enough to come up with a plan for life or a career and that, perhaps, I do my best work when I just take each day for what it is.

DON’T LET YOUR NEXT SONG CRITIQUE DRIVE YOU CRAZY

8/24/2021

After receiving different song critiques of the same song from two different people, I often hear an aspiring writer complain that the critiques contradict each other. For example: the first person critiquing the song likes the second verse, but not the first; the second person, however, likes the first verse, but not the second. Usually, the aspiring writer’s next statement is something to the effect that it’s just somebody’s opinion, and the song is just fine as it is. This is overlooking the real value of this of song critiques by misunderstanding the feedback, and perhaps, the source it’s coming from. After doing thousands of critiques of my own songs, and of songs from mentoring students in my classes, I have a much different reaction to this type of critique.

Here how to weed through seasoned feedback and uncover the real value of a song critique:

POSITIVE THOUGHTS FOR SONGWRITERS

8/17/2021

I’m a big believer in positive thinking. I have a strong faith that there are some positive thoughts for songwriters which can help keep us moving forward in our music business and can help us to enjoy this long and tough journey, which is hard enough that if we don’t have that strong faith and believe we might give up, just like those thousands or possibly millions of other people who stepped in this path and gave up after a while. We must accept what we started is something that not everybody would dare to start and even from the people who started it, not everyone are strong enough to keep it up. All the financial instabilities, all the long hours of working and all the rejections as conclusion of standing by all these hardships. It needs an iron faith to keep going and keep writing until we get the desired results. Here are some of the topics that fill up my mind during the hard times at work, and they give me more energy to continue what I sacrificed everything for.

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