I’m going to get a little analytical in this article. If it seems like I’m also getting nit picky, that’s because this has always been a topic of discussion that I think a lot of people disagree on. Kind of like the age old debate of whether a sports star is more talent or hard work. Personally, I think you need both, but let me not jump ahead of myself. Forgetting about sports stars and war heroes, let’s focus on songwriting. When all is said and done, does coming up with a “good” song more inspiration or perspiration, or hard work? We’re going to tackle that question in the paragraphs to follow.
Let me preface what follows with this question.
Are you born with talent? Is it something that you have or do you need to find some way to develop it? And if you don’t have it, can it be developed?
I don’t think anybody really has an answer to this question. Sure, there have been examples throughout history of musicians who were clearly born with an amazing gift, like Mozart who was composing at a ridiculously young age. And I guess we could look at him and say, yes, because HE was born with talent other people must also be born with talent to some degree. Well, then we get into the debate of what percentage of people are “born” with talent.
Like I said, I’m going to get very nit picky and deep in this one.
As a frame of reference, I’ll use myself because outside of Mozart, I’m the only person I know as to whether or not he was “born” with any talent.
Looking back at my life, having made my first record singing at age 3 (I sang some old standards) I guess I could say I was born with some talent. But oh my God, were those recordings dreadful. Yeah, cute for a 3 year old, but I can now see why I never had a singing career. Point is, I didn’t open my mouth at age 3 and sound like Caruso. Not even close.
Of course a singing voice is also a physical thing. You’re born with a certain kind of voice box and chest. How much sound you get out of yourself naturally is going to be somewhat limited by the way you’re built. But again, we’re not talking about singing here. We’re talking about writing songs. That’s something you can do even if you have the worst voice in the world.
Well, I didn’t try to write my first song until I was 20 years old. Some girl broke my heart and I turned to the piano. I really should thank her because had it not been for her I probably wouldn’t be writing this today.
Needless to say, my first songs were dreadful. They were a repetition of chords that just went on and on and on and on. My mother, God rest her soul, asked me when I was getting off the merry-go-round. Yeah, my stuff was like early Kraftwerk but melodically not nearly as good. Not even close.
So I had to work very hard to begin to write music that was at least listenable. I took some music theory, got a music minor in college and finally “learned” some stuff. In turn, my music at least started to get to the point where you could recognize it as music. But I didn’t get off the merry-go-round until about 1984.
That year, I made my first “album” of songs that were real songs. They were catchy, had a hook. were under 4 minutes and outside of my so-so voice (no, I still can’t sing a lick) were not bad. As a composer, I was getting there. As a performer, I still had a long way to go. My keyboard skills were fair at best. Lots of timing problems and wrong notes that required lots and lots of retakes.
None of it came easy to me. For me, it was almost all perspiration. I never worked so hard at anything in my life, probably because it meant to much to me. Not sure why. In my early years, I really didn’t care much about music outside of listening to it. That’s something I always enjoyed. I remember when the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show and how much I loved their first album. Even bought the Beatles dolls with the rubber heads.
But I digress.
Anyway, that’s my story. For me, it’s always been hard work. It’s studying styles of music if I have to write a musical score so I can get a feel for what I need to do. Rarely does a tune go through my head where I’m running to the keyboard to get it down. Today, was actually one of those rare days when inspiration really did smack me right in the face. Check out “Pop Goes The Easel” under Pop at my site wagsrfm.com. It’s actually quite catchy.
But most stuff I have to slave over. I have to keep playing and playing and playing until I come up with something decent. That’s the norm.
What’s the norm for some people? I don’t know. I have no doubt that there are artists who can sit down at the piano and just start playing and what comes out is a Grammy Award winner. I’m still looking to have my first song recorded by an established artist. Something tells me I have a long wait.
When I sit down to write a song for my royalty free music site, I rarely have an idea already in my head. It comes from tinkering around with things. Now, maybe that’s a talent. I don’t know. After 50 something years, you should have enough music in your head to at least come up with something. But again, there’s that 50 years of perspiration.
Maybe for you it’s a little of both. I hope so. Having to constantly work at coming up with something half way decent is not a lot of fun. Well, it is when you’ve finally come up with that something decent.
I just wish it came a little easier.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim