Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of miss pupik

September 1st, 2008 – Today was the final submission date for the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song Contest. I had ideas for the song as far back as the beginning of the summer when I heard about the contest. The mere idea of the contest had sparked creativity immediately and I was psyched about the possibility of being competitive in such a contest. I, like many people, could really use $100,000 and future royalties.

The last two weeks have been quite busy for me. My friends and I have an entry in a local film festival for which I needed to write a soundtrack, I had the Mariah Carey remix, and I had the hockey theme song to do. After years of not having deadlines to make music, I suddenly had three large projects to do in a two week period. Implementing song ideas has never been a big problem for me; it’s the idea that’s the hard part. For me to take an idea from zero to full production, takes me a few days tops. This is not to say I’m especially talented, it’s just that I like to work straight through and finish a song.

I do my schedule planning around this particular ability. This means that I book more time to work on ideas, than on implementation. Since I had several ideas for the hockey theme song already, I pressed hard to finish the Mariah Carey remix and the short soundtrack. I budgeted myself a generous four days to work on the production of the ideas I had incubated for a couple months for the theme song. When I sat down to record the song, something didn’t seem right. No matter how I recorded the song, what instruments I used for the arrangement, or how I played it, it sounded completely different in real life than in my head.

For the past three days, I struggled with trying to come up with new ideas, to get completely fresh takes. Each time, hearing the ideas in person was painful; nothing was working. Last night before I went to bed, I listened to some of the entries on the CBC website. Like all contests, there were a lot of really bad entries, but there were also some fantastic ones. There were ones that had the same feeling that I was going for, but with excellent implementation. As I got to sleep, I realized that there was no way I would have time to come up with something good and produce it to a point that would put me in contention with the contest closing Sunday August 31st at 11:59PM EST.

Today, I woke up in a pretty sour mood. This was pretty much the first time I hadn’t come up with a good idea when I really needed one. The contest was over for me, and I hadn’t even entered. I have always told others that all they need is experience. “Get out and just start creating”, I say. Yesterday reinforced a feeling I’ve always had that I am not yet experienced enough. I’ve written dozens of songs, produced even more tracks, and yet I am still not able to truly turn on the creative tap on demand. Some might say that it’s not possible to turn creativity on and off, but there are plenty of songwriters out there that are ridiculously prolific.

One thing that came out of this experience though was the urge to work harder, faster, and better. I need to get to the point where ideas come when I want them to, not when they want to. I may not win a contest, a contract, a job, but I need to be sure that I’m always improving. It is said that successful entrepreneurs stumble many times but always pick themselves up and try again. Failure is giving up. Success is as simple as trying, learning from your mistakes, and improving. As a songwriter, you are your business and your biggest asset.

Time to dust myself off.