1. What songwriters, poets, or performers do you admire? Name three.
2. What qualities and abilities does each of these favorites have? Is the artist a great singer? A great piano or guitar player? An eloquent lyricist? A brilliant composer?
3. Do you have a vision of what flavor of songwriter you’d like to be? Rearrange these five types by order of importance:
- Singer
- Instrumentalist
- Live performer
- Lyricist
- Composer
You could always rethink this later on if you find your priorities changing. For now, just trust your gut and list those labels out in order from most important to least important. The resulting scale of priorities will help guide you as you make decisions about how much time to devote to each area of study.
You cannot do everything or be everything in a single lifetime. What you can do, though, is be truly excellent at one or two things — and be respectably good at the others.
Example: I’ve chosen to focus mostly on lyric writing as my main skill. I can compose well enough to set my lyrical ideas to melodies. I can play guitar and sing well enough that audiences won’t run screaming, too — but still, lyrics are what I’d like to be known for as a songwriter.
4. Which of the areas listed above (Singer, Instrumentalist, Live Performer, Lyricist, or Composer) are you best at right now?
5. Which of those areas especially needs work? Is there an area that you need to patch up to get to a “good enough for now” skill level? If so, be sure to work on that area in the coming weeks.