No More Excuses...Please Help A Wannabe Songwriter

[Russell Grand]

i think you need therapy. i’m a therapist. i have been in therapy for many years. if you want to achieve your goals and you’re having these kinds of conflicts within and without it would be an excellent first step. set yourself up for success. i feel that you’ve been calling out for a long long while for this kind of help. answer the call.

Well stated, I believe this as well.* (I'm not a therapist, just a crazy person with a decades-long interest in psychology.)

*Please note that I firmly believe that all of us could benefit from some form of therapy. With that said, some of us need it more than others.

[tehlord]

Sure, you had your Stock Aitken Watermans, and your Frank Farians, and Trevor Horns.... but there were so many styles,

Are you really putting Trevor Horn in the same category as SAW? Really? REALLY?!??!?!

[Russell Grand]

[nevermind]

[Russell Grand]

You think you've changed, but you seem imo to still be playing out the same exact patterns, right here, even today.

This^ right here.

[Russell Grand]

More on topic: not a good time to be a songwriter. As I am slowly settling into old-fart-mode, I feel I have the right to moan about the times. Pop music used to be so diverse, just look at any chart in the 80s. Sure, you had your Stock Aitken Watermans, and your Frank Farians, and Trevor Horns.... but there were so many styles, some really far-out stuff, songs that wouldn't stand a chance in today's market. You had individualism, and personal expression. Nowadays, who really cares if it's generic-singer-with-Max-Martin-material #234 or #4395? Pop has never sucked so badly.

On the plus side, there's more reliance on live music, and so many good bands have developed in the shadows because they haven't been spoiled by the big Warner Brothers paycheck. I think a songwriter who has any artistic ambition needs to either be a musician, or find someone and stick with them for a fairly long time, developing and growing and maybe garnering more attention as a result.

Excellent post!

[Russell Grand]

Sure, you had your Stock Aitken Watermans, and your Frank Farians, and Trevor Horns.... but there were so many styles,

Are you really putting Trevor Horn in the same category as SAW? Really? REALLY?!??!?!

[wagtunes]

*shrug* I help people and have been helped by people. it's not rocket science to listen to someone and help them to help themselves... but it can make every bit of difference. there are certainly bad therapists, and bad therapists as partners are a special hell, I happen to know. don't see bad therapists, just like you don't go back to a bad doctor.

but therapy is about resolving internal conflicts that can really hold you back from achieving your goals, recovering from the effects of living with those conflicts and building a set of tools to get where you want to be. it's saved my life more than once, which is why I entered the profession and it is why I occasionally suggest that someone might gain something from it -- in the off hand chance that hearing someone talk about it might put the idea out there.

I don't recognize what you're identifying as the process of therapy at all. It sounds like you had a very bad experience and I'm sorry for that. For most people therapy is very successful, is self-directed, and is a process where they help themselves -- not a process where they are acted upon, or have their soul erased.

in my mind encouraging someone that is trying to make a big change in their life after 40 years of frustration to seek assistance in therapy is like encouraging someone who is going to drive across the country to get AAA. if you have a different association because of your personal history that makes sense, but attaching a stigma to therapy in general and pathologizing people that are in it (some of whom really need it) isn't really very nice.

Eh, don't mind her. She seems to feel the need to swoop in and defend Wag any time he self-destructs.

Please point out to me WHERE I self destructed AFTER I finally came to this epiphany in my life and have made some major changes in it? I want to see the post where I was the same old Wags even though I had turned my life around.

See, all this is, is you guys just continuing to dump on me because that's what you do.

The difference is, I'm not playing your game anymore. No more yelling at people. No more cursing at them. No more reporting them to the mods. No more ignore list. I'm just going to let them continue to be what they are and go on and live my life.

As I told el-bo, you're going to have to find somebody else around here for your entertainment. I'm not going to be your enabler in order for you to get your jollies.

So again, nothing personal against you or anyone here, but really, I'd appreciate it if you just went somewhere else to have your fun.

In the meantime, I'm getting ready to go to church and have myself a really super day.

I wish you the same.

[ariston]

Sure, you had your Stock Aitken Watermans, and your Frank Farians, and Trevor Horns.... but there were so many styles,

Are you really putting Trevor Horn in the same category as SAW? Really? REALLY?!??!?!

Ummmm.... sorry, the name came to me automatically. To be precise: Trevor Horn established a synthetic, in-your-face aesthetic that I grew to dislike over time. Many tried to emulate him, which isn't his fault, but that didn't help. No, he's not in the same category artistic-wise, definitely not.

[wagtunes]

Didn't SAW do all that Rick Astley stuff?

[herodotus]

Wags, I don't have the patience to wade through this whole thread, but has anyone mentioned Taxi?

Taxi is an independent A&R outfit that provides listings that you can send recordings in response to. For 300$ a year (at least that used to be the fee) they provide critiques of your work, and will send pieces they think meet their standards to the people who put up the listings.

These listings come from movie and television producers looking for soundtrack or trailer content, talent agents looking for performing artists or songs for their stable of performers, ad agencies looking for music to place in radio or tv commercials and so on.

I found it disheartening, because they have zero interest in people who are trying to create their own sound. They want you to sound like other people and will tell in excruciating detail exactly which works they want you to slavishly imitate, but they aren't a scam. The fact is that people who are good at sounding exactly like other more famous people are what the powers that be are looking for these days.

Anyway, good luck.

https://www.taxi.com/

[Frantz]

I provided a link to taxi previously but it seemed to be unnoticed.

[wagtunes]

I provided a link to taxi previously but it seemed to be unnoticed.

Frantz, I did notice it, as all the other links, and will check them out, as all the other links. There's just a lot to go through and I've been kind of busy having been out of town a few days and trying to catch up on everything.

I appreciate your help.

[Frantz]

Cool.

[herodotus]

I provided a link to taxi previously but it seemed to be unnoticed.

I suspected as much. I mean, in 41 pages kvr can cover everything from Gestalt psychology and Presocratic philosophy to serialism, 80s era fashion designers and Quantum Mechanics.

Sometimes even in the same post!

[herodotus]

Sure, you had your Stock Aitken Watermans, and your Frank Farians, and Trevor Horns.... but there were so many styles,

Are you really putting Trevor Horn in the same category as SAW? Really? REALLY?!??!?!

Ummmm.... sorry, the name came to me automatically. To be precise: Trevor Horn established a synthetic, in-your-face aesthetic that I grew to dislike over time. Many tried to emulate him, which isn't his fault, but that didn't help. No, he's not in the same category artistic-wise, definitely not.

I think it's interesting that when Trevor Horn joined Yes for an album it actually sounded kind of like Yes, but when he produced a Yes album it sounded like......well.....not Yes.