Springboards. Sparks. Influences and Inspirations. What are yours? What do you model your music after?

When it’s time to create your next song, you can always benefit from others’ works by extracting out the spirit, concept, or essence of the work and translating it through your own Voice and perspective.

As artists mature, they are still influenced by the music of their predecessors and contemporaries, but rather than copying, imitating, or emulating the styles of their heroes and teachers, they engage in the modeling process.

Just as researchers have methodologies, companies have business models, professionals have career tracks, and economists have schools of thought, musical artists can decide upon the approach they take to their craft, before composing any words or music. A consciously chosen approach can be based on a number of elements, including:

• timeless topics
• successful song-formulas
• proven assumptions behind song-crafting
• time-tested strategies for creativity and productivity
• undeniable grooves, moods, or vibes
• modes of storytelling
• a compelling perspective

Songwriters can extract the spirit, structure, or conceit of a great song and use it as a springboard for their own compositions. We can Song-Model.

A song-model is different from a genre, a sound, or a tradition in that it has nothing to do with how the music sounds or what it is made up of. It’s more like a mood encoded into the music and lyrics or a borrowed approach to the songwriting structure. A model exists apart from the actual content of the song.

Join the Song-Modeling discussion and JP explores three common qualities that have been modeled in countless songs: sex/passion, romance/imagination, and compassion/love.

 

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Think about DOING.

What do you do? How do you do? Do you do that voodoo that you do so well?

Actions of all kinds can be opportunities to develop your musicianship. By employing your sense of rhythm, pitch, phrasing, melody, harmony, and composition (as well as the many other innate musical sensibilities that you already use to make your music), you can live a more musical life and bridge the gap between the inspired and the ordinary.

When you allow your music to infuse the rest of your life, even mundane tasks such as tying your shoes or brushing your teeth can become musical (See Mel Brooks in High Anxiety for the most musical tooth brushing scene to ever grace the silver screen.).

Join this SOS episode and explore ways to bring more music into your life (and more life into your music).

This is part four of a four-part series of “Musical Lifestyle” podcasts.

 

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