Here is the transcription of my most recent video blog:
(And here’s the audio on AnchorFM)
Hey everybody, it’s Queen Mab, and I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: I am TIRED today! And this is like my third or fourth time trying to record this video, so let’s see if I get it this time.
Okay. So what I would like to talk to you about today is finishing songs. So I’ve already talked to you about this EP that I’ve been working on, and I’ve got two songs down, and one song that I just…I don’t know, it’s having trouble…figuring out what it’s going to be. And I remember that when I wrote my first song, I think it was…it was like 2011, okay? I was well into my twenties at that point. And it took me many years – even though I’d been studying music for a long time – to finally sit down and write a song, because I just had so many hang ups about what that process needed to look like.
I had a theory professor in college talk about the fact that he wrote away from the piano. He was a composer, because composers teach theory, I guess. And he was like, “Oh, I can’t write at the piano, because if I do, I’m just going to write what I know.” And so I internalized this, and I thought it meant, “Oh, well, if I’m gonna write, that means, like, I can’t be at any kind of any instrument.” Except that when I was away from an instrument, I couldn’t really think of what to write down. I just had this idea that I had to have a certain level of knowledge, of composition, of music theory…even though I have a pretty high level of knowledge of music theory…but that it had to look a certain way before I would be allowed to write a song.
Now this is really ridiculous, because I’ve seen people who know nothing about music write songs, okay? But…but I had this really ingrained perfectionism. And I would start writing songs, and then I would go, “Oh, no, no, that’s not good.” “Oh, no, no…that’s good…no good.” And I would just stop, okay?
So a friend of mine named Sasha Bayan, who’s a really good musician and has a pretty cool album if you are looking for something good to listen to (it’s called, “Do I Know You?” Check it out – I’ll put a link below) – anyways, he said to me, “You know what? You just gotta finish it. Like you can’t worry about whether or not it’s good. Just…do it.” And then I remembered that I had read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and she says something pretty similar in that book. She says…she says, “God!” (She’s into God…”Good Orderly Direction,” right?) She says, “I will control the quantity of the work that I produce, and YOU control the quality.”
Wow. That was a really difficult shift for me to make. But somehow the way Sasha said it – “Dude, just finish it” – that really helped me. So I realized that I am really in a “Dude, just finish it,” situation with a number of projects, but I wanted to share that advice with you, and I wondered if you have any ideas about different strategies for finishing songs or finishing projects – especially if you have lots of perfectionism hangups like I do. What helps you?
That’s all I have for you today. Thanks so much for tuning in. I’m Queen Mab. You can visit queenmabmusic.com for more of my content. Don’t forget to like, comment, subscribe, and I’ll see you next time. Bye!