Why your best ideas usually start as bad ones | Think Like A Musician

0:01 It's a cliché to say that mistakes,

0:05 imperfections make something special, but they really, really do.

0:08 In art, embrace mistakes.

0:10 The mistake is the journey.

0:12 And it’s you getting better because your voice probably won’t crack

0:15 there the next time— it’s just another moment to pivot from.

0:19 So never freak out about making mistakes, is really what it boils down to.

0:24 Hey, you!

0:25 Yes, you.

0:26 Is there music inside of you?

0:28 We’ve recruited working musicians from throughout

0:31 the industry to help you hear it,

0:33 hold it, and share it with this wild and wonderful world.

0:39 At least for me, from between the studio and a live situation,

0:44 some of the adjustment for me means like letting go of a type

0:49 of obsessive perfectionism about the sound quality and also in performance,

0:59 being willing to fall down and get dirty or make mistakes.

1:04 My first songs, my early songs are pretty embarrassing,

1:08 but I think I was just kind of figuring it out.

1:11 And I was really literally just taking the poems that I had written,

1:14 which were kind of cryptic and a little

1:17 bit dark because I was like a moody adolescent, and putting them to melodies.

1:22 But I hadn’t really learned the importance of song structure.

1:26 It started out as a very personal outlet for me.

1:29 And then later I sort of learned

1:31 how to write something that was more accessible,

1:33 that people could understand where I was coming

1:35 from, and maybe get some catharsis out of that.

1:38 You don’t just automatically jump immediately to perfection.

1:43 That's what's so great about experimentation.

1:46 What I’ve loved about collaborating with other songwriters and musicians is

1:49 I hear them come out with some not so great ideas, some pretty lousy ideas.

1:55 And I realized that they will come up with eight lousy ideas or even like 15,

2:00 and the 16th or 20th or 30th idea, suddenly it’s like, that is brilliant!

2:07 And the listener will never know of the other 30 lousy ideas that it

2:11 took to finally come to a sense of clarity and something locking in.

2:15 That’s not right.

2:16 That’s not right.

2:17 This is right!

2:18 There it is.

2:19 But you have to be willing to let it come out.

2:22 Out of the thousands of songs you write, maybe five might be a hit.

2:27 Maybe.

2:27 You’re really, really lucky as a songwriter if

2:30 you get a number one record one time.

2:32 You could literally start at any age, you could literally not be able to sing,

2:39 but as long as you understand what your thing is,

2:42 there is no one type of way to songwrite

2:45 or to produce or to do any of these things.

2:47 There’s no right way.

2:48 It’s, what is my way?

2:50 And then I find the appropriate people

2:53 to collaborate with to make this a well-rounded thing,

2:55 because that is what our industry is about, is collaboration.

2:59 Mark D.

2:59 Sanders, he’s a writer in Nashville,

3:01 he said to me once, songwriting is like fishing.

3:03 He said, you can stand in the water days on end and get nothing.

3:07 Or you can stand in the water for four seconds

3:10 and catch the biggest fish you’ve ever caught in your entire life.

3:13 He goes, it’s not the outcome, it’s that you’re in the water.

3:16 So, if you think of songwriting and sessions as a fishing expedition,

3:22 you can sit out there for hours and it wasn’t the day for it.

3:26 Or you can sit out there for no time and you had a great day.

3:31 So it’s very much just like a thing you do every day for the sake

3:36 of the great ones that might happen today and might happen a week from now.

3:40 When I was young, I do remember those songs just [snaps].

3:43 And there's another and another and another, and it still happens.

3:47 But after however many hundreds of songs,

3:50 it becomes new you versus old you saying

3:53 something that you’ve said from an entirely different perspective.

3:57 So as far as locking into a song

4:00 and knowing when you’ve found the song’s proper path,

4:04 if I was going to, not advise, but opine, I would say break all the rules.

4:11 Run through all the walls and do not conform.

4:15 And last but not least, sometimes we don't know our best work.

4:19 I’ve put songs away that I’ve years later played for people and have

4:22 ended up on records because they had to tell me what it is.

4:27 You're going to have to listen to somebody

4:29 and you're going to have to take advice from someone.

4:32 And if you can find that one person to trust with your process,

4:38 you're really lucky to have that person.