Your 2025 challenge has really inspired me! I’ve always thought that writing a good song is the coolest thing that anyone could ever do, but I’ve never tried it myself because it feels like it’s reserved for the “geniuses” or the people who started super young or who are naturally good at it. I’m in my early 30s with some basic instrument skills, and now my goal for this year is to improve at music theory and instrument playing so that by the end of the year I can write at least one song that I actually like. Thanks for helping me break down that barrier of thinking that doing cool stuff is reserved for other people!
That’s lovely to read, thank you so much!! Honestly, I love the Barthes thing of “your hand right now isn’t too slow, channel what is around right now” - I also spent some time learning music theory because I thought it was a prerequisite, and apart from learning about key signatures containing 7 notes that work together, essentials of chords (honestly, you could just watch Andrew Huang’s 30 min video), everything else was overkill. For my recent songs all I’ve done is take a chord progression from a song I like (like literally C, G and D for one) and write song words. Hugely recommend learning by doing rather than feeling like you’re not ready and need to prepare loads first, I think you’ll be surprised what you make!! (Nashville numbers are also a useful thing to have a simple knowledge of, basically that e.g. a I chord, IV chord and V chord work together nicely, stuff like that - hooktheory is a good website for this, really shows how simple this stuff is!)
Your 2025 challenge has really inspired me! I’ve always thought that writing a good song is the coolest thing that anyone could ever do, but I’ve never tried it myself because it feels like it’s reserved for the “geniuses” or the people who started super young or who are naturally good at it. I’m in my early 30s with some basic instrument skills, and now my goal for this year is to improve at music theory and instrument playing so that by the end of the year I can write at least one song that I actually like. Thanks for helping me break down that barrier of thinking that doing cool stuff is reserved for other people!
That’s lovely to read, thank you so much!!
Honestly, I love the Barthes thing of “your hand right now isn’t too slow, channel what is around right now” - I also spent some time learning music theory because I thought it was a prerequisite, and apart from learning about key signatures containing 7 notes that work together, essentials of chords (honestly, you could just watch Andrew Huang’s 30 min video), everything else was overkill. For my recent songs all I’ve done is take a chord progression from a song I like (like literally C, G and D for one) and write song words. Hugely recommend learning by doing rather than feeling like you’re not ready and need to prepare loads first, I think you’ll be surprised what you make!!
(Nashville numbers are also a useful thing to have a simple knowledge of, basically that e.g. a I chord, IV chord and V chord work together nicely, stuff like that - hooktheory is a good website for this, really shows how simple this stuff is!)