5 Things You Can Learn From: Songwriter- The Complete Season One

Mike Purcell spent close to 20 years in the music industry working with songwriters, recording music, and refining his art. He’s worked with some of the most successful songwriters in the industry as well as unknown writers whose songs have really left an impact.

Mike, along with Eric Fazzini, ended up formulating an idea for making a video of a former client about his songwriting process, and received a national distribution agreement through MVD Entertainment Group.  They covered many genres from Folk to Hip Hop, and captured honest conversations from songwriters.  Regardless of genre, they found that songwriting is songwriting, and there are common threads that run throughout the process.

Here are 5 things you can learn as a songwriter by watching their series.

1) Write what you know

Write what you feel.  Don’t just chase a sound or style of music if you want to write truly original songs

2) Always be writing

Creativity is like a closed faucet.  It may start as a trickle when you struggle, but will go to a steady flow the more you write, because it will get easier to unleash your ideas and creativity.  Don’t get discouraged, keep after it and you’ll continue to create content

3)  Collaborate

Collaborate with others and the end product may exceed the expectations of the writers involved

4) Take criticism with a grain of salt

Criticism from anyone can be hard to take, but if its coming from a respected peer that has valid comments, you should take what they are saying into consideration.  Remember, it’s not a personal attack, it’s one person’s opinion about a song, nothing more.

5) Make sacrifices

Sometimes you may need a day job to pay the bills.  You may miss family events at times as you work towards achieving your goals so prepare yourself and loved ones around you for this.

Remember, regardless of your journey, do what you feel, follow your heart, and don’t give up.