Now that I've done a little house keeping in the way of establishing my view point on the pedagogy of Songwriting, I thought I'd get into some of the stuff I have learned over the last year. The only place that I can think of to start is at the mother load. This particular point changed me as a Songwriter and I think as communicator in general. This notion is the balance of personal expression and communicability of an idea. I think most people involved in music on a popular level (like artists, people in the biz, etc) would agree that music is simply a medium of commercial communication. People value the ideas and sounds put across by bands and so they pay money to experience them. There is a two part transaction that takes place. First a cerebral transaction where a listener buys into what the Songwriter is doing, and then a financial part where the listener forks over the looooong green. The first part of that transaction is something I think about every single day. Why is it that some tunes "connect with people" and others just don't? How come some tunes sound authentic and others sound like they're trying just a little too hard? I think it really lies in an intrinsic balance between personal expression and communicability. My mentor Andy West has this theory that for a song to work really well a writer has to first find a very strong personal connection to the material and then focus on making that material widely palatable. In practice, that would be like, a Songwriter must find a set of lyrics that really mean something to him personally, set it to music, and then after all that think about how they could edit the tune to make other people understand their message. Both practices are equally important, both are totally essential. Without the personal connection the song ends up cloying--a kiss ass doing what it thinks you want it to do. With out the refinement that song is abstract, self indulgent, and keeps the listener outside of the experience. The hardest part I've found is in the balance. It's never completely equal. Too much of one makes for weirdness, too much of the other makes pastiche. For me it's a big step just being conscious of these elements when I start a new tune and I think it's helped my writing a lot. I feel like a learn this process for the first time whenever I start a new tune . . .