There is no ‘right way’ to make music. It’s a seductive idea though, isn’t it? The belief that there's some mystical, unwritten formula for speedrunning through the trenches of half-baked ideas to emerge effortlessly with a song that can capture the hearts of millions.
Every day a legion of artists finds themselves clinging to the hope, or perhaps the prayer, that raw inspiration will be their salvation. They consume the highlight reels of their heroes, the curated glimpses of effortless triumph, and then stare, bewildered, as their own creative sessions buckle under the weight of neglect and 'writer's block.'
The real tragedy is the pervasive, deeply ingrained myth that brilliance flourishes in disarray. That creativity, in its breathtaking flight, is an act of pure sorcery.
Yet, beneath inspiration are principles as fundamental and unyielding as gravity itself:
Developing an effective songwriting workflow is about more than just establishing routines or mastering tools; it's about aligning your songwriting process with a counter-intuitive understanding of complexity, not as complication, but as efficiency: transmitting maximum information through minimum data.
In songwriting, this means expressing the deepest feelings with the fewest notes, chords or words. Rather than merely reducing, you're maximizing what you say while minimizing how you say it. True complexity is simplicity elevated, simplicity that accomplishes everything it possibly can. It's about condensing emotional impact into an economy of means. This principle becomes the cornerstone of an effective songwriting workflow, where every choice, from the first chord to the final mix, serves this elegant compression of meaning.
The universe in its impartial majesty, doesn't distinguish between a bedroom producer and a platinum-selling artist. Gravity weighs equally on both. Time moves at the same rate. Attention depletes according to the same cognitive limits. The only difference? One has learned to work with these forces. The other fights them daily and wonders why everything feels so hard.
While the Songwriting component in Musician OS is designed to streamline the operational aspect of helping you finish your music, the goal of this chapter is to also share some of the first principles and power laws of creativity so that you may improve your broader creative workflow and accelerate your musical output. Until you learn to navigate the core principles governing your focus, your time and your creative energy - your art, however promising, remains a beautiful, fragile hostage to the whims of fortune.
