How I write Songs

Picture it.

Lunch time at Red Robin on a Sunday afternoon. You just finished placing your order and the couple that you and your husband are out at dinner with just asked you how you write songs.

This was me last weekend.

This is probably one of my favorite questions to answer. Not because the answer changes but I genuinely love discussing my process.

Where do I start, melody of rhythm?

What inspires the subject matter of my songs?

Do I ever get an idea in my head from a dream and have to write it down?

The plethora of ways that creativity sparks and grows is fascinating to me which is part of the reason why I consider it one of my core identities.

I am a creative. And I love it here.

In thinking about other creative souls that have graced us with their presence I wonder where they got their inspiration from or how the creative process unfolded for them as they prepared new material?

I’ve heard tales of Nina Simone Billie Holiday being so upset at injustice and white supremacy that it birthed the songs like Strange Fruit and Mississippi Goddam.

John Coltrane locked himself in a room for three days straight to write “ A Love Supreme” only taking breaks to eat. He said God was speaking.

My process pales in comparison to these creative giants but it’s mine and the more I lean into my creativity the more I fall in love with how my brain is wired and why I always start with crafting an instrumental.. But if I dig deeper into my process it is rooted in a feeling. If I’m feeling frustrated I'll sit at my piano and without worrying about proper hand placement and chord structure just find a sound that matches my mood.

I originally started playing piano because I looked up to Alicia Keys. I was transfixed listening to her music and knowing that she not only played piano but that she wrote her own arrangements. That stunned feeling ebbed as I matriculated through highschool and college without regular access to a piano. I wasn’t sure how to write songs like Alicia or Nina. I definitely couldn’t play piano as well as them so I wrapped myself up in my voice and the voices of others. Doing covers of Jill Scott songs and hoping one day I could sing as good as her.

I felt like a caged bird, but I was a comfortable caged bird. I had no idea how big the world of music was and I had made myself content with singing everyone else's songs but my own. But something switched after I moved to South Carolina. Although I had a circle of people who believed in me and supported me through high school and college I didn’t have access to the tools until I moved away. Tools and a trainer go a long way and after a few years of playing piano at church those skills were at the same level as my singing used to be. I could sound like the recordings and people could sing along. My voice however was on a different journey. It had transformed because it was the instrument that was always with me. Not only had I improved technically as a singer but I became more and more willing to step outside of the melodic box of the covers I sang and made them my own. I learned over time how to do riffs and runs with my voice. I unlocked my vocal personality. I now knew how I wanted people to feel when they heard me sing and every twist and turn and flip I made as I sang followed that objective. And one day my skills on the piano will go beyond just playing what is written in notation. I will discover new ways to move my hands along the keys and new rhythms to elevate heart rates and sounds that dance on the tightrope of whatever I play, undulating between tension and release.

But in the meantime I write. I allow my current level of skill to help me express what I feel and that is how I write songs.

Suffice it to say I didn’t say all this at the dinner table.

How do you handle the tension between writing at your skill level and not feeling as though your skill level is good enough? What keeps you writing songs?

Until next time,

Orianna Joy