No More Lone Ranger

I Gotta Consolidate

In fact I may even use that as a song title! 2010 began with the resurrection of the Weekly Songcast, but I feel it’s current format and aimless direction is restricting me creatively and it’s also one more thing to get done when I could incorporate the same kind of thing into my main musical blog.

After completing my third FAWM Songwriting Challenge I feel that I have grown as much as I can, simply putting out songs by myself. I’m really pleased with my progress and my results over the last couple of years, but there is something I haven’t done enough of and I finally realize why I haven’t.

That thing is collaboration. The FAWM community does a lot of collaboration and on the few occasions I have participated it has been very rewarding, but I usually shy away from doing much of it and I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t into sharing the creative process more. Well I think I have the answer:

This website!
Yes really. Not that it’s doing me wrong of course, but I realize how much emphasis I have put on the importance of writing songs all by myself, probably to make for all those years I didn’t do it. I guess it’s what I have created as an identity for myself and everybody has issues when it comes to breaking down any kind of identity that we have created for ourselves.

To be honest I think it’s an ego thing, but it’s definitely stopping me from being more connected with many people who share the same interests as myself.

The truth is that to be a great songwriter, a great anything in fact, you have to share. I already have written well over one hundred songs since I started and I want to record many of them properly, so I can proudly say to myself that I am a songwriter, now I want to be the best songwriter it’s possible for me to be.

So I’m taking away the cause of this dilemma of "Do I keep this great idea for myself as a song or do I allow someone else to play a part?".

So, what liberated me in the beginning has really outgrown it’s purpose and is now holding me back. I’m really happy with this realization. There’s no woe about stopping the weekly songs because I’ll still be posting them over at the musical home of Boy at Heart and what’s great about that is I’ll be able to post the collaborations too and I’ll be able to post them weekly, daily, monthly or whenever I want to.

An extra little service I’ll be able to provide in doing so will be to help promote some excellent musicians and songwriters that I have come into contact with around the world. Even better for me is the fact that they cover many different genres of music, so I will be able to learn from them too.

This is just speculative right now. FAWM is nearly over and my mind is a bit blank right now, but I’m looking at doing this outside of FAWM too. My dream now is to connect with other musical alchemists and establish a really cool, creative relationship with those who I seem to particularly click with, so as to create some music that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

It’s time to let go of the "Lone Ranger" style that I seem to have created for the Boy at Heart and become more connected. I’m also up for working with other types of creators like: animators, film makers, writers and who knows what else.

In the future this could see me making some in-person collaborations too which would be cool. I’m building a new studio this year, so I want to make sure I’ve got plenty to do in it!

Thanks to all those who have contributed their time and comments to the Weekly Songcast. It was a great ride and it served a great purpose. This is just the closing of a chapter, not the end of the story.

Tagged as: collaboration, songs, songwriters