Co-Writing With Yourself

Last week I mentioned Hawk Wolinski and touched upon the importance of reading music.
More Here
I say Hey! If it's good enough for a Grammy Winning producer who has worked with greats like Prince, Michael Jackson, Chaka-Khan, & Quincy Jones, maybe it's not such a bad idea after all!  More on that another time…. 

Today? I wanted to talk about Hawks unique approach to songwriting called
Co-Writing with Yourself  What? Doesn't Co-writing MEAN writing with Another person??!?  
Yes, perhaps this seems confusing at first because co-writing does mean writing with someone else!
So, let's start with the idea that a lot of songwriters record while writing so that they can capture ideas/melodies/chords that emerge while they are creating. Then what happens is often they might only use pieces of these ideas for the song they are working on that day. Or sometimes a song won't emerge from that particular writing session. Lesson #1 - It is SO important to capture the thoughts and melodies that emerge during your work session. (Trust me, you won't remember most of them later...)

Then let's assume that you have archived your work via the recording or at least via notes. Time passes and you forget all about that work tape. It gets buried in the midst of life and other projects

Then a week, a month, a year later, when you dig up that same recording, you hear the words and melodies with fresh ears. It's like, "Hey I never heard that before! That sounds pretty good" Suddenly you are spinning with new creativity from discarded material from another session. You forget that YOU are the one who actually wrote it, and
IT FEELS LIKE Another person has walked into the room and is presenting all these new (and perhaps even fabulous...) ideas! What a wonderful co-writer that person is :)
But guess what? They all originally came from YOU. But it sounded like a different person because the you heard it differently the second time around.
What a marvelous way to add a whole new level to your songwriting process....
It's a tip that's definitely worth checking out.

ENJOY! And Write On with your Beautiful & Brilliant Creative self (but not on the walls, couch, or kitchen fridge – oops! My friend's 5 year old did that last week…)