In this context a goal is anything that you want to experience as a songwriter. Anything at all related to your musical or lyrical life. These goals can be small, short-term wins, or they can be long-term goals that will take a decade (or more) to complete. And anything in between.
Creative slumps and unintended vacations from practice routines come about for many reasons, and one of them is lack of an inspiring goal. Having something exciting or meaningful to work toward is a powerful motivator, and the rigors of practice become easier to bear when you know that your labors will eventually come to an end.
Goals are especially important when the teaching materials you’re studying and practicing aren’t especially lively. You learn most eagerly and readily when you know that whatever you’re studying will help you reach a goal that you’re passionate about.
Dreams of fame vs. dreams of excellence
This being a course about personal growth through practice…
I believe that the most valuable goals are not related to awards, album sales, fame, money—instead, I think the best goals are related to self-discipline and study and technique and personal satisfaction. Because while you don’t ultimately have much control over whether you earn this reward or that one, you do have control over your own training and your own skills as a songwriter.
Of course it’s perfectly fine to have goals related to your music career. But please make sure you set some goals that have to do directly with the craft itself, not just with the trappings of success. Because while awards and applause and admiration and fame might all seem glamorous from outside, many people who actually manage to achieve them find that while it’s briefly exciting, it’s ultimately not satisfying.
What really nourishes most songwriters is the sense of having built a song well. Being conscientious about their technique. When you end a practice session knowing that you really made solid progress on some little aspect of the craft, and you can feel yourself growing just a little stronger week after week… it gives you a sense of personal wellbeing that you’ve just got to experience.
How to dream believable daydreams
There’s no wrong way to dream, of course, but passive “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” daydreaming is not quite our aim here.
This is more like: daydreaming in a way that lets you actually start working toward the things you desire, instead of just fantasizing. And the key to productive dreaming is: envision your desired outcomes in as much detail as you can.
It’s key that the details be accurate. If you’re not exactly sure what the life of a professional songwriter looks like, do some research. Find out where they work. What their daily routines are like. Write to them. Call them. Tell them you admire what they do and you’d love to hear about what the day-to-day details of their routines are like.
As songwriters, we use sensory details to make our lyrics feel more lifelike and believable. We fill them with true-to-life sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch sensations that welcome the listener into the world of the lyric.
You can also use sensory detail to make your own goals and visions of the future more believable, more realistic—and in the process, more useful and more inspiring.
Breaking a goal down into steps
Next I’m going to ask you to shift your attention to whatever challenges and tasks stand between you and your desired goal. What do you need to study, learn, and practice to make your goal a reality? What learning materials do you need?
Any big, hairy dream can be broken down into progressively smaller, more specific pieces. Go on breaking down what you need to do enough, and eventually you’ll break it down to at least one action—often something small—that you can move on right now. It may be as small as writing yourself a note to research flamenco guitar lessons and search for teachers in your area. Or it might be as simple as opening a book and beginning to read Chapter One.
For example, here’s a breakdown of a dream of mine. My goal is to be as good at making up music on the fly as the average jazz soloist is. This is a big-picture, long-term project, because Jazz artists train for years to be able to invent melodies over any chord progression in real time onstage.
Through research I’ve learned that you can learn to play jazz solos over complex, fast-moving chord progressions by understanding chords, understanding scales, and understanding the relationships between a given chord and which scales happen to sound good over that chord.
So as I break this huge task down more and more in my practice journal, I finally conclude that the very next small step I would take toward this goal is to just make a list of chords. DMaj7, A9, Bbmin11, etc. And just practice writing out which notes are in those chords. And then playing them on the guitar neck and on the piano so that I can see what their shapes are like.
Is crunching chord theory math in this way the most exciting thing I could be doing? Nope. But here’s what makes it exciting: knowing that it’s one small step toward being able to write beautiful melodies totally off the cuff. Since it’s fairly boring work, I’ll take it in small daily 10-20 minute sessions, and then I’ll move on to other areas of practice for the day.
When I’m able to glance at a jazz standard’s lead sheet and instantly identify every note of each chord, I’ll know I’m ready to advance to the next step.
Keep your eye on the diamond
Be sure to return to the big-picture view often. If at any point you’re feeling bored, and you’re tempted to check your email or go watch TV or surf the web instead of practicing whatever you’re working on, fix your eye on the goal. Remember what achieving this goal is going to feel like.
Knowing that you’re taking a tiny step on Everest can infuse even the most dry theory exercise with a sense of adventure and purpose and determination.