Do you remember the first set of lyrics or piece of music that you ever wrote?

Maybe it was the first riff or chord progression you ever made up by yourself on your new guitar, or on the family piano.  Maybe it was a set of lyrics that you wrote in an old raggedy notebook during study hall in your junior year of high school.

I remember my first piece of music that I wrote on my own.

It was a very simple chord progression in the key of G that I wrote on my acoustic guitar.  I was sitting in my apartment on the edge of my bed.  I was probably 19 years old.  I had just learned a new chord turnaround, and I wanted to play around with it until I got it down.  I ended up making up a chord progression around it, at first mainly so I could practice using it with different chords.  Before long I realized that I was playing the same patterns over and over, and it was something that I made up myself.  I didn’t even realize that I had written a song!

Years later, I am a much better guitar player, and a much better songwriter than I was in those days, but I would often go back to playing around with that first song… not really because it was good or amazing (in fact, it was very simplistic and un-noteworthy), but because it was my first song, and in a weird way I was proud of it.

I ended up marrying a very talented singer who was interested in writing lyrics, but had only written a few songs before we got married.  We always talked about wanting to write songs together, and the first song we wrote together was written to that very first piece of music that I ever wrote… but that’s a story for a different time.

For now, the point is, even though I knew that piece of music wasn’t spectacular, I was proud of it because of the story behind it, and because of the sense of accomplishment that it brought at the time it was written.

The other day I was digging through some of the traffic statistics for this site, and I saw that one of my posts from several months ago entitled Write a song with an instrument that you don’t know how to play had gotten quite a bit of traffic from StumbleUpon (if you don’t know what StumbleUpon is, look into it at your own risk… you WILL waste lots of your time playing with it)

In that original post I had not only given an idea to expand on musical creativity, but I had posted a link to a song I had written that was an example of the topic I was talking about.

I decided to check out StumbleUpon, and see what people were saying about that post.  The comments weren’t pretty.  I’ll share them here:

dude, your song sucks.

He experimented to find a good tone… and that’s what he calls a good tone?

I love the thought process this guy has. I feel the same way and collect rondom shite too. That said I cant condone his song, not trying to be offensive but its just horrible… sorry.

Obviously these comments weren’t exactly what I wanted to see, but to be honest I have pretty thick skin, and they rolled off of me pretty quickly.   After all, I spent this past football season writing off-the-wall song parodies (and accompanying YouTube music videos) for every game of the Minnesota Vikings season.  Vikings fans usually loved the songs, and fans of the opposing teams typically HATED them.  I spent most of the football season being ridiculed for lack of talent, and even for a several personal outward-appearance flaws.    That’ll toughen a guy up pretty quick… I even grew to look forward to the trash talking between nice and loving fans and the mean and hateful mockers.

Anyway, I wasn’t too worried about these comments…

…but they did get me thinking a little bit, which in my opinion is always a good thing.

Why do I strive to be creative in my music?  Why do I search for new ways to write music?  Why am I not interested in following the tried and true methods of songwriting that seemingly 99% of the songwriters who get their music on the radio follow?

Really, all those questions could be tied into a question that is important to the existence of this site itself… Why do I care enough about musical creativity to actually want to blog about it?

The answer is really pretty simple.

I do it for me.  I do it for my own personal sense of accomplishment.  I do it for my own satisfaction.

I know the song that I linked to on that original blog post wasn’t the greatest song ever.  I know that if someone else had written that song and played it for me, I wouldn’t have been completely impressed.  It’s not a song that I would play continually (if even at all) if someone else gave me a CD with it on there.

But none of those things were the point of me writing the song in the first place, and none of them were the reason I linked to it from this blog.

The real reason I wrote it was to see if I can.  I wanted to pick up an instrument that I had never played before in my life, and write a riff that I could build an entire song around… and I did it!  I was proud of that, not because it was a spectacular song, but because it was an accomplishment!

I posted the song on the blog not because I was trying to show off my amazing ability to play the mandolin, but because I wanted to show people that with a little creativity, you can write a song based around an instrument that you’ve literally NEVER played before.

This blog isn’t about writing music that will earn you money, or fame, or even recognition from your peers or friends (although if you’re able to use any of these ideas for those purposes, more power to you!!!!!)

This blog isn’t for the people who want to turn themselves into a major music star writing songs that everyone will be trampling through the music store (do they have those anymore?) to get the latest CD.

This blog is about stretching your own ideas of musical “norms”.  It’s about getting outside of your own musical boxes and boundries.  It’s about writing things that you’re proud of, even if you know no one else is going to like it.

This blog is for the people who want to be proud of music that they write, not just because it’s spectacular, but because it’s a personal accomplishment for themselves.

After all, shouldn’t your music be all about expressing you?

Related posts:

1. Welcome to Creative-Music.org
2. Article: Become More Creative…
3. Creative Musicianship: Combining existing songs into new pieces.
4. Why do I create music? (part 3)