You Don’t Know Until the Gig
One of the weirdest things about songwriting or gig prep is that you don’t know if you’ve done it right until you do the gig or play the song for somebody. Like, you can imagine the crowd, or the venue, or your audience, or who’s gonna listen, and all that matters, and I think you need to consider your audience always. But you never really know until the thing is happening.
As you know, dear reader, I’ve been working on production music. And I’ve been pretty confidently sending tracks to libraries to general silence. But being so unpopular has really prepared me for this. And I’m unfazed. Because obviously, I will get an answer at some point.
I’ve had a couple good nudges, though. It hasn’t all been silence. And I haven’t received direct criticism, but I’ve had questions, and I’ve been able to answer them really confidently, because I believe in what I’m doing.
This morning, I made 2 songs. Both came real easy. One was just kind of a very cool, no-drums, moody piece. And I’ve learned that when you’re in the flow, you need to trust it and respect it, even if it’s easy. And most of all, that you can train yourself to get yourself into the flow, which is what I do at 6 in the morning on my writing days.
And I think I’ve gotten what I want to get across right, even if I haven’t gotten it in front of the right people. It’s such a crapshoot whether you’re hitting someone at the right time when they’re looking for that one thing.
And I’ve made the conscious decision to work on what I do best, not try to tailor what I’m doing to a Taxi request or this or that. My feeling is that there’s enough music needed in the world, that my job is to find the right supervisor, or filmmaker, or creator that needs this for their fit, or hears something close enough that’s like, 'hey man, we can work with him on our next whatever.'
We shall see when and if the feedback rolls in. And if (when) the feedback doesn’t roll in anytime soon, I'll have an even bigger body of work.