DO YOU WANT TO BE A SUCCESSFUL PUBLISHED SONGWRITER?

Today, I was sharing my songwriting journey with a group of high school students. I’ve never really told my story in quite this much detail and to such a young audience or matter of fact, to anyone out of my very small close circle, but in the course of trying to convey my story, I discovered a couple of things about myself. I told them about growing up in Tehran and how I had to leave Iran, because I almost got executed and almost lost my life, simply because of writing music which was questioning certain things about the government, and about the intimidation I felt in regard to the music business because of the huge number of people I encountered that were trying and failing to make their dreams come true.
 
Even though I had dreamed as a child of being one of the people whose names were on the liner notes as having written the songs, I was scared senseless, so much so that I wouldn’t even try. 

I went to college and got a degree in Industrial Engineering, but I never gave up my music dream and eventually at age of 20 I ended up studying the degree course again in major of Music Production (instead of studying Master of Industrial Engineering). ​

Today, for the first time, I realized WHY I was unwilling and unable to even try songwriting after I got out of high school. Because of my fears and insecurities, I had created a list in my head of reasons why I could never become a songwriter. I didn’t play piano well. I didn’t sing well enough. My melodies were boring. I was just writing rap music and producing beats, but I didn’t even know anything about the industry and didn’t know anyone in the business. On and on the list went. I realized today that by focusing on the people who were failing in the business, I had become one of them. No one has failed more completely than the person who didn’t even try. At least the cable guy, the waiters and the air conditioning people TRIED. I had not.
 
So, what changed my self-defeating thoughts? I met a guy who had succeeded. I asked him questions. He told me how things worked. And, the impossible became possible. Here was a guy who was getting paid to write songs telling me how it was done. If he was doing it, I believed I could too.
If I can do this, you can too. It takes a lot of hard work and a lot of time. But it can be done.

Author

Hangi Tavakoli is our in-house established and professional music producer with more than 17 years of experience in songwriting, music production, mix and mastering. He has produced more than 3,000 and written more than 4,800 published songs to-date, including some major hits in international scale.