Busking gives me a valuable opportunity to play regularly—one that strengthens my hands, my voice, my fingertips and my resolve. On the other hand, it doesn’t provide an opportunity to create new songs, which is the activity that has always been at the heart of my musical experience. If I had to choose between the three main parts of my musical life—the songwriting, the performing or the recording—I'd keep the songwriting.
So I have to find time to keep doing it.
In theory, it would be possible for me to work on songs-in-progress while I'm playing in the subway. But in practice, I'm always aware that somebody may be listening (even if they're halfway around the corner), so I rarely noodle around with new chord patterns or try out impromptu lyrics. (I suddenly realize that perhaps I'm missing an opportunity to become a better improviser or rap artist?) Even if people are just passing by and my music seems to be only a part of the scenery, I consider busking a performance. And I find that the more focused and practised I am, the more money I make and the more at home I feel.
Songwriting is a mysterious process. It's a process I know intimately and one I think I'll never completely understand.
Sometimes I think I'm so familiar with what's going on, I believe I can document the steps I take to create a song. It goes something like this. "Hey, that's a nice chord change...now let's make up a little finger picking pattern…here’s a lyric phrase that fits into it…there's my chorus...lets develop those lines to strengthen the main idea…change the melody to make a verse…" and so on. Sometimes the steps come in different order (the lyrics arrive first, for example) but there's a consistency to the experience that often seems, for me anyway, reassuring and reliable.
But as soon as I think I've "got it", I don't.
After sailing along comfortably on a new song idea for awhile, sometimes I realize that I don't have anything in particular to say--or that whatever I thought I had to say doesn't seem sensible or wise or note-worthy anymore. Sometimes I realize that I didn't really want to write a song at all, I just wanted to have another song in my repertoire, like another Brownie badge. When I realize that, the song promptly dissolves into shallow nonsense.
Other times, I really do have a good idea to begin with, but I become self-critical in the middle of the writing and start undermining what I’ve done so far. ("Come on, you’ve used that chord change hundreds of times" or "That finger picking pattern is pretty darn repetitive" or "Hey, you just rhymed 'twist' with 'drift'.") This is also the point at which I often compare my songs to those of others, and that's when things really go off the rails.
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Last night I went to the Groovy Mondays open stage, where Terry Tufts was featured. Terry is a highly-accomplished singer-songwriter and fingerstyle guitar player: the kind of guy who really knows where every note is on the guitar, how to play chords in about a thousand different positions, and how to tune his guitar apparently effortlessly while talking to the audience, playing a song and no doubt standing on his head. The songs he writes are sophisticated and yet simple and accessible. They're catchy, moving and full of wisdom.
So, inspired by his performance, today I felt keen to write some new material, and, for that matter, to practice my scales. Needless to say, I was also at high risk of comparing myself with others. ("Okay, where’s that chord if I play it on the 8th fret? Betcha Terry knows"…etc.)
My tendency to compare myself to others reminded me of something Cheryl Wheeler had said to me when I took a songwriting workshop from her once. She said that we tend to second-guess the ideas that arise most naturally from our individual songwriting minds. We think that the ideas (words, melodies, riffs) that come most easily to us are somehow inferior and not worth sharing. In fact, they are the ones that are most true and valuable. "That is your gift", I remember her saying.
After trying unsuccessfully to come up with a fascinatingly sophisticated new riff for the guitar, I decided to leave that to Terry. Instead, I turned to a file of songs that I had started but not finished, or finished but not yet performed. It's a large file.
These are songs that had been written easily, when I was in a free and non-comparing frame of mind, but that I hadn't considered "good enough" to play in public. (Interestingly, When I Walk (I Run) had also been in that category once. And I remember at one time asking my singing teacher if Complicated Things was worth recording.) Interesting that I seem to need outside affirmation (that is, other peoples' approval) before recognizing the value of my songs.
This morning I re-learned two songs I had written and left behind, songs I will take with me into the subway.
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