Learning to do things wrong
What’s the difference between a songwriter and a music student? The student focuses on playing it correctly, the songwriter tries to play it wrong.
Playing things incorrectly is a great songwriting technique.
Sometimes, when I’m learning a song, I accidentally play a wrong note or chord, and become intrigued by the mistake. “Oh, what’s this?” my ear asks.
Hours later, I find myself composing a song, inspired from the mistake. Sure, I can be a distractible student, but I’m a focused songwriter.
It’s easy to view studying songs as simply that, learning to play it note for note, chord for chord, word for word. But what about the wonderful mess of creating something new, going in a different direction?
That song is supposed to be a Dsus4 to Cadd9 and you used Dsus2 to Cm9? Boom, you have a new idea.
As teachers, we need to encourage these discoveries.
That’s one difference between the student and the writer; the writer embraces the mistakes.
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