How Old Are You? Were your songs better than?

[Viperbc1]

This is definitely a phenomenon. I personally believe this has to do with people practicing and learning lots of new material when they start out. Eventually the accumulated mix of ingredients turns into original tunes. The artist then tends to think they have "found their niche" and stops learning new stuff which results in stagnation. If you keep questioning your abilities, stay open to new styles, techniques and sounds - then progress and improvement will come naturally. On the other hand if you tend to think - "I don't need to work more on my singing, I have already got that down" then you will certainly not evolve (even if what you're doing sounds great it will eventually sound boring to you and everybody else, if you don't make a conscious effort to go into new territories). edit - oh and I am 27. This thread made me realize I am getting old I am definitely still learning though, that's what I live for

not originally a Boydog post Looks like he was trying to quote the original

[Bodyguard2112]

As time goes by I find that things with me are getting more conventional and using more proper methods, techniques, etc. So on paper the stuff is getting better. But I fear losing the edginess of spontaneous ideas that arose during the era when I knew nothing.

I want to keep a balance between the two.

[Surrealistic]

As time goes by I find that things with me are getting more conventional and using more proper methods, techniques, etc. So on paper the stuff is getting better. But I fear losing the edginess of spontaneous ideas that arose during the era when I knew nothing. I want to keep a balance between the two.

 

 

Yep I think that's the right idea. I really don't subscribe to the idea that you have to stagnate or lose your edge after a certain age. It may well be a tendency but it's not a universal law.

 

My take is that it may get a little harder to resist the temptation to rest on your laurels as you get older, but keeping your mind open to new ideas and new possibilities is an option available to anyone, no matter how old.

[MotleyHart]

Snap, I'm 13 coming on 14 and I can write maybe 20 - 50 songs in a day if I was so inclined. All different, of course and all able to stand on their own. I've been writing for 4 years and singing for 2, and I'm wonderin' if its to do with age or my own stupidity to actually sit down and write so many songs?

[Surrealistic]

Um ... 50 songs in a day? i.e. assuming you worked a 12 hour day (which seems very unlike any 13/14 yr olds I've ever met) you'd write 4 songs per hour? Apologies if this sounds mean but I doubt I'd want to hear any of those songs!

[maddrummerdude]

Snap, I'm 13 coming on 14 and I can write maybe 20 - 50 songs in a day if I was so inclined. All different, of course and all able to stand on their own. I've been writing for 4 years and singing for 2, and I'm wonderin' if its to do with age or my own stupidity to actually sit down and write so many songs?

 

 

Either you are the next Mozart, you take a lot of meth/cocaine, or your songs are terrible.

 

20-50 songs a day is a tad too much IMO, I'd like to hear one or two of these songs.

[MotleyHart]

Here's 2 of the 24 I did today

 

End of Days :

 

The world is falling apart

Apocalypse? Thats what the headlines state

But I wouldn't start

Its not the end of the world, thats not going to happen

Just quite yet, and dont you bet

On it

 

You can never know, your never safe

You've got lots of time but you've also got lots of fine

Fine opinions we never hear, so it doesn't make a difference

If I'm late, if I'm falling would you pick me back up?

 

Hey, is it so easy for me to say?

When its just another phrase, another wasted breath

Dont fight the fight, dont support the war

Blast the beaches and protest for the poor

Thats all stupid, its all a bore

Just stay at home, pet

And lock them doors

 

Its the final night, turn off the lights

Sit down by the television and watch as we all pray

The ground is slowly sinking in and I feel like I'm dyin'

Think my prayers will be answered soon

 

And when its over wake me up

Tell me off and curse my luck

Hope thats its just a bad dream

Another bad dream, I'm hoping, I'm praying

 

Tell her a picture to make her keep her words inside my brain

Its the end of the world and I'm still keeping up the same

Attitude, damn I need to stay awake, unless I plan to faint

She's breathing down my neck and its time to go away I dont wanna go

All work and no play, can I keep my wings? Or simply fly away

 

Someone new they say to me, down the gates round tiffany's

She says that its havoc down there I wish I was round here

Then she vanishes and goes and like the dream I wish I'd know

Apocalypse, they say that this is, the apocalypse

Man I'm just happy I went to heaven and ...

 

The world is falling apart

Apocalypse? Thats what the headlines state

But I wouldn't start

Its not the end of the world, thats not going to happen

Just quite yet, and dont you bet

On it, hey!

 

Fill it up with gasoline

Hope that you can hope to glean

Lick your lips until they gleam

I really wanna shine just like everybody else

I wanna be a big rockstar

In the middle of an apocalypse, just shout out

 

 

Hey, is it so easy for me to say?

When its just another phrase, another wasted breath

Dont fight the fight, dont support the war

Blast the beaches and protest for the poor

Thats all stupid, its all a bore

Just stay at home, pet

And lock them doors

 

And

 

Nice:

 

Now I'm judged by what I've got

Now I'm known by what I'm not

Congratulations you have learned

Stop giving me things I have not earned

Our lives built on ciggerate burns

Babies dead so its your turn

 

Thats the way it goes

Thats the way it goes

 

Sinking deeper know my name?

Fear it not cuz' I got fame

Taking drugs on a super highway

Getting AIDS from getting laid

Superstars and celebrities

Only one thing wrong with me

 

Thats the way it goes

Thats the way it goes

 

You can cry your eyes out

But lets be fair

You can be stressed out

Until you gain white hair

But in the end and at the gates

Theres only one thing wrong with me

 

Thats the way it goes

Thats the way it goes

 

And now I'm old

The spotlight blinds

But I'm good

Never been so fine

Now I've lived

A long nice life

I think I will

Resign

 

Thats the way it goes

Thats the way it goes

 

And maybe I would recycle the possibilities

Love actually, think factually

 

Thats the way it goes

Thats the way it goes

 

I write a lot of songs really fast, and they are all decent 3 minute songs. I think that I'm just prolific as hell and having a high IQ just helps.

[grantsabbath]

lol

[Sentry68]

I'm 40. I started lessons on my first instrument at age 8. I've written my share of songs through the years, some good, some bad. What I consider my best stuff is sprinkled throughout my musical 'career'. Styles and tastes and subject matter changes, but I don't believe the composer's age has as much effect as some would like to say.

 

There is something to be said about the loss of creativity as you get older, owing to many factors including formal schooling/learning methods, discipline in a particular field, idleness in the arts, and stagnation. But it's ridiculous to say you'll only write your best stuff while you're young. Hell, I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up... maybe it's just about remaining young at heart.

[blue2blue]

Heaven forfend. Those drugs will strip off those extra IQ points quick enough in anybody, especially in a growing body and brain. Not to mention what they can do to the other organs and the joints. Sadly, I've known more than my share of tweakers, snowbirds and crackheads, and those drugs suck the life -- and brains -- right out of folks. I saw one of my old neighbors go from a big, strapping healthy guy to a scrawny, ultra-paranoid bag of skin and bones over the course of not that many years... He just got into meth because his then-GF was into it and he had the wacky idea that he had to get on 'her wavelength' in order to 'save her.' Last time I saw him he was on the streets and looking bad. (And his now ex-GF had stolen and sold a bunch of his things to support her and her new BF's own tweak habit.)

 

Another pal was a fine, really productive artist... but he found his dayjob cutting into his art time... and he thought, well, I'll just do a little speed to help me finish this project... but before long I was hearing stories about afterhours tweak parties at his flat that didn't end until 6 in the morning or later... pretty soon he wasn't getting into the dayjob and he hadn't worked on his art projects in a long while. When his brother died, leaving him the sole emotional support of his mother, he got into the program (NA) and left that behind. He came back a long way but he's rather rueful, because he says there's stuff that was simply lost.

 

So, you know, I'm not really preaching here... I'm just talking about what I've seen over 40 years of watching my boho/outsider/hippie/punk/raver friends. (And, yes, don't buy the hype, X/Ecstasy/MDMA will devastate your body's ability to produce the natural brain-chemicals that make 'rolling' seem enjoyable... it's a snapback thing... you take X, feel all groovy/happy/etc then come down... and when you come down, you don't come back up quite as far after you recover. Over a series of experiences, the body's ability to produce the endorphins related to the good feelings is slowly but surely impacted.)

 

I'm just saying... use your head. Don't abuse it.

[maddrummerdude]

Heaven forfend. Those drugs will strip off those extra IQ points quick enough in anybody, especially in a growing body and brain. Not to mention what they can do to the other organs and the joints. Sadly, I've known more than my share of tweakers, snowbirds and crackheads, and those drugs suck the life -- and brains -- right out of folks. I saw one of my old neighbors go from a big, strapping healthy guy to a scrawny, ultra-paranoid bag of skin and bones over the course of not that many years... He just got into meth because his then-GF was into it and he had the wacky idea that he had to get on 'her wavelength' in order to 'save her.' Last time I saw him he was on the streets and looking bad . (And his now ex-GF had stolen and sold a bunch of his things to support her and her new BF's own tweak habit.) Another pal was a fine, really productive artist... but he found his dayjob cutting into his art time... and he thought, well, I'll just do a little speed to help me finish this project... but before long I was hearing stories about afterhours tweak parties at his flat that didn't end until 6 in the morning or later... pretty soon he wasn't getting into the dayjob and he hadn't worked on his art projects in a long while. When his brother died, leaving him the sole emotional support of his mother, he got into the program (NA) and left that behind. He came back a long way but he's rather rueful, because he says there's stuff that was simply lost . So, you know, I'm not really preaching here... I'm just talking about what I've seen over 40 years of watching my boho/outsider/hippie/punk/raver friends. (And, yes, don't buy the hype, X/Ecstasy/MDMA will devastate your body's ability to produce the natural brain-chemicals that make 'rolling' seem enjoyable... it's a snapback thing... you take X, feel all groovy/happy/etc then come down... and when you come down, you don't come back up quite as far after you recover. Over a series of experiences, the body's ability to produce the endorphins related to the good feelings is slowly but surely impacted.) I'm just saying... use your head. Don't abuse it.

 

Oh, I definitely wasn't condoning the use of meth or cocaine, I was simply insinuating that he would need it to write 50 good songs a day. Writing like that is completely unnatural. I'm not a drug user, but I think I would need some Adderall to focus enough to churn out an output like the previous poster mentioned.

[blue2blue]

 

Oh, I definitely wasn't condoning the use of meth or cocaine, I was simply insinuating that he would need it to write 50 good songs a day. Writing like that is completely unnatural. I'm not a drug user, but I think I would need some Adderall to focus enough to churn out an output like the previous poster mentioned.

Oh -- I definitely didn't think you were.

 

I just didn't want our budding songwriter friend to think that that sort of temptation didn't have serious consequences. Sometimes, when you're 14 and hanging out with the big kids, you may not have all the perspective that some of us have gathered the hard way, along the way.

 

I'm no goody two shoes and never was -- but I've seen a lot of suffering, sickness, and, sadly, way too many deaths -- including close friends and family members -- that just didn't need to happen...

 

And, btw, don't get suckered into thinking that good ol' demon alcohol is a free ride, either. It may not have the social stigma that hard drugs have, but, for some of us, the consequences of its abuse can be just as devastating.

[Mark L]

I 'peaked' during the years 2002-2006

Since then I've hardly written anything

[easilyspooked]

what's it like looking back at your peak? every song i write i fear - what if i can never do better? and of course that will someday be true, but i'm sure i won't recognize it until it's long since happened. give us a taste from the other side of the looking glass?

[Z-Mann]

The stuff I wrote in my late teens and early 20's was total crap. Most composers don't "peak" until very late in life. Making music relies on the desire to make music, not on your age. Songwriting is no different than any other art: painting, writing, etc.

 

To any younger people: just keep playing. You will get better and it gets more fun. Just keep playing. That's my honest opinion.

[eddieboston2]

I can feel myself getting dumber every day. I keep working away, though, hoping something shiny will result every once in a while. I wrote some great songs when I first started, but some pretty cheesey ones too. I'm pretty sure the same applies to my current work.

[Lee Knight]

Oh -- I definitely didn't think you were. I just didn't want our budding songwriter friend to think that that sort of temptation didn't have serious consequences. Sometimes, when you're 14 and hanging out with the big kids , you may not have all the perspective that some of us have gathered the hard way, along the way. I'm no goody two shoes and never was -- but I've seen a lot of suffering, sickness, and, sadly, way too many deaths -- including close friends and family members -- that just didn't need to happen... And, btw, don't get suckered into thinking that good ol' demon alcohol is a free ride, either. It may not have the social stigma that hard drugs have, but, for some of us , the consequences of its abuse can be just as devastating.

 

 

 

Well said Mr. Blue. At my age and my history I can report an equal ratio of deaths among my close friends divided between cancer and drug OD/suicide.

 

Coke and meth are very efficient at deteriorating your sense of reality to where offing yourself looks pretty good. And they have offed themselves.

 

Please stay away from it.

[its_me_again]

I've thought about this before. I'm in my early thirties and thought about giving up songwriting. But then I think about Jeff tweedy, he created YHF around 32 which was miles beyond the stuff he did before that. Yeah, he's a pop song genius anyway, but still it's possible to hit your peak later on...

[LeonardScaper]

still it's possible to hit your peak later on...

 

 

I hope so.

[Ferdinandstrat]

I am 17 now, and no, they were way worse back them.

More amaturish and half baked than now.

I am still in the process of developing as a songwriter, I am still trying, problem is I dont often know how to express my ideas.

[BumbleBb]

Of everyone on this thread, I think I am the oldest as far as starting age. Actually I wonder how many people in general started writing at such a late age. I started writing songs in my late 30s (did do some other writing before that, poems, stories, etc.), a little while before I started learning to play an instrument for the first time. So a good amount of my older stuff was written before I could play any music at all. Being able to play some now is a big help. Being able to pick up a guitar and flesh out what I'm hearing in my head is nice. Having had two years now of playing music and paying attention to music in a way I wasn't able to before I could play, has helped too and makes the process feel richer to me. Now, I wish I could also play piano and also write songs on piano. Maybe someday, if I live long enough. It's been something I've wanted to do for a long time!

[peanutroad]

Malcolm Gladwell (of whom I am not a particularly big fan, normally) wrote an interesting essay about 'late bloomers' a few years back. It's available at his site: http://www.gladwell.com/2008/2008_10_20_a_latebloomers.html .

 

I'm definitely a late bloomer; shoot, I didn't even learn to play guitar until I was 26, though I sang in bands before that. I only picked up an instrument so I could write my own tunes to the lyrics -- and very bad lyrics they were at that point -- I had turned out. One thing is for sure -- inspiration may burn brighter when one is young but craft is something one can spend a lifetime learning.

[Lee Knight]

^^^^^ I totally agree!!! This is such a great point and anyone of... uh-hem... advanced age might do well to read it a few times. I did. I wrote tunes starting at age 19. The first 10 songs I wrote, though in some ways are a bit awkward, were some of my best ideas. The previous 5 years, from the age of 14 or so, were filled with digesting poems and lyrics and orchestral scores and jazz bass and punk bass and trying to pick up upright and trying to write like Elvis Costello and Graham Parker and playing in a big jazz band and playing in a new wave original act and auditioning for signed acts and and and and... I was on fire. Then I went professional. And did what was needed to keep working. That isn't always the most creative road. Now many years later... and after finishing my production phase of my life (I think that's what I've decided, no more outside production work), I've been working with a vocal practice CD everyday. I've been putting pen to paper. I've been formulating ideas and really just filling the well. I'm ready to start soon. 2 more albums to finish up and then that's it. I start writing again and producing my album! I feel 19 again. Hey, why not? Ask Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and even Elvis Costello. Tom Waits for no one, right?

Boy, this is an old thread. It's interesting to read my self 3 years ago and see if I'm full of $%^ or not.

[blue2blue]

I ask cause we talked about Noel Gallagher before, and I noted how he did all his best stuff when he was in his late teens/early 20s. Also thought it'd be cool to get temp of room. A couple posters seem really young. Others much older. I'd tend to be a harsher critic if I thought the author were more experienced. I'm 31. I'm really not sure If I'm better than when I got started. I'm more serious about songcraft and honing the technical aspects of singing and playing. Although I think I've lost some of the urgency of passion. I used to be rather skinny. I'm not so much any more, which probably hurts me as a performer.

Older than Justin Bieber, younger than Mick Jagger. (But a lot closer to Jagger.)

I'd probably been playing maybe a year and a half before I wrote a song that was a keeper (for these purposes, that made it into my song blog, which serves more or less to lay out my oeuvre). It wasn't a disciplined song, at all, but, unlike some earlier efforts it was moderately coherent -- I had a tendency to write songs the way I first started writing computer code -- we call it spaghetti code because it noodles around, loops here and there, is hard to follow because of a lack of discipline and coherence and may have interesting elements but is generally a mess.

Within another year or so, I'd written a couple more somewhat disciplined songs and that continued forward, picking up steam at times.

But there were times over the years when my desire for new material caused me to accept a lot of what I might call filler into my songbook, stuff that I'd probably put back in the WIP bin now. In contravention of sensible music marketing, when I gigged, I tended to really change my sets radically all the time. While that might keep ME happy on some level, a little more discipline in the marketing side -- and a lot more repetition -- might have been a more solid marketing tool. Someplace between the guy who has played the same 12 songs in his set for 20 years and the guy who improvises everything (and I did have an instrumental, live-loop act where I did that) is a happy medium, the guy/gal who sells his songs in a disciplined manner but slowly adds and removes new/older songs to keep his set evolving -- not jumping erratically through 150 songs in such a way that no one ever gets a chance to bond with specific works.

Much has become easier with experience but, I've had to be frank with myself, it was my lifestyle and my soap opera personal life which provided emotional impetus for a lot of my writing -- even if the songs themselves often were highly abstracted, characters compounded, etc. (You've got to watch out for telling your GF-of-the-moment that the girls in your songs are 'composite characters' because, at a certain point, they start wondering if that doesn't inform your emotional approach to them -- that they all start 'running together' -- this, for some reason, is seen as a bad thing by the typical inamorata. )

So, the discipline and craft is easier, but that all-important spark of emotional inspiration is often harder to come by. For a guy who dubbed himself 'The Bard of Bitterness, Denial, and Regret' back when he was gigging a lot, I spend precious little time brooding about the past. That might help my songwriting. But I'm a moody guy and I guarantee, sitting around thinking about the women I've loved (not wisely and not well, as the cliche goes) is NOT a good thing for me.


So, from here on out... I write about my cat.

[BumbleBb]

Older than Justin Bieber, younger than Mick Jagger. (But a lot closer to Jagger.) I'd probably been playing maybe a year and a half before I wrote a song that was a keeper (for these purposes, that made it into my song blog, which serves more or less to lay out my oeuvre). It wasn't a disciplined song, at all, but, unlike some earlier efforts it was moderately coherent -- I had a tendency to write songs the way I first started writing computer code -- we call it spaghetti code because it noodles around, loops here and there, is hard to follow because of a lack of discipline and coherence and may have interesting elements but is generally a mess. Within another year or so, I'd written a couple more somewhat disciplined songs and that continued forward, picking up steam at times. But there were times over the years when my desire for new material caused me to accept a lot of what I might call filler into my songbook, stuff that I'd probably put back in the WIP bin now. In contravention of sensible music marketing, when I gigged, I tended to really change my sets radically all the time. While that might keep ME happy on some level, a little more discipline in the marketing side -- and a lot more repetition -- might have been a more solid marketing tool. Someplace between the guy who has played the same 12 songs in his set for 20 years and the guy who improvises everything (and I did have an instrumental, live-loop act where I did that ) is a happy medium, the guy/gal who sells his songs in a disciplined manner but slowly adds and removes new/older songs to keep his set evolving -- not jumping erratically through 150 songs in such a way that no one ever gets a chance to bond with specific works. Much has become easier with experience but, I've had to be frank with myself, it was my lifestyle and my soap opera personal life which provided emotional impetus for a lot of my writing -- even if the songs themselves often were highly abstracted, characters compounded, etc. (You've got to watch out for telling your GF-of-the-moment that the girls in your songs are 'composite characters' because, at a certain point, they start wondering if that doesn't inform your emotional approach to them -- that they all start 'running together' -- this, for some reason, is seen as a bad thing by the typical inamorata. ) So, the discipline and craft is easier, but that all-important spark of emotional inspiration is often harder to come by. For a guy who dubbed himself 'The Bard of Bitterness, Denial, and Regret' back when he was gigging a lot, I spend precious little time brooding about the past. That might help my songwriting. But I'm a moody guy and I guarantee, sitting around thinking about the women I've loved (not wisely and not well, as the cliche goes) is NOT a good thing for me. So, from here on out... I write about my cat.

I definitely don't have the same youthful angst I used to have, not so often anyway, so I totally get that in terms of getting older that type of emotional inspiration can be harder to come by. But, hopefully not TMI, but for me, being a woman, I get a nice hit of emotionality at least once a month or so, so very good songwriting inspiration despite my more even keel due to age.

Also, I find that I can go back in my mind to some of those youthful experiences and emotions and mine those experiences for material. I can sort of conjure up the feelings from back then and have that inspire my writing if nothing too emotional is going on currently.