CHANGING YOUR TUNE

There’s something inspiring about sitting down with an instrument that isn’t yours.

We know there’s a real comfort in having your own gear. That guitar you’ve written 100 songs on has served you well. But have you ever borrowed a guitar and had it speak to you with an accent ? Like this new instrument in your hands is speaking the same language you’re used to, it just sounds and responds a little different.

Our experience has shown us that picking up on that new accent often sparks you to write something you wouldn’t have written without it.

That’s the temporary beauty of an instrument that isn’t yours.

It flicks a tiny creative switch in your brain that lets you play something familiar and hear it just a little differently.

The same thing works with switching instruments entirely, except the switch is bigger.

Are you normally a guitar player ? Try writing on bass or piano. Chords are chords but they sound and feel different coming from different places. When you write songs for a living there are only so many directions you can go. If the car’s moving slowly one day maybe finding another road to get there can help ?

It’s easy to feel a little trapped by our go-to instrument. You write with the same sounds over and over and you can start to convince yourself you’re out of new ideas.

It’s never a bad thing to try something different. You can be a fantastic guitar player and a shitty piano player and it’s a good bet you’ll still manage to bang out enough notes to follow the inspiration. Never played drums in your life ? Sit down and try it. Find a rhythm that gets you out of the one you’re in. Swap out a guitar that gives you too much opportunity, for a bass that gives you less, it might help you narrow in on a different aspect of songwriting than you’re used to.

We’re not petitioning for a world of half assed players winging it for fun, we’re just saying that the weight of writing songs is real and sometimes that weight leave us trapped. Trying something you’re not used to can help unlock whatever box you’re stuck in.

IS BIGGEST ALWAYS BETTER?

It feels pretty natural to want a bigger spotlight right ?

An artists career usually starts off with a few friends holding a flashlight, usually in some dive bar while someone’s eating chicken wings in the corner. Hopefully those friends invite a few more friends with a few more flashlights, and all of a sudden the room gets a little brighter. Take that 10 steps down the road, and for a select few artists , if you’re good enough (and lucky enough) the lights keep getting bigger and brighter until you eventually need sunglasses just to walk on stage.

Sound familiar ? Something you’ve hoped for ? Or planned for ? It’s not a bad thing to want. There’s a whole bunch of reasons that the biggest spotlight is fun and rewarding and offers the kind of career you’ve always wanted. But it’s not the only thing worth chasing, and we’d be kidding ourselves to think there aren’t sacrifices to be made on the way to the biggest and brightest lights.

Maybe the size of the spotlight isn’t as important as what and who is standing under it. If chasing the brightest lights on the biggest stages means being someone else’s version of you instead of your version of you, is it worth it ?

There are costs to every decision we make in life. Personal and professional. Nothing comes for free. When you set out a path for your career ask yourself this - if the biggest spotlight is the most important thing, will I still like what I see when I get there ? If you can make sure the answer is yes, buy some sunglasses and work your ass off until you get there. But if the answer is ‘I’m not so sure', don’t feel like you're admitting failure before you even start. It’s never a failure to stay true to who you are. It’s amazing how bright 1000 flashlights can be (or even 100) sometimes telling yourself it has to be 10,000 means you might not like the view.

Bigger is good. You want as many fans as you can get. You want your career to grow. Work hard to make that happen. But biggest isn’t always better. Grow your career at a pace that allows you to stay who you are and become

who you wanna be. Do it your way. The spotlight will find you and you’ll be happier with what the world gets to see.

Photo credit - Connor Scheffler.

I WANT MY MTV

Remember when MTV and MuchMusic played music videos ? Ya, us either.

No one wants to admit they're old.

But full disclosure - we do remember, and it was awesome.

You'd come home from school and turn on the tv and wait anxiously, hoping they'd play the video you wanna see. 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins please.

Maybe you'd stay up late for Headbangers Ball or The Wedge and get introduced to something you'd never heard of before. They were good times for music, and good times for fans of music.

Apparently not good times for the networks though, as they decided 18 hours of Ridiculousness was a better way of banking ad dollars.

So what's the point of music videos today ?

There's no big, commercial gatekeeper, deciding who gets added into rotation, there's no chart countdowns, no consensus arbiter of what's cool. We're left with the democracy of YouTube, for better and worse.

Videos are like recordings - if you can make 'em, you can put 'em out. Just hit that upload button. But just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Or..should you.

If a song drops in the forest without a video, does anybody hear it ?

I don't think it ever does anymore.

Even if it's not a real video, there's probably a visualizer or a lyric video or whatever term you wanna use for 'something to watch while you listen'.

There's value in moving images, but there's also value in using them to tell a story.

Every aspect of what you do as a musician should be helping to tell the story of your song, your record, and most importantly, the story of you as an artist.

Not everyone has a big budget or a crew of talented friends moonlighting as film directors after they finish at Starbucks, but everybody has a camera in their pocket more powerful than whatever they used to make indie videos 25 years ago that actually got played on TV.

There's no excuses for not making the best video content you can, on whatever platform you can. Don't do it to chase likes, or views, or your share of the TikTok creator fund, but do it to help tell the story of why you do what you do in the first place.

The world wants to see you. They've had enough Ridiculousness.