[joebergeron]

I've been writing and recording music for a long time, and I've internalized a lot of these pieces of advice. I work completely solo, so it's nice to see that some of the techniques I use are also useful to others. Lyrics have historically been difficult for me, not because I don't have the inclination or intuition for them, but because I've always been a bit embarrassed and frozen in-place by the prospect of sharing that sort of expression with others. I've forced myself to become more comfortable with it in the past several years, since it's ultimately the kind of music I want to write, but it hasn't been easy. I used to sort of "through-compose" both the lyrics and songwriting itself -- writing and recording entire songs "piecemeal" and in serial, chunks at a time, getting impatient with the lyric writing process and just wanting to set something to tape.

I've since come around to writing everything in full before doing any recording, which has been difficult and a real test of my patience. I'm taken to writing very long (>8 minutes), winding songs with dense arrangements and quite ornate language, and without traditional song structure or repetition. I'm not used to stewing on something for so long before being able to actually record; these days it will take me months from the the seed of an initial idea to recording. Whenever some idea strikes me, or I see or hear something in the world around me that piques me interest or inspires me, I immediately write it down on whatever I have handy. The same goes for musical ideas; whenever some motif or progression pops into my head I record it into my phone. It's taken some courage to get over my own embarrassment of having to leaf through this seemingly juvenile collection of half-thoughts I've amassed, but I've come to realize that of all things that may prevent you from realizing your passions, you shouldn't let yourself be one of them.

Anyways, I've come to love this slow, plodding process of writing. There's a great joy in finding precisely the right word or phrase for a particularly difficult passage.