Why You Should Try Making Songs Everyday
I make songs everyday for two months. You should try to. I wouldn’t say it was easy. It just sure is worth the effort. Here is the story.
The Beginning
I started it on February, a challenge for myself to make songs then published them on Path everyday, named #songperday. I succeeded it by making 31 songs. Then it turned much out surprising. There were six of my friends joined the challenge for the next month. I was then motivated to continue the challenge even I initially didn’t plan to do so. On March, together we wrote 70-ish songs.
The Folks
The first lady on board was Lawinda Cempaka, or Lala for short. I knew her for years now. Before she became a mother of a cute little Azuri and since she was a girl I admire for having a magnificent voice and playing piano exquisitely. One day she told me that she would love to do the challenge to stimulate her brain again. She also told me a trivia that she used to make songs for musical, which, I never knew before.
The second friend hopped in was a boy named Rifyalka. I called him Akka. He was one of my friends whom I set my jealousy upon. I envy him for his great aptitude towards coffee and guitar. Particularly, guitar. He learned guitar from ground zero via Youtube and many other free platform without any formal education. From what I knew, he mere put his love and effort so much that he grew until he able to pulled the stunt off, finger-styling. While singing. He joined the challenge right after I announced that I will continue marching the challenge. He asked, “Should I do this too?”. Hell yeah!
Then came Kiki along, Ahmad Ilham Rizky. A friend of Akka who I wasn’t yet know for too long. He was on the same major in college as Akka and also got his mind and life revolving around coffee. I have to admit, his love for coffee, the effort he put into it, is a thing to be envied about. He said he was an amateur in playing guitar. He just recently bought a Guitalele for fun. But oh boy, he was better than me. Much better. He was though, confessed that, he was not used to make songs and a little bit shy about it.
The second lady then came aboard. A great singer from the same faculty as me. She was one of the singers from my college music-album project. She joined the campus choir. She sings, like somewhat 80’s to 90’s kind of great. A pop, rather rock, and a little bit musical. She was Helena Prihastuti, or Helen. She had a quite different approach than friends mentioned above. I asked her to join the challenge. The reason was, I admire her talent and love for music. I didn’t want to see her allowed herself to not be brave then embrace it. She said yes, fortunately. I couldn’t be happier.
Then there was a cute-yet-boyish-voiced girl flourished the party with sincere heartfelt songs on the 3rd day. Better known as Caca, Ms. Shafa Atrining said that she was already thinking about making songs for too long then decided to do so after saw us fooling around on her timeline. She surprised me right from the first song, I didn’t expect her to be that good, yet she was.
On the 13th day, there was one surprisingly tuned herself in too, Afifa Ayu. She is a violinist. The serious one. She is kind of big thing from my perspective. There are 8 level on classical violin, she is on the 7th. She was used to be in a great band and frequently performed with both major and indie musician of any genre. And an aspiring scientist. She is pursuing her Ph.D in Japan as you read this. Damn cool.
The Process
Including me, we then accidentally formed an oddest circle which were so accommodating toward each other’s progress though we wasn’t know each other too well personally. Each of us had a different set and level of skills, knowledge, motivations, personal and professional life, responsibilities, standards, pace, personalities, habit, style, well.. things. We basically had a totally different personas which I didn’t think would be a perfect fit for each other, but it was. At least in the #songperday sense.
There was Lala who influenced us with strong musical both broadway and disney kind of songs. She explored things through her eyes as a young mother and a long-distance wife which enriched my perspectives. She told me that she just learned how to sing while playing the piano in the challenge but I didn’t buy that. I learned to listen to the piano — vocal synchronicity from her. She and Helen also taught us some vocal techniques. I owe them for helping me found the dizzying head voice.
Then there was Akka who I furiously blamed for raising the bar through his consistency on quality. I love his taste. He kind of already figured things out, his style was solid, Akka-style. A mix of classical, finger-picking, folk-ish guitar pattern, scat-singing, with smart, touchy, and sometime romantic lyrics. He also the one who taught certain simple techniques in mixing and found some much helpful software for making music.
Kiki, on the other hand, for the love of coffee and his dream on making his own coffee shop in his hometown leaved us on the 4th day. I was excruciatingly thrilled for him. I only mad about one thing, I couldn’t let him acknowledged himself for not being able to make songs. He made four songs and they were all damn, great. Yet his progress was greater. His first song had only two chords with a handsome vocal, then his second one was a sell-able romantic song, then on his third attempt he managed to create somewhat Kings-of-Convenience felt of song, then he left us with his simple, cheesy, sweet, easy-listening last submission which, I believe, will make any girls fall for it.
Helen started out by singing a song titled Kingkong Badannya Besar, then she made her first song on the second post with guitar about her insecurities from being not-a-worker-yet. I much appreciated her guts for embracing it. I knew it was hard for her to made songs but she stormed through. Her determination motivated me to keep making songs when I was down. I felt honored to witness her progress. In fact, I personally thought, she was the most developed one. The last songs she submitted was nothing near amateur-ish as she first started.
I think Caca had a great aptitude towards lyrics. Hers were all sincere and pretty. She and Akka are ones busy working in the harsh midst of the capital city, Jakarta. The fact that they were able to nailed the challenge in such a way is admirable. Caca were even able to explored guitar, piano, and vocal. And that wasn’t the best thing yet. What I admire the most was her influence in her office. Her colleague happily participated in her process by requesting her to made songs about certain topic. Which, of course, she nailed.
Then, Afifa. Oh. She didn’t just make technically-scary songs with her beloved violin. She also shared musical theories, techniques, and histories. I felt she was more like a teacher and I am grateful for it. She fed us words like, Portamento, Glisando, Csardas, Vittori Monti, Phyrgian, Dorian, Aeolian, Klavier Sonata, I can’t remember them all. She also able to play various kind of genre which I found both envious and inspiring.
The Circle
Strangely, we made a chat group and fooling around naturally without first introduced our self to each other. There we shared things we knew, and not yet knew. Things we were anxious about, envied of, and admired from everybody. We consoled, comforted, and supported each other in a way that made us ventured forward. We even managed to collaborate in person, cross-city, and cross-country! We also discussed the idea of making the #songperday as an app. One which literally help people to learn making songs.
We haven’t all met in person yet but I bet we all are eager to do so. There was a day when I and Akka motorbiking an hour through traffic, heat, and rain to visit Azuri and his mom, and to ate meatballs. There was also a day when Caca spared her weekend to made a song with Akka. There was a moment when I adding a layer to Afifa’s violin tracks. There is also this idea of developing a song by relaying tracks from one another which is still going on. We get along way better than expected.
The Lesson Learned
A sincere act is contagious.
I never wish #songperday to turned as it is now. I just did what I love and didn’t hurt anybody except flooding up their timeline, whoops. I was surprised the thing I love ended up loving me back. It was such a great feeling. I already wrote about that here.
Be courageous to fail.
Fear is an interesting prick. It feels uncomfortable but nothing is better than fear to warn me of something great might happen if I nailed it. Failure doesn’t taste great either. As much as I don’t want it, I will never can avoid it. I fail from time to time. Combine those two, and eureka! I got the worst enemy possible for learning. It is then my choice to be brave or, well.. else.
Venture first, worry later.
The thing about learning is, for sometime, so hard it overwhelm me, and I end up doing nothing but worry. But the same goes for actually doing it. I was worry if I made a bad song that people hate me then I lost my chance to be heard of. I was worry that somebody scolded me for being suck. The worry won’t go away just because I push myself to learn. So why not choose to do it? At least I will still learn something from my failure.
Failure is a better friend than success will ever be.
You will have a love-hate relationship with it. It tastes bittersweet. But never let it put you off the grid. Failure teaches me how to go wrong so then I could eliminate them when I am willing to success. On the contrary, success teaches me a way to make things happen and I tend to use the same proven approach over and over again. It is the worst because I will end up learning less things than through failure. Also, failure teaches me how to adapt. You won’t know if the way you fail today might work best on the other day.
Jealousy can be productive.
I felt shitty one day but then great on the other day because of them. I found it was liberating to talk things I was jealous about to the respective person. It was more productive than shame myself then pretending to be a great all-rounder. I wasn’t, nobody was, and that is okay.
Be sucks.
If you aren’t, don’t learn it. Why is it then to learn things that you already great at? I was surrounded by folks greater, have more experienced and knowledge than me. It belittled me. I felt sucks but then things turned out fine when I embrace it. When you feel suck, it will be easier to be eager to learn so you could feel less suck. I did and I ended up learning more and faster than I ever wished. Plus, I thought people tend to help ones who sucks more than them.
Love is not the greatest source of inspiration.
I think it’s not love which much inspirations are rooted. It is the suffering enveloped around it. Love feels too great that we become very much fear of losing it. It is so contagious that we crave for it. We worship it. We suffer from longing it so bad then it become inspiration.
Suffering creates great art.
I make songs better when troubled. It just is. I already made more than 100 songs now, ones I considered decent are just near half of them, and they are mostly written when I felt uneasy. It is satirical when I thought about it. Happiness is then basically to celebrate suffering.
The Next
I am so grateful for the experience. I’ve discussed it with the folks and we decided to not dismiss the circle we’ve created. It will be nice to extend the circle wider but our funny schedule and priorities won’t allow us to keep #songperday as we did on March. It will need to evolve.
Some of us planned to keep making songs from time to time but with less strict schedule, maybe one per two or three days, or maybe weekly, but we’ll definitely do so. Some of us even planned to raise the bar higher. We might collaborate a lot in the future working on few but much greater songs than we’ve already so far made.
I, myself planned to finish producing an album next May, not mine. Though I will also working on my album but it won’t be on my top priority for awhile. Afifa got her hands full of lab works, thesis, international publications, and science conferences. Kiki with his newly built coffee shop. Everyone with their own dream to be chased I don’t dare mentioned.
Truth is, I deeply believe, whatever it might be, however we might become, this experience grew us so much it will become some kind of memento that we can do what we set our mind into. Well, at least for me, it is. Thank you.
Post Scriptum
I suggest you to try the #songperday challenge. Even you aren’t aspire to be a musician. Even if you just casually love music. Songwriting is not a rocket science. I believe everyone can do it. It will be good for you I promise. It could teach you more about yourself.
If you enjoyed this article it would mean a lot if you’d recommend it by clicking ♥ below and share it with your friends and social media. And please subscribe to my Youtube and follow me on Soundcloud.
