Successful people make quick decisions. They don't wait around and ponder things for months, worrying if they're making the right choice. They decide, and if they end up making the wrong choice they process the information and use it as a knowledge base for a future decision. They learn from their mistakes, and turn them into advantages.
People who are only writing a few songs in hopes that they're all great, aren't making decisions quickly. How can they be, if their final result is only a few songs? They'll write a melody, and then change it again and again, because it never feels right. They can't decide on a melody because they're too afraid of writing one that's "wrong." This indecision regarding what melody to use holds them up from writing lyrics, and so on, until they're left with a handful of incomplete songs. I'm not saying you shouldn't rewrite your songs. It's actually a big part of becoming a better songwriter. But you do need to make decisions and move forward, even with your rewrites.
I'll show you two people, and see if you can decide who's more likely to be successful with his music.
Songwriter A comes up with a chord progression for a song. He's unsure if he wants to end the progression on a C or an Am, so he puts the progression aside, hoping the answer will come to him at a later time. A few weeks later he revisits the chord progression. Still unsure about whether to use the C or the Am, he uses both of the chords. He uses the C at the end of the first chord progression and the Am at the end of the second. He gets to use them both.
Now it's time for him to write a melody for the song. He has three ideas for how the melody can go, but he's not sure which one to use. He puts the song a way for another week, hoping the answer will come to him. Again, unable to decide between the three melody ideas, he crams all three of them into the song, so he doesn't have to pick only one.
Three months later the song he's done. He's not even sure if he likes it. Maybe it's because there are too many things happening for one song.
Songwriter B comes up with a chord progression for a song. He's unsure if he wants to end the progression on a C or an Am. He decides to end the progression on the C. He revisits the song the next day and realizes the C sounds good, so he stays with it. He doesn't bother going back to the Am anymore.
He has a few melody ideas. He picks the first one he came up with. He listens back to it the next day after having a little distance from the song, and realizes the second one is the strongest. He changes it and doesn't revisit the melody any more. He knows the current one is strong.
A week later the song is finished. He gets some feedback on it. Some musician friends he trusts made some good suggestions on things that can be improved. Ideas he could even use for future songs, not just this one. He decides to leave his current song as is, and use the newfound ideas as he writes his next song. A week later that one is done.
By looking at these two scenarios, Songwriter B is way more likely to succeed with his approach. He makes decisions quickly, which allows him to get more information, do more work and learn more. Songwriter A is indecisive and as a result lazy. He's not getting much done, and he's not learning from what he's doing.
Get into the habit of making quick and effortless decisions. Do! Don't just ponder forever and never take action. You want there to be thought behind the moves you make in your songs, but make the decisions for those moves and then move forward and make more decisions.
To learn more, download my free EBook here:
http://www.SuccessForYourSongs.com/freeoffer/
Anthony Ceseri is the owner of http://www.successforyoursongs.com/, a website dedicated to the growth and development of songwriters of all skill levels. Anthony's writings appear as examples in the book "Songwriting Without Boundaries: Lyric Writing Exercises For Finding Your Voice" by Pat Pattison, an acclaimed lyric writing professor at Berklee College of Music.
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