We are residents of Lakewood Ranch, Florida, and the goal has always been continuous learning. It has been proven that learning something new helps maintain neuroplasticity in the brain as we age. My primary motivation to write songs is to (a) keep my brain active as long as I can, and (b) find a purpose that I can continue for the conceivable future. My motivation determines my action-oriented approach, which is to create value with no expectation of return, by regularly releasing a new song every two weeks, to constantly keep my mind active and challenged.
When you are looking for inspiration for a song, sometimes you must reach deep within you to draw on personal experiences and values. As such, you will often hear the same ideas echoed in different ways in several songs. For example, acceptance that we all make mistakes and the idea that being wrong is not always a bad thing, are dealt with in multiple songs.
Millions of people have an idea for a song every day. All we did was take things one step further by writing down the ideas for the concept and hook. After that it was a natural progression to creating the chorus and then the remaining verses. After a rocky start with the first few, it became a habit, and we started producing a song every two weeks. The idea was never to make money from writing songs, but to find purpose and use it as an exercise in neuroplasticity to stay mentally active.
Up to now, I have kept mentally active via my work, but I never really planned for how I would stay mentally active during retirement. As a CPA I planned for my finances during retirement but not my continuing purpose or mental acuity. In retrospect, I find that shocking. What good is physical and financial health without mental acuity? Without purpose all you have is boredom on a fixed budget during retirement. Yuck. If you can’t recognize your wife, what good is growing old together?
Music has always been an escape for me. When I put on my earbuds and listen to my playlist the world goes away. Hearing my own words coming at me through speakers is an incredible feeling. I have made something that can never be obliterated. Exhilarating!
COVID was a wonderful time for me as I am an introvert and working remotely was ideal. Meeting new people and socializing more than once a week is not my first choice. But having a purpose such as writing songs and producing music can be a powerful way to make social connections. I now have more social connections and interactions with musicians, vocalists, mix engineers, etc. These are people that I would not typically have interacted with as a CPA. This again helps keep my brain active and engaged by expanding the groups of people with whom I interact.
I love reading, writing, and creating something new, so in 2005 I published a nonfiction book called “Implementing Excellence” that took 3 years to finish. It was about implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems software in a manner that enhances your ongoing effectiveness. Nonfiction was easier for me as I was relying on my experience and knowledge for the content. Unfortunately, after the first book I was not ready to commit to another 3-year ordeal.
Then I tried writing fiction and gave up after a few months. The problem with fiction is that I needed to layout each chapter of the book in advance, but I had no history to rely on for content as I was making stuff up. Fiction is like chess where you think of fictional moves and counter moves for yourself and your opponent. I have the attention span of a gnat and a terrible threshold for boredom. I admire people that can play chess and think several moves ahead, but I prefer action and consequences, so overthinking just bores me to tears.
‘Often Wrong But Never Unsure’ is me in a nutshell. I like to take a step and figure it out as I go. I go Mach 2 with my hair on fire until I realize I’m headed in the wrong direction, so I’ll change direction and head in a new direction without slowing down. I’m not a detailed planner, so I do the minimum needed to understand the direction, target, resources, and timeframe, then I learn by doing and continually course correct. I make it a baby step if needed but enough to get past the ‘Analysis Paralysis’ stage.
Another problem was I hated the rewriting. The first draft typically is a brain dump for me (full of run on sentences) which I then edit and organize through numerous iterations. I love the excitement of creating something new in the first draft, but once I have a strawman, I get bored very quickly and each iteration of each chapter becomes tortuous work. For me, a strawman is something that has the shape of the final product, so you can see what the final shape might wind up being but is just there to kick around and discuss. At this stage, there is no pride of authorship. A strawman is just a lump of clay that will one day be a golem.
A one-page book would have been ideal and suited both my temperament and attention span, but unfortunately, they don’t have many of those. All that to say that I gave up on the idea of writing fiction in my quest to find something I could continue to do in retirement that would also keep me mentally active.
Next, I tried learning a new language (Italian), but again my short attention span proved a problem as I could not handle the repetition of practice and got bored quickly. Then I tried a musical instrument (keyboard) and found I have more thumbs than I thought. At this point I was ready to give up but was saved by Mother’s Day.
Over the past few years, instead of buying my wife a birthday card, like most sane people, I started writing her poems on her birthday. CC loved the poems, mostly because they were proof of the thought I invested in her birthday.
In May 2023, while writing CC a Mother’s Day poem, it hit me that poems could be the answer. Think of a song as a one-page book. Each song is a micro goal that creates daily focus. Songs satisfy my love of music, my love of writing and fit within the limitations of my minimal attention span as well as my threshold for boredom, as each song is a new challenge, a new peak to conquer. It also gave me something I had never had before: the ability to finish something within a week. Typically, implementing an enterprise-wide business system is a 6-to-12-month process, so writing a song in a week is like instant gratification.
I am action-oriented and started songwriting following the ‘learn by doing’ method which is my default. Learning by doing is ideal for me as I get bored taking classes or theoretical discussions. Why would anyone want to go back to high school and listen to someone read from a textbook, when you can take a step, see the consequences and course correct accordingly. While I realize I am missing the ability to think several steps ahead, I have no problem making decisions on the next step without seeing the whole staircase. I have the confidence to cope with uncertainty and ambiguous circumstances, figure it out one step at a time and continuously course correct. There is a sweet spot between control and chaos, where I am very comfortable operating, even though I may not know exactly what will happen next.
The key for me is deliberate practice. Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.
Steps:
1. Create the primary Tag line or hook and overall concept
2. Create the secondary hook, if you can find one to support the primary hook.
3. Create the chorus using both hooks.
4. Create the intro referring to at least one hook to ensure people know what the song is about ASAP.
5. Work on the other verses.
Most of my professional life, I’ve been creating one-page summaries. I used this approach and started out writing a one-page summary story and it wasn’t until I had written 10 awful songs that I came across a short article for 5 things a chorus should have. The first 10 had a lousy hook and chorus but I have slowly gotten better.
1. You’re my Beautiful Chaos, And I’m Your Prey.
2. Love All of Me, Body, Mind, and Soul
3. Old keys Don’t Unlock New Doors
4. Need a Hug Today, But You’re Far Away
5. Cause you’re gone, I Must Stay Strong
6. Do More Things That Make Time Stop
7. I’m An Alien Lost in Place
8. I’m Often Wrong, But Never Unsure
9. Give me time to heal so I Bend But Don’t Break
10. The Right Mistakes Brought Me To You
11. You May Be The Devil, But Not to me
12. I May Be Crazy, But It Doesn’t Make Me Wrong
13. Life’s Too Short, Chase Your Dream
14. I Remember You Best, With No Dress
15. I don’t need perfect, I just need you
16. Where Hero & Villain Blend
17. Please don’t treat me like I’ve treated you
18. Kings and Fools Have Different Rules
19. Am I Brave Enough to Suck at Something New
20. Can I go back in time, Change My Mind
21. I’m Learning to Dance In The Rain
22. I Caught Your Eye, You Caught My Heart
23. I See My Future When I look At You
24. I am Who I am Because of You
25. We Don’t have Money, But we Have a Lot of Fun
26. Let’s Start Living Our Happy Ending
27. Find Your Vibe, With Your Tribe
28. Is it Time I Tried the Other Side
29. Hope you fall in love and it breaks your heart
30. The power is within, the key is me
31. I Think I’ll Just Be Happy Today
32. Accepting me, as I was meant to be
33. It’s the silent ones, that hold the key
34. You can’t get it back just by wishing
35. Can’t Deceive Me, I Have My BS Degree
36. Prayers are Answered In Unexpected Ways
37. I Think Even God Doesn’t Understand Women
As you can see from the above, the first step is to have a hook that says something you feel strongly about. The next step is the chorus.
It takes about 30 lines to make a 3-minute song. That’s it!
You can get away with fewer lines if you repeat the chorus more than 3 times, but I try to avoid that as I feel it’s cheating. The 4 lines for the chorus form the core or heart of each song. Without a chorus to hook you, you do not have a good song.
I soon found that I have no idea whether a concept will work until I have written a critical mass of at least 90 to 150 lines. The key for me is to think of it as a brainstorming exercise and complete 150 lines without letting my inner critic loose, knowing full well that some of what I am writing is pure junk. Sometimes I write four lines of junk to get one line I really like and then I learn, and course correct from there. But if I don’t have the courage to write that first line of junk, I’ll never create a critical mass of 150. As such, for me writing a song is often an exercise in wading through a sewer of awful lines expressing love in some generic motherhood statement to find a few nuggets. Luckily for me, wading through an ugly first draft is CC’s responsibility, not mine.
Continuous course correction is the key to writing a song for me. It allows me to learn by doing and maintain a very short-term focus. Once I hit 150 lines I reevaluate and create a strawman with about 90 lines organized by intro, pre chorus, chorus, verse 2, bridge, (verse 3 optional), outro (opposite of intro), etc.
Next, I evaluate whether the strawman and concept are worth further effort to turn into a song. For the record, two thirds to 80% are not. If I think it is worth the effort, then I hand the strawman over to CC to have a fresh set of eyes rate this concept and strawman.
Typically, CC rates them as 20% “A”, 40% “B”, and 40% “C”.
A “C” rating means don’t waste any more time on it as it will never become an “A”.
A “B” rating means it has the potential to become an “A” but needs more work. “B” ratings remind me of my report cards which stated, “Has potential but could be better if he applied himself.” My mostly unspoken response was I did not want to peak in high school. Lots of people do peak in high school. My brothers fell into that category and then found reality too much to handle so they retreated into fantasy. I just felt sorry for anyone that buys into the premise that high school is the pinnacle of one’s existence. I just file these “B” ratings away to work on later during a dry spell, which hopefully will never happen. 😊
Essentially, my role is to come up with the concept and strawman, generate the quantity, representing the first brain dump of 150 lines whittled down to 90 lines, while CC’s role is to ensure quality by reducing the 90 lines down to the final 30. All the lines I cut I move to the bottom under the caption, “Optional extras” in case CC needs them, so nothing is thrown away until CC says the song is final.
Basically, I do 80% of the work and create 20% of the value in the final song, whereas CC does 20% of the work but creates 80% of the value in the final song. Life is so unfair. Almost as bad as an accountant with delusions about writing songs and producing music 😊
After we have finalized the lyrics, we farm it out to a few contractors to create a demo of the instrumental. Basically, this involves aligning on the beat, tempo, and primary instruments. This can take a few iterations as we are not co-located. Once we have chosen the beat, tempo and primary instruments we create the full backing track and provide a suggested melody for the vocalist. This step can take a week or two.
Next, a vocalist is contracted to provide the vocals. This typically takes a week.
After that we contract a mix engineer to mix and master the instruments and vocals and add any additional instruments or effects that may be needed for the song. This typically also takes another week.
Start to finish the songwriting process could take 2 weeks and the music production process could take another 3 weeks.
Success for me is writing a song I like, one that didn’t exist until I brought it to life. The beauty of my approach is that it is impossible to fail. Keeping my mind active and challenged is the goal so I have succeeded in that no matter what the song sounds like. Then I get the joy and satisfaction of being a songwriter. Not bad for an accountant!
I tend to work in sprints. I’ll be on for 2 weeks and then laid back for the next 2 weeks. So, on average, I come up with one song each day and we jointly finish one song every 2 weeks. We started Savage Thunder Music (savagethundermusic.com) after Mother’s Day May 14, released our first song June 7, 2023, and to date we have hit our target of releasing at least one song every 2 weeks under the label, “Savage Thunder.” https://savagethundermusic.com/
I am learning more with each song, and I think the latest ones reflect that new knowledge, but I could be biased. We got lucky with the first one, “Beautiful Chaos,” as we didn’t know what a good chorus should contain, but after that we got better.
The good news is that this exercise in neuroplasticity has other benefits. A good song, like a good story, generates emotion. Most of the time it’s happiness as I am still mostly writing poems to my wife and the only difference is the frequency has changed from once a year to once a week.
But there are times when I am searching within myself and find a hurt or other dark matter that I tease at until I put a name to it and then I define it and bring it up and spit it out against the wall so I can use an appropriate explicative to say, “I’m done with you,” and remove it from my soul. I think these tend to trouble CC, who has a master’s in psychology. However, I have found this process incredibly cathartic and would highly recommend songwriting to anyone as a first step to letting go of your demons.
Hope you enjoy this collection of what inspired or triggered each song and how it started out before it took on a life of its own.
Taf and CC
SavageThunderMusic.com