Write every day, even if it’s terrible | Think Like A Musician

0:00 One of my classmates, he was able to get me a meeting with the big boss—

0:06 Lyor Cohen.

0:07 I took a Megabus from D.C.

0:08 to New York.

0:10 We sit down and I played him a verse chorus of one song.

0:16 And then I started to play the beginning of a second song,

0:20 and he cut me off, and he was like, “why am I here?”

0:24 And I was like, “to hear my music?”

0:26 He was like, “no, I mean, this is a waste of my time.

0:30 You’re not ready yet.”

0:31 And he got up and he left the meeting.

0:33 I got literally two minutes with him and it was over.

0:39 Hey, you!

0:39 Yes, you.

0:40 Is there music inside of you?

0:43 We’ve recruited working musicians from throughout the industry

0:46 to help you hear it, hold it, and share it with this wild and wonderful world.

0:53 Hi, my name is Daniel Breland.

0:55 I professionally go by Breland.

0:58 I am a singer, songwriter, and producer originally from New Jersey.

1:04 I live in Nashville and the genres that I usually play in

1:09 are country music, R&B, hip hop, gospel.

1:14 That day with Lyor Cohen, I got back on the Megabus and went back to D.C.,

1:20 and I was devastated for a good week because I was like,

1:24 I’m 19, I’ve been making music for five years,

1:26 I got a meeting with the guy that’s supposed to be The Guy,

1:29 and he said it wasn’t it, you know?

1:32 And so I’m just trying to figure out what my next steps should be.

1:36 I decided to double down and I ended up buying some equipment.

1:42 And I was like, look, I’m going to write and record a song every day

1:46 until I get better.

1:48 And so from from that day, in October of 2014,

1:53 for the next year, I wrote and recorded a good 365 songs.

1:59 And the following year, the songs had definitely gotten marginally better.

2:04 And so I said, okay, well, this next year, now my junior year,

2:08 I said I’m going to write and record two songs a day.

2:11 Now, at this point, I’m pretty much barely going to class.

2:14 Now I've got two songs a day.

2:16 So now halfway into that second year,

2:18 I've got 700 plus songs and nobody to really listen to any of them.

2:24 And so I started reaching out, kind of cold-calling people in the industry—

2:29 songwriters, producers, managers, A&Rs, artists, friends.

2:34 I mean, they received an email, a DM, a tweet.

2:38 I might have written a couple handwritten letters if there was an address

2:42 to a record label.

2:43 And literally just trying to reach out to as many people I could

2:47 to see if I could get any feedback.

2:49 Really, that was the year that I made the biggest jump,

2:52 because I started getting feedback where I was like, okay, cool—

2:56 there are people in the industry that have given me some insight

2:59 on how songs are actually written and where I’m falling short.

3:05 Writer’s block is real.

3:07 You know, inspiration can strike at any moment,

3:10 but you can also lose inspiration on something in any moment.

3:14 And I think that’s okay.

3:16 Because I’ve written so many songs, and because I was so dedicated

3:22 for all of those years that I was writing songs every day,

3:27 and no one was hearing any of them,

3:29 I understand that there are songs that people are never going to hear.

3:33 And so I’m not afraid to step away from a song entirely

3:38 and say, hey, if it’s not happening for this song on this day, that’s okay.

3:44 I think the right way to produce a song is to listen to the song

3:48 and give the song what it needs, you know?

3:52 And that requires a level of— a level of humility.

3:56 You may think, okay, well,

3:57 this is what it needs to do because I’ve done this before

4:00 and I know that that works.

4:01 But sometimes it's being able to say, hey,

4:04 maybe it’s something that I’ve never thought of before,

4:06 and maybe it’s something that’s going to come to me in its own time.

4:09 And you can't rush the creative process.

4:11 A lot of times you literally have to step back from it and say,

4:16 how can I be in service to the song?

4:20 For me, stepping back to gain perspective on a song,

4:25 it can come in a few different ways.

4:27 Sometimes it’s me listening to a song a bunch,

4:29 and sometimes it’s me not listening to the song at all;

4:32 literally letting it sit for a few days or a week,

4:36 working on some other music and then coming back to it.

4:40 You know, sometimes it's playing the song around other people.

4:43 It's not an exact science.

4:45 Part of it is just being receptive

4:47 to the fact that it might look totally different on one song

4:51 than it does on another song.

4:52 You might get to that finished product the day that you write it,

4:56 and then there's other songs that might take you months or even years.

4:59 And I don’t think either of those is wrong.

5:01 It just literally depends on how it comes to you

5:04 and where your inspiration arrives from.

5:06 For me, it’s just recognizing that it’s not always going to go

5:09 exactly the way I want.

5:11 And that even those “dud songs,” are the ones that don’t get finished,

5:17 you know, they still help inform the way that I write songs in the future.

5:21 And I think it’s those great songs that you end up getting,

5:25 oftentimes you would not get those songs if it weren't for the songs

5:28 that you feel like you missed or that you didn’t get it.

5:31 And so just trying to continue to encourage yourself

5:34 and not get too down on yourself

5:35 because something isn’t going at the speed that you want

5:38 or coming together in quite the way that you want.

5:42 You will eventually get to the songs that you really want

5:46 if you just continue to work on it.