Episode 15 - Songwriting

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guys welcome to another episode of the liturgist podcast and this week we are looking at the science art and faith of songwriting with our good friend ryan o'neal from sleeping at last welcome to the program ryan thank you so much i'm i'm really excited to talk to you guys and of course as always we've got our uh our my partner in crime and uh in many ways superior thinker mr michael gunger oh you you jest but thank you and ryan we are so pleased pleased to have you ryan for those of you that don't know ryan's music i hope uh by the end of this episode that you will do yourself a favor and fix that problem in your life because he's one of uh he really is one of the best songwriters that i'm aware of uh wow in the world today he's his lyrics are rich and full and his voice lulls you into just just a transcendence so quickly um wow so ryan really is a pleasure of course and ryan is a he's ryan was actually part of the original liturgist conversation you're sort of a liturgist 1.0 or even a beta version i am i'm honored honored to have been been involved in the beginning um yeah so ryan i'm not sure how familiar you are with what we've been doing with the podcast uh but we we discussed issues through the lens of science art and faith um in addition to the liturgies that you're aware of that we that as you've been a part of and that we've done but uh so songwriting we've got a lot of we've got a lot of people out there that are creative a lot of people that are into music a lot of people that make music um themselves and we've got lots of great questions for this episode so maybe we could just rather than divide it up so neatly into the science art and faith maybe we should let the questions kind of drive this what do you think mike i've been pretty amazed at uh kind of the popularity of the show lately it's almost freaky um but by far this is the strongest response we've had from our audience in terms of submitting questions so there's a lot of aspiring songwriters out there and so we asked our listeners to sing a couple of lines from a song that they wrote but don't like anymore so we can explore that a little deeper and you can hear those clips interspersed throughout the episode this is dan coke a former songwriter of the band sherwood and this actually made it onto a record if only you could hear the beep beep beep of my beating heart then maybe we we would never be apart i feel a little out of place on this episode since i've only ever written two songs and they're both pretty horrible um but but why are they horrible mike maybe there's a place to start and also what better place than now to show us those two songs oh my gosh there's no recordings of those i'm an old man so i mean i guess there's technically recording of one but but what makes you the writer think that they're horrible why would you have written a song that you think is horrible well the first song was in high school it's called uh grow a frog it was a an ironic and humorous soliloquy towards a mail-order pet that i wrote as a gag and then ended up being like our most popular song from a high school band everyone always requested it um but it's mindless and monotonous uh it's more a weird owl song than an actual song i mean like an original weird owl song not like a parody and then the second song i wrote uh the second song i wrote is called song for jenny because i'm a very creative titleist which is a song i wrote to propose to my wife um oh that's awesome you know it's a yeah i mean it so as a marketing ploy it worked really well because i did get married but i don't know that it's the best the highest quality song writing but interestingly enough we got a lot of questions um about how do you get over hating your own music and i didn't mean to set those questions up but it kind of did see michael and ryan you guys are both really accomplished songwriters um and a lot of people with creativity struggle with a loathing of their own work so how do you guys deal with that huh that's an interesting one um for me um i think that it never really turns into loathing as much as it turns into just just getting really tired of hearing it over and over and over um but i i would say i mean any like any confidence issues that i have always show up in my songwriting in some way or another so so maybe there's a little self-loathing in there uh just a low-grade self-loathing under under every uh every songwriting process but um i don't know i don't really struggle with it too much i feel like it's uh it's i kind of i can kind of separate when uh when the song is really getting under my skin i can kind of like okay well that i'm gonna work on something else for a little while and get back to it until until i hate it less so that's how i deal with it how about you michael that's how you deal with it because you've always written good songs oh whatever thanks you haven't written some of the worship songs that i've written um i yeah i it's not so much self-loathing um that i experienced and it really is a is a i experienced embarrassment about things i've done in the past like farther back the more i embarrassed more embarrassed i am about it oh absolutely um but i don't loathe it because i i do know where it came from and hopefully i think any healthy uh person should not hate any past version of themselves necessarily you know if like of course there are things that you regret that you've done probably or whatever but um you know you do you gotta learn to love the journey on on some level to to be a healthy human being and and so you for me i have to remember that the songs that embarrass me now that and by embarrassed because because i've written so many it's probably because i i write a lot of times about spirituality about god about these things that have drastically evolved for me over the years and so i'm singing really really passionately about something that i don't believe anymore you know that i like that i think is a silly idea at this point right um or misguided or whatever it's just kind of embarrassing it's like what seeing a a a junior high picture of what i was super passionate about that haircut i thought i was so cool no that's exactly that's like the perfect comparison i do feel like it's it's like looking at old pictures be like wow that was horrible fashion you know like i can't believe i wore that and thought like i remember feeling so cool in that when i wore that but exactly and probably the probably the cooler you felt the more embarrassing it is exactly [Laughter] what would you how many how many years do you think um like going going back like at what point how many years back do you feel like you started to get embarrassed like for me it's probably i don't know like five or so anything i've done five or six years ago that seems to be like the moment yeah that's a that's a kind of a good length i mean there are things there are earlier things that i still you know can enjoy elements of but there it is a weird the farther away you get from it the more embarrassing it is yeah usually for me uh well do you think that's ever getting like the nostalgia mode though on your own work like it's uh so old it's good or so bad it's good not for me it hasn't come back into fashion yet that's what you mean there have been there have been songs and moments that i that i go back and that i that i go back thinking that i'm going to be embarrassed of and that i'm not quite as embarrassed as i thought i would be that's good those are those amazing moments a pleasing sensation you know yeah like oh that was i'm kind of like that it's not the worst uh but i don't know i think there's something about there are some artists that really they don't they like make a point i think miles davis made a point of never hearing old stuff of his um he just would like get done and not look back and i kind of i have i have a little bit of that in me like i i will avoid listening to older stuff like pretty much anything that i've completed i i avoid listening to at all costs like with the exception of i don't know like the when when i press a record on vinyl for the first time obviously i have to proof it and but even that i've even had friends like hey can you just can you just make sure that it it sounds right i don't want to hear it again um because i sort of feel like when you're done with the record at least for me when i'm when i finish something i finish a song or finish a lyric i i feel like it i feel like it's it's in a good place in my heart and then i want to like never never have to question that again so as soon as i'm done i just want to like package it up and and send it out there and not not really look at it again but it is it is hard like uh i guess i guess the further something is back in your history the the more like i don't know the more disconnected from it i feel so i feel like like less less nervous about hearing it or or scared to hear it like some something i've done like 10 years ago isn't as scary as much as it's just like fascinating like huh i feel like a totally different human being like i don't know who made that that's so bizarre listening to the mastered product has always been a pro a hard thing for me to do like i've i hardly even i can get through it like once when the master so those of you know how to make a record like you spend all this time in production and writing and all this stuff and then you mix it and and then you master it and it's like the last thing and then once it's mastered it's done like right that's it you can't do anything else to it yeah and and at that point i never want to i'd never want to hear it anymore really it's it's the but during the mixing during the production i listen to this stuff all the time because it's constant it's working on it while you're listening it's working that's exactly right but once it's done there's something kind of like scarily final about it and it's like well what if i hear that now it's only going to create any anxiety if i want to do anything else to it it's it's done you know yeah yeah no that's right um which is that why part of why i asked you mike why like why those songs you seem to have some sort of embarrassment about that maybe it's is it just because it's long ago but i think songwriters um sometimes we give up on our on our babies too quick and we put them out before they're done and then we think they're bad um i've been trying to like not do that more and more you know like uh spend as much time in the baby becoming what it needs to be before i send it out into the street do you have like a do you have a test for that or like a uh like a code for when when something's done or well my approach is to uh improv once while the guitar plays and then go with that first idea just go with it yeah literally but you're so there might be something to that michael [Laughter] but but your songs also seem to accomplish their purpose their point right i mean jenny said yes yeah you got a pretty good track record mike that's true i mean number number one song in the school and then you got married out of the next one like it's a pretty solid trajectory i can't wait for number three yeah who knows what you're gonna do with number three [Laughter] i did i did get to a point like in the last i don't know maybe this is like five or six years ago where i stopped i stopped recording demos i don't know how you approach demos michael but um i i just sort of have now like gotten to a point where i know the sounds and the things that i like tracking with enough to to like just eliminate the demo and get get to the part where i'm actually like excited still excited i'm not chasing anything when the final product's done um and just just kind of getting to the point do you do that or do you still demo stuff uh i've done both like my demo it's been that my demos are like constantly evolving into the actual so you're using parts of what you would call a demo in in usually yeah sometimes that's kind of what i'm doing yeah sometimes i'll start over but a lot of times by the before i put a demo down i really try to feel the right tempo or whatever because that's going to be something that stays but that you know what i first put down might most likely is not going to last to the end but uh something i usually evolve rather than you know start and stop different uh sessions that make sense okay yeah cause i i don't know what it is but i i felt like so many you know you demo something when you're most excited about writing the song and when you're you know really pleased with what it what what you're saying with it and then you know then you rip it apart and try to start over and wonder why the magic left you know so i've i've sort of just been like okay anytime i'm i'm gonna press record it better be you know i'm gonna get it to a point where i'm proud of it to some extent that i can like you said evolve off of it and keep and you know make sure that the tempo is right and all that kind of stuff but it is that's one way that i've sort of tried to eliminate any any self-loathing in the in in the writing process because when i'm demoing something and then trying to beat the demo that's just that's one of one of the worst feelings and i remember i remember doing that when i first started uh writing and recording and just feeling like there has to be you know some other way to do this because it's never as good as the demo nothing's ever as good as the demo well and the stuff that i write that i don't hate even on in my own my work is the things that i iterated and revised over and over and over the ones that i sat on the idea for three months before i wrote the rough draft when i go back and read those posts i love them when i go back and read the things that i got like really fired up about they may have gotten a lot of traffic or a lot of connection with the audience i come across sentences that just make me feel shame because i can't believe i released it and i think there's something about um letting create a creative work be born out of this inspiration and and letting that be a very free process but then bringing in the editor and just start chipping away at that block and sculpting it into the thing that measures up to your own sense of taste [Music] the hardest part about writing songs for me is um if i'm genuine with what i'm writing about or if i'm just writing things for the sake of a sad song i wrote a book a few years ago and it was i was really surprised at at certain similarities between writing a song and writing a book uh cert certainly a book takes a lot longer um and does tap into kind of i think different maybe mike could have something to say to this but it seems like different parts of the brain uh were were engaged somehow i don't know like i write i think we may have talked about this on the creativity podcast but i i like to write music late at night um a lot of times and i like to write when i was writing books that's definitely a morning activity um mike why do you have any answers explain this there's a kind of a two-prong action there when the people get up and write really early what you're trying to do is beat your editor out of bed um so the parts of your brain that are responsible for evaluating the consequences of decision of decisions and forecasting failure and all those sorts of things and way up in the prefrontal cortex uh they're expensive they're um slower to fire neurologically and so when you kind of wake up really early and you're still rubbing your eyes and you sit down to write which is frankly how i like to do it for any first draft especially those parts of the brain kind of take a longer time to warm up and become responsive and so you don't have your full neurological capacity to check your work as you create it and i think um the the music late night thing is uh working towards um the other end of exhaustion where we're also kind of avoiding the editor a little bit um we're not quite as self-critical um but in that more fatigued state you you probably are more alert your hand-eye coordination is going to be better i mean if you could imagine waking up first thing and trying to play an instrument well that's a lot more challenging than pounding on a keyboard and so i think the the higher need for an effective cerebellum might play into the night owl's musician's needs uh more than the absolutely quiet orbito frontal cortex that the writer is trying to find in the mornings wow i like that i like all that ridiculous but the similarities they're still uh it's just it's just decision it's just decisions like what's better it's like a constant eye exam do you like this better or this better yeah uh do i could go from this chord to this chord or from this chord to this chord or and until one of them feels right or until the next sentence feels right it's just totally that's the game right i mean that's the whole thing it's just decision after decision that you're making um and why you shouldn't finish that song or that whatever whatever work until it feels right until it feels like it is what it is what you've intended it to be um and i think that's why i think all the cr all the i mean again i want to get getting kind of close to what we did with the creativity podcast but i think it's all connected i think the whole creative work i i saw did you guys see that is it chef i can't remember uh one of them one of the movies that might not be the right movie actually i think you tweeted about the movie ryan it was a about a chef maybe yeah there's that's one of my favorites last year was a movie called chef by john john favreau yeah and like wasn't it totally about music to you it kind of was yeah it was about parenting and and creativity that's exactly what it was about yeah it was beautiful in every in every way but i think you're right i think it is kind of all connected it's like this uh this really beautiful i don't know i like to think of it as sort of creativity as part of part of our soul in in some in some beautiful way i don't know let's have a little talk you got some time cause i can't get you off my mind i know it doesn't help when i've had [Music] wine there's a lot of questions that we got about kind of the the how-to which i guess kind of also falls into maybe the science aspect there's a science aspect of songwriting um but i'd be curious ryan to kind of and i'm sure a lot of people would be there's a lot of people that like like to would like to write songs but just how how does this work step behind you know let's peel back the curtain a little bit what does it look like for you usually to start with an idea what sort of idea do you start with and how just walk us through that moment to when we hear it through our earphones or whatever yeah absolutely um so i i've i've learned over over the years of writing that i have a few practices that sort of help me help me uh streamline the the waiting process i guess because that's that's what songwriting is is just a waiting process um and what i like to do is i like to collect i like to collect kind of everything and that's music as well as words and uh and lyric ideas and things like that so basically what i'll do is every day i'll try to you know sit down at the piano and um whether i'm feeling like it or not i will press record on my on my iphone memo recorder and um i i kind of just won't think about i'll just play play anything and kind of randomly and if uh if it sounds interesting enough i'll i'll keep recording and if it doesn't then i'll stop it and i'll kind of put away those recordings for a while and and uh and then come back to them later and i do the same thing for for lyrics i'll i'll i have this this app on my phone called day one and it's basically just a journaling app and it just reminds you to write every day so i just free write every day lyrically and um whether it's a word i like that that particular day or a line that kind of came to mind or something and then um that's kind of where everything starts that's like that's like the my little my little uh my little collection collection boxes of of of ideas and then eventually sorry to interrupt you like what's how how detailed do you get in those journaling like are you is it total pros are you trying to get into is is it poetic or is it just no it's i mean yeah it's mostly like the language tends to be poetic just in general or even i mean i'm looking at it right now there's like it it's probably similar to just what people toss in their evernote to be honest um because a lot of it is just like i mean really random words that made sense when i wrote them and then now they don't most of the most of the time like i'm looking back at like yesterday's like i don't have no idea what it's almost done means but i wrote that down and there it is um and so but what's cool about it is like i i really do feel like i i put these things down on you know in the app and and in these little sounds in the recorder and i completely forget about them like 100 just they're gone and when i when i go back and and kind of comb through all these little collections they all feel new and it all like it gives me that objective um perspective to kind of see like oh that's there's something there let's i'm gonna try to build that out and figure out what it is and um so that's kind of the beginning of my songs but i i i read this book when i was i don't know it was probably like 14 or 15 a friend a friend at the time um who was like this incredible songwriter who kind of uh took me under his wing for a little bit um he he gave me this book and it i don't know what it is about it but it has like stayed with me for this entire you know last many many years of writing and it's a book called songwriters on songwriting it's a it's all it is is like a collection of interviews with all these incredible incredible uh artists like so like i don't know everybody from paul simon to bob dylan to leonard cohen everybody's in there and all it's just a collection of interviews all about the songwriting process and what i what i took from it when i wrote it when i read it when i was a lot younger was that like all these geniuses have no clue where the songs come from have no clue how to get them to come out in the first place and something about that was really really inspiring and encouraging and i think there was one i don't even know who said it but somebody said that like songwriting is a lot like waiting for a bus you you sort of you can't control when it's gonna get there but you can make sure that you're at the bus stop when it does get there um so that's kind of what all these little practices that i've that i've kind of put into place like like collecting and just sitting down every day to try to write something so i don't know if that any of that makes sense but that's that's sort of my approach cool so so then when do you start to develop do you have like a time of writing and then like a time of development every day or how do you yeah like usually i mean depends on like the project i'm working on like when i started doing the yearbook project which was my uh 36 songs and in in the course of a year when i did that which was like you know pushing pushing out my my songwriting output like 300 percent what i what i was doing before that so at that point then it was a lot of you know constantly diving through these little collections of recordings to see what what makes sense and at that point then i'd spend you know hours hours and hours every day trying to be like okay what is what should that first song of this project sound like and then i'll i'll i'll be like okay this this piano part is kind of interesting i don't know something definitely it could turn into something and then i'll just i'll just kind of build it you know i'll take it apart and rebuild it and try to figure out the tempo and try to figure out what it's supposed to say and what maybe what does the melody and the uh the the tone of the song is that how it you know if it had words what what would it should what should it be saying so it you know it's it's a it's a pro and sometimes the lyrics come first sometimes they don't i'm sure you're the same way where it's like every every song kind of gets cobbled together in in one way or another they all they all come out they all you know they all come out a little different uh and and start a little different too but yeah i do spend i just spend i mean especially when i'm like in the middle of a recording project that's you know the i i probably spend an hour just collecting and doing you know doing that kind of thing and then the rest of my day will be like you know eight or nine hours of just trying to you know flush out and flesh out ideas i think of brains a lot as kind of like information computers and it's uh it's funny whenever i hear someone talk about the creative process um because like we're from relatively similar cultural context ryan and it's funny that we both start with a daily day one discipline that then goes in in this collection mode that then goes into this revision mode that then turns into a specific work or project you could have just worded that for me and then we wouldn't have had to listen to me talk for like eight minutes [Laughter] you just you just narrowed it down it's perfect next question i'm just gonna be like all right mike tell them what i think on this you'll say it much better than i will well i was just saying we if in terms of our creative disciplines uh i am a writer so uh my whole gig is how do i cut this thought down to the clearest punchiest words possible whereas as a songwriter to me it seems like you you guys have a bigger responsibility to take an idea and open the possibilities to the listener and i may end up doing that across an entire work but i do it by like here's an idea here's an idea here's an idea here's an idea they're really punchy they add up where um that would be a pretty pretty terrible song right um you you guys are poetry is very very important in your work ryan what about do you have one of the sides either the poetry or the music that tends to be easier to develop for you i would say probably music music is you know there's only so many chords as opposed to how many words there are yeah exactly so just just in a you know mathematical sense music seems to be it seems to come to me a little easier although i do feel like when i'm you know i'll have like an instrumental song that i'm i'm gonna write and i'll be really excited like okay i get a break from writing the lyrics and this should be you know this should take me a couple days and or whatever it should be easy and then that ends up being way harder than i thought so every time i think you know instrumentals or or just music is easier than lyrics i i get proven wrong pretty pretty quickly it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating 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because it was all for the same purpose it was all for church use or for worship you know response of worship so all i had to do was put words in that elicited that response from myself you know or that i could imagine it would elicit from the people my congregation or whatever um [Music] and then over the last few years um really trying to write in other ways to elicit other sorts of you know thoughtful responses or just self-expression or just what whatever the song is is for in its intended place like right now we're in the middle of recording our new record for gunger and um and especially when you co-write this is something you have to like come to terms with with somebody else like i write with my wife lisa for most of the gunger stuff uh we're co-writers on and so we have to at some point come to a consensus like what are we trying to say with this what are where is it trying to fit into this album what is it trying to be and so there's a couple songs right now that i have two full developed lyrics that are completely different songs for the same musical idea but the same way yeah it's interesting and just don't know which way to go with it based on it's where does this where is this in the record what are we trying to do with this song what is what sort of response are we trying to elicit in the listener was it you know like um and it used to be simpler for me i just i guess i'm overthinking things these days i don't know what i would do in that situation is i would just make the song twice as long and then include all the lyrics that's that's what i would do noted 18-minute songs on the next record let's do it you just do an ep of multiple songs where it's the same music but different melodies and lyrics that would be really actually super interesting to have that would be multiple eps with the same songs but totally different intentions behind or different meanings for every song that's that's cool you should totally do that i want i want you to do the work for that the hardest part about writing a song for me is finishing it most times i'll come up with a couple verses or a chorus that i really like but i'll end up putting so much pressure on myself to stick the landing that i end up keeping the song as a work in progress forever i try to seek perfection and consequently i'm just never satisfied with that speaking of like innovation in music there's a question several questions actually that mirror something i think is a fan of both gunger and sleeping at last um because there's there's this tension in music between innovation and listenability i was reading this article that you know basically music in 2014 sounds like it's all the same and it's our fault and it was about how the closer a song sticks to the neurological model that people have for a song the better it does on the charts um and and the better it does in terms of social recommendations and so when you look at really innovative music uh it's actually more neurologically taxing for the brain to process but something that i've noticed that both gunger and sleeping at last do really well is create very listenable very innovative works and actually [Music] james worsham from twitter said how do you do something new in 2015 when every possible song structure and chord progression has already been used and copyrighted and you guys both do a great job of that so i'd love to hear your secrets oh man do you wanna you should go first michael and i'm just gonna say i'm gonna copy and paste your answer well i first of all i don't think not everything has been done first of all i agree most um but most like may you know it depends on what level of innovation you're talking about like nobody's i mean there might be some composers some very avant-garde composers that are still trying to invent new timbres that haven't been heard you know with certain uh combinations of crazy electronic circuitry and instrument whatever or trying to invent new instruments there there is a there is a whole stream of music that really focuses on we are going to create something sonically that you've never heard anything like it and that's that would be a very difficult thing to accomplish at this point i can't even imagine um but but you are uh on the level of where most of us operate so even say take this podcast for for instance has there ever been a podcast about songwriting yes of course have there has there ever been a podcast with three white dudes talking yes there certainly has um has there ever blah blah blah there's a million things that have been done about this podcast but that doesn't mean this podcast doesn't have something unique about it right we're all the three of us have never spoken like this before the three exactly and had the exact insights that we've had and played off the conversations in those exact ways that's never happened in uh at least this segment of the multiverse it's a little a little nugget for you science mike um but no like you know that so what level of innovation so yeah the chord progressions it's it would be hard to come up with a chord progression that has never been used um on any stage of the chord progression but by the time you actually put it all together uh it's probably got something pretty unique about it even though there's only 12 notes in the western tempered scale i actually saw the math one time of how many different possible song combinations there could be i can't remember what it was but it was ridiculously high i mean it's like okay it wasn't like 15. no i mean it's it's even yeah within our very limited musical scales um the options are nearly infinite that you can do i mean they're just vast the amount of percentage of those are crap that's also vast that's it's fast it's fast that's true what were you going to say about that ryan i was going to say i mean i think you you hit the nail on the head like i feel like it is so much about like the fingerprint of the of the people you know everybody has a guitar and can play the same chords over and over but there's somebody's going to have some sort of different slant on it and there's going to be some sort of angle that they come at it from that just completely unlocks something about it or some combination of words or something you know i'm i'm i'm very hopeful that not all of the music in the world has been written yet and um and even if there is only so many notes to play around with and only so many uh ideas and songs there's there's none of those have been sung by me yet none of those have been sung by you and millions of other people so i feel like there's still this beautiful i don't know there's this hopeful uh possibility of of of new from from our interpretation of all that's come before us you know and i don't think it's something you can think too much about or you'll paralyze yourself like if you try imagine trying to have a conversation with somebody where they're only constantly obsessed with saying something that's never been said before in the conversation exactly they'd be silent yeah it'd be silenced if you still did conversation so you just say you just assume that you've inherited a lot of your musical ideas and traditions and thoughts and what you like about different timbres and different sounds you've inherited it from your experience you're basically a curator of everything that you appreciated about music before you yeah you synthesize it and what's new about it is it's you doing something nobody's had even if i strum the same chords as somebody else it does sound a little different with me strumming it because i have different shaped hands i have a different guitar i strum with a little different technique and i hold my pick a little different everything about how i approach a guitar is going to be slightly different than somebody else that's playing the exact same chords so don't worry about it don't worry about it unless you get sometimes you'll come across an idea and then you'll realize oh that is actually a different idea like that is this other song yeah that is a bad feeling too it's one of the worst as a songwriter it's one of the worst when you find when you like are almost done and then you realize like oh that's why it sounded so familiar it's because this it's this other artist that wrote it got it and then you go back to the drawing board it's the worst and i feel i feel bad for the art like because there are there are some popular songs now and then that all of a sudden you know everybody realizes oh wasn't it like the sam smith everybody realized yep that it was what was it a tom petty song or something yeah it was a tom petty song and i think that i think sam smith just agreed to pay uh some sort of royalty to tom petty now on that song yeah but i i kind of feel bad for sam smith actually because i'm i would imagine from my experience he probably didn't realize it no i i haven't i have no uh i don't think yeah i don't think there's any way that he was like yeah let's let's try to slip this over people's eyes you know because when anybody's like when we're talking about coming up with ideas what that actually usually looks like musical ideas it is totally what you said mike of picking up a guitar playing sitting on a piano whatever and just screwing around and going blah blah blah you know like you're just making sound and playing like a little kid like my daughter amelie sits on a piano and she's record she's realized uh that if you separate your two fingers your first two fingers by a certain amount that like she can hear that should that place thirds so it kind of sounds interesting to her so that's all she does she holds out her two fingers and she like goes around the piano that's awesome and plays these thirds that's about what i do i just know a little bit more about musical theory but it's kind of just put my fingers out like i understand makes interesting sounds and i play around until something sticks out and then you just and when something sticks out you don't know why it does but when sam smith is just noodling with a melody or whatever and something sounds nice he might not recognize us because that's from that tom petty song it's just that sounds nice that something resonates with him about that yeah that's just kind of how it works yeah exactly working on commission the great commission getting folks sold out to jesus is my mission so what do you do when you get stuck i mean we uh had i don't know 10 or 12 different wordings of that question about when you've had a good string of creativity going and then you lose that inspiration and you lose where you were going how do you guys escape creative ruts i i learned some pretty significant lessons like so it started with that yearbook project that i did where i wrote three songs every month for a year that that taught me a lot and and very very fast about writer's block for me because before it when i encountered any sort of blockage i would i would just walk the other way and and wait until i felt like i could write a song again and when when i was in these kind of like pressured you know i have to meet the deadline kind of situations i i don't know i ended up i ended up realizing that like writer's block it exists but only in the sense that like it's completely you like it's a man it's a man-made thing i think i think that you you just keep your butt in the chair as long as you need to and then eventually it you'll you'll let yourself write a song you know you'll get through it on the other side uh whether that's you know two days or two weeks later like you will do it and i i i used to think like okay here's tension i'm gonna walk the other way and that would prevent me from writing a song for months or even like a year back when i was a lot younger um i think that's more laziness than anything i don't think that's writer's block so i don't know i learned i learned a lot about um in these last few years about just writing through writer's block like nobody has to hear anything you're writing nobody has to see it uh until you want them to and i feel like kind of taking comfort in that was a really helpful uh helpful practice for me to kind of realize like okay so i'm not writing anything i love right now but i'm going to just write it because i have to get through it like i'm going to just keep writing i love music i'm going to keep writing until something eventually comes out and i don't think i've ever i don't think i've ever like followed that and then realized oh no i was totally wrong there's nothing beyond here and what i just wrote was terrible like i usually usually end up you know writing a couple verses that i don't like and then all of a sudden a chorus will happen i'll be like oh this changes everything and then i go back and rewrite that verse or whatever so yeah just writing through it is kind of my my best advice and that's what i've been doing is just trying to just keep keep my butt in the chair my wife um she actually she drove around different uh different authors uh this is like an earlier um like side job that she had that was she sort of their liaison like authors that would come into town and do these like book signings and i think um i can't remember who said that to her but that advice of like just keep your butt in the chair as as a writer like that's that's the most important rule of thumb you can possibly do is just keep your butt in the chair so i i i've kind of i've kind of burned that into my head like yeah if the song's not coming just keep my butt in the chair or something something's gonna happen there's this fantastic book by steven pressfield called the war of art and um and he talks about this idea of resistance he capitalizes the r and how it's this active like force against artists and creators um and the hardest the hardest thing to do as as someone who's creating is to start doing it every day like to get your butt in the to get it in the chair is the hardest part and it's bad before that decision he makes the comparison to like jumping into a cold pool every morning it's like once you're in you kind of whoa you shake it off and now you're in the pool and swimming laps once you're in the pool you do it you know or whatever you're gonna do you're but jumping into that pool every morning that's the hardest part so like actually not putting off you know i could sit down and do this now but i'm just gonna grab another cup of coffee and great you know i gotta i gotta do the busying yourself with activities that you know that are that are unconsciously keeping you from or consciously keeping you from the work you know you should be doing right now right but actually getting yourself to that spot actually picking up the guitar for me like when i'm actually practicing i love it when i practice guitar but actually sitting down and turning on the metronome or whatever and like i'm gonna run some you know scale i'm gonna play this block piece right now that that's the hardest part about the whole is is sitting down and starting it um but yeah i found that as well when i was writing a book i love what you said about just writing through it um because i got i was getting stuck for a little while when i was trying to write my book uh because i i needed it i wanted everything that i said to be brilliant you know i wanted every first the first thing that i typed to be like the thing that it would be and i didn't want it to be stupid or trite or whatever so i'd kind of sit there and wait for something to happen eventually i learned i was much more productive and would get better material if i just started typing i mean just get it going if it's you know like as trite as it can be it doesn't matter as soon as it starts flowing usually something it'll take it'll go somewhere um and even if it's just one sentence or one idea that comes from that session that ends up getting that ends up evolving into something else um just plowing through and just just moving your fingers and doing it you know just starting the process that's the hardest part have you i'm sure you guys have heard of the artist's way i have i'm sure this has existed in many other forms but she has this thing called morning pages that is essentially that it's basically what whatever whatever type of creativity you're you're uh pursuing she recommends that you sit down with three three white sheets of paper blank sheets of paper that you just write out whatever and fill them every morning with whatever even if it's i don't want to write on my morning pages like you just say that over and over like just keep your pen moving um i love the practice of that i think that that's a really uh that's a great way to like approach it because it is true yeah i completely agree with that michael it's it's it i'm i'm amazing when it comes to avoiding doing stuff i'm supposed to do like it is it is it is a gift that i did not know i had to like avoid avoid things i i will i will magically you know waste like four hours doing about six minutes of work you know i mean i don't know i think that that might be the whole trick to success in creative work is just that daily discipline um in my own life everything changed when i read the war of art and i decided i would do the work every single day without exception and that's the only change i made and suddenly it seemed like everything took off and it's because i quit talking about how the work could happen or what the right strategy should be or trying to architect the perfect thing and just every day said what can i do in the next two hours and did that that's amazing that's perfect yeah i i had a similar actually experience where uh about i don't know right before i started that yearbook project i i heard this interview with i think it was with han zimmer and he talked about which is it was completely a random interview that i was watching i think on youtube and he had talked about his time as a before he was a film composer he was in a band and um i i guess the question must have been like what what's the difference or how do you know why did you get into film composing versing versus being in a band and he said that when he was in a band all he did and all his band did was was talk about the music that they made you know so they'd make a record and then they go on tour and talk about the music that they made you know a year or two years ago and he said the difference between that and composing music for film is that you're always creating you're always writing and you're always you're always doing the thing that he fell in love with music in the first place which is writing music and that that like once once i started doing that is the same kind of thing and everything just kind of made sense like i once i focus on writing more and and and that being what i love about the career of music that that changed everything for me and and i do feel like in some way me not paying attention to like the business of it and and just sort of focusing on the creativity of it i think opened up a lot of doors uh in terms of like my music being used in different you know films and tv and told completely without my my push or without my uh my um you know my my my business hat on like it was just i just had my head down working on music all the time and that has proven to be a really healthy way to be a creative person and and still be a human being while making while trying to make a living doing doing this creative thing oh you are you really are my like music musical business hero right now oh whatever you're just doing what you want to do it's amazing i i do a lot of complaining too so i i i'm very very glad to do what i get to do and i i have to remind myself that how how thankful i am because i like anything you know you just you just learn to just learn to figure out how to complain about the whatever whatever you're going through you just figure out how to complain about it i was just complaining to my wife this week about having to do so many media interviews and uh it i had to say that out loud before i realized how stupid it was yep yep and that's that's what's amazing you know to to have family around you to be like you realize how stupid what you just said is because that's basically like the the active role of all of my family this is constantly keeping me in check you realize what you're saying and why you're stressed out like i'm just i'm just i'll wake up and i'll be like oh i'm just so crabby today i'm just so stressed out like why because you have to write a bunch of songs that you chose to write and like yeah that's that's exactly why so what is what is the most challenging part of your job ryan what do you like i would say um probably probably like i don't know every you want you want every song to be the greatest song you've ever written you know that's that's the i'm i'm sure you feel the same way where it's like your newest song should be the thing you're most proud of and i i think when i'm about to write that newest song i'm always scared that i'm not gonna be like it's gonna take a down curve you know every every song i write i've got this like this low grade stress underneath it like just like oh man i hope i hope this is gonna build upon what i've what i've been creating and not you know not go the other direction um so that's more of just like a just a constant fear but honestly i also think that that fear is partially what helps me um keep pushing and try to write better and better songs um so i don't know it's a it's a that's that's probably my biggest challenge is just to um just the fear of wondering if uh if i'm gonna keep keep loving the stuff i'm putting out but so far so far i've been very fortunate that i'm i'm like that's my that's my only criteria especially with the amount of songs that i write right now um i i needed to make some some pretty big rules like i didn't i didn't want to release like a bunch of demos or a bunch of uh just kind of half half completed songs so the only criteria that i have is i have to be proud of it and i i even have that like on on uh on a note um near my near my recording desk that is just like and i always check it before every single song goes out into the into the wild you know i'm like am i proud of this song and i will i will not release it if i'm not and that's a that's a it's a good it's a healthy uh it's a healthy little test for me to try to figure out if uh if i if i've cut an if if i've cut any corners at all that that note keeps me from from allowing them to be cut if i sit down to write something and nothing comes out then it feels like maybe i've written my last good idea or something and that fear i think keeps me kind of finding reasons to not sit down at night so a question from twitter um that i i'm curious about as well jason ropp asked what role has the study of music theory played in your songwriting a lot none and i would add somewhere in between it pro it i mean like my knowledge of music theory influences how i approach music um it's it's actually a lot of times for me something i try to have to transcend um and not think about i don't use theory as a like a trick to write a better song i actually like try to forget what i know um there are times i have to like um i'll retune my guitar into something i'm unfamiliar with so that i so that i don't have an idea of where how this should work or whatever so i just have to rely on some something else that's less or i'll write a song on the piano where i'm not as competent or something because it's like i have to rely more on my ears and less on my analytical theory brain that being said i'm glad i know theory it's it's to me i've always i've used the analogy like the alphabet um and reading and you know when you're like diagramming sentences in grammar school and and learning the parts of speech and learning you know you have to learn all about these like nuts and bolts of the language that really does it me you know once you are you is uh was shakespeare thinking about the diagram of the sentences that he was writing probably not was are the great works of creativity relying on those like nuts and bolts i think probably not in a conscious way like it helps you i think it probably does help you to be able to be a better communicator to know the parts of speech to know your alphabet to know how to spell words just because it helps you engage that you can read better so you can engage in the language better as you read and you know you can have a better understanding as you're crafting a sentence why a good sentence is crafted like it is you know so but um eventually that stuff gets it just becomes second nature it becomes something that's underneath the surface and i you know i i could tell you that a a minor knife is going to uh it's going to be a very dissonant interval for a lot of most chords like if you put um you know a minor a flat 9 on top of whatever it's going to create some distance i could tell you that without hearing something but i could also tell you that from hearing something but there are now and then that i'll know you know uh something i hear something straight if i'm doing a string arrangement or something and i hear something that sticks out a little bit and i can i can more quickly pick up on oh that move of the parallel fifth sounded weird between the viola and the cello rather than that's that's easier for me to pick up because i know theory um and i've done your training and you know so rather than like having to totally reapproach that string part and what what exactly why doesn't that sound exactly right you know um so i think it helps and hinders base at certain times i most over 99 of the time it helps i think i'm glad i know it um but it is sometimes uh the crea the whole idea of creating can get limited by uh if you start trying to make it into a science into uh well you can't have parallel moving fifths you can't have you know um that can actually put you in a bad creative zone yeah interesting any listeners completely lost don't worry i'm with you no that's that's different i'm like literally the exact opposite i know absolutely zero theory like at all and honestly it's to a point where it can be embarrassing where people will be like hey can you give me an a and i literally don't know what an a would sound like i i mean i know the chords i know the shapes like there's lit it's literally um one of the most embarrassing things ever i i play with strings quite a bit and so at different this has happened probably i'm not even kidding like at least 12 times um where we'll we'll we'll be you know sound checking and tuning up and the girls or whoever's playing with me will ask for um we'll ask for an a on the piano and i i have hit the wrong note almost every time and there's like one once or twice where i like get i accidentally just pick and it happens to be an a but i just i i so don't think of music or like my piano notes or um or the guitar in in chords or notes at all so it's all shapes and sounds in my head so i don't know it's sometimes it's a huge disadvantage obviously um because like like you said being able to access your knowledge really quickly to figure out if there's a problem with something or i don't have that so if there's a problem with something it takes me hours to figure out why why something doesn't quite work in that you know in that bizarre chord progression um but on the flip side i do think that there are some advantages to being like i will cluelessly stumble into melodies that probably shouldn't have been written that i really love you know so it is yeah but i have i have zero zero music theory and i wish i did i i don't know how to read or write um charts or things like that so when i write string arrangements it's all based on like uh just keyboard first you know a cello on a keyboard and then i build out the tracks multi-tracking and then i have i have a a a real musician actually like go through all those parts and put them on paper so it's it's a roundabout way but um i love all of what you said except for a real musician because music i know you were i know you were joking but music is sound and that is something that uh the academy and like like in music school and in sometimes more serious musical traditions uh that would be the sentiment that like people that just create sounds based on shape and sound are not real musicians and i think that's bs um music is sound and music is an exp it's a human experience it's um it has it the numbers and the letters and the math and the bar lines and all that are simply ways of trying to communicate music in other ways that are like to communicate to to easily communicate to a viola player for instance how to play the music that you have in your head right that's true it's a way of of quantifying things and communicating things it's not the actual music music is not written on a page music it doesn't it's not music until it's sound um that's true so you are a musician so so you might have you may have a harder time communicating what you're hearing in your head to people than if you had a musical theory or you know uh ways of of writing it out and and communicating in those sorts of ways you might have a slower time communicating with others in that way but which is what the you know music school is good you're that the whole thing is communicating teachers communicating to students and students communicating with one another about learning about music so it's necessary for certain circumstances but it's not necessary to create beautiful sound as as evidenced by your by your music and i i love why i laugh when you say it is not any sort of derisive mockery or anything like that it's it's pure joy i'm so mad at you right now no it's pure joy because it's like i i have a guitar i had i worked with a guitar player for years that was similar and that he you know he'd call a certain he had like these names for these chords like he's like no that's bear claw which i just loved because that's like the way his fingers were shaped and he he would say it jokingly knowing that i would laugh at him but like the bear claw cord um because he didn't know what it was called or whatever but that's awesome yeah i it is i i'm thankful for it but at the same time i i have you know i've seen you play guitar and i'm like okay yeah that's that's different than i play guitar and what's different about that is that you know exactly what you're doing and have you know an arsenal of talent to pull from for me it's sort of like okay and put this finger here and then oh nope that one's wrong okay you know 10 minutes later i i'm i'm forming three chords well i mean but it's all just constructs right um if i could put on my reductionist hat for a second thoughts are really just like a manifestation of physics in one model of reality and language is a way for us to transmit thoughts from one brain to another so on one level uh speech is nothing but molecules vibrating because they've been excited by vocal cords in an airstream but on another level they convey information when they are symbolically interpreted in the brain and so what you're saying and the way you approach music theory is that you don't understand music theory but then you said i view it as shapes and sounds so what's happened instead is you've created your own meta construct of music that's independent from the established norm that may create a slight penalty for you in terms of communicability but it is probably an asset in terms of producing innovative material because you aren't held back by your model you've invented your own i like all of that a lot as you should that was that was beautiful yeah i'm a big fan of everything you just said is my wife's song to her future husband when she was 18 she wrote this which was probably not you my heart is safely locked up tight sheltered from the windy night and guarding it with all my might until he tells me it's all right until he tells me it's all right any other questions that you see mike that would be good to get to i was just scanning there's so many like amazing questions um but we've covered a lot of them by happenstance oh i had one i definitely want to cover that's not necessarily music related um but just brings me pure joy uh both of you guys what's the worst day job you've ever had so i'm i'm really embarrassed and really and super proud of this i've never actually had a day job so i'm not i've only done music since i was like 14 or 15. and the reason the reason is um well first i have amazing parents who who supported me playing music right right off of uh right off of the bat but um i i signed a record contract when i was about 16 or 17 years old so i i was just about to get my first like normal job and then um that record contract came through so i i have never had to have a normal job yet so thankfully and also i'm super embarrassed to say that [Laughter] there's a million people on twitter seething right now if your job is a day job if anybody's been listening i mean you get up you work every day hard that's true it's hard work that's for sure hard work so you shouldn't be embarrassed uh i [Music] i'm gonna give mine a tie between my lawn mowing because i have allergies and i'd like break out in hives and get bloodshot eyes every day because of my lawn mowing job that was rough and then my cd cleaning job in high school i worked for my uncle's production company and i would clean like hundreds or thousands of cds a day the returns oh wow of these production cds and i just sit there at a desk and like scrub these cds clean those were my that's awesome least favorite jobs i didn't have many though i didn't have many jobs either i got into music pretty quickly but but it is how about you mike yeah how about you what what's some early day jobs for you uh well i think we're about to be really three hated people um because when i was in high school i started a computer consulting business which i loved because i'm a technology person at the deepest level of my hearts and so i've always worked in pretty great jobs designing and deploying technology solutions at scale nice and that led directly into uh being a you know the current thing i do by day which is you know being a cto for an ad agency and um i've never really had a awful day job ever i think now is the time for all of us to get some really bad day jobs [Laughter] we owe it to the people's trust so we just we need to pay in a little bit is there anything you're working on ryan that you'd like to tell our listeners about oh yeah um so i just finished my first film score ever um like literally actually about 10 minutes before you guys called i just put the last the last couple couple notes down on it congratulations thank you so much it's called many beautiful things it's a documentary about um this this uh late eighteen hundreds painter named elias trotter and she's a water colorist um and it's just this really really beautiful film by my friend laura waters hinson and so i got to score all the music which is the first time i've done like a feature a feature film so that was really really fun um and then at the same time i'm working on atlas year two so i atlas is like this ongoing project that i started um about a year and a half ago and um so this is year two of that project and it's basically the kind of the thread that i put all of my sleeping last music on lately and it's like this thematic series of music and so um that starts this spring and it'll be 24 new songs so i'm really excited about that that's that's the thing that i'm most looking forward to right now it'll be uh it'll be really fun to to kind of get back into into all of those writer block moments that we just talked about wow and how's how's it been being a dad with all this stuff that you're trying to do oh my gosh it is the greatest thing ever like it it it poses no like conflict with my work day because i feel like i guess the only thing it really is like a struggle i i will hear you know because i work i work from home um i have a studio here and so i'll hear lily our little girl um like laughing or playing upstairs and i like that that's when it gets really hard to sit there staring at a computer screen waiting for music to happen because you're like oh man i'm gonna just go upstairs and play with her because that sounds way more fun right now so but being a dad has been i mean it's so cliche to say but it is such a a beautiful experience it's i don't know i've never i knew i've been looking forward to being a dad since i was a very little kid so i i have been so pumped about it but actually getting to be a dad is so much more amazing than i even thought so it's been been a huge gift that's awesome wait until she's two and she comes knocking on your door daddy that can't even imagine that's when i had to uh decide to get a studio away from the house because i can't just like keep saying no she's like irresistible you know and i have to get something done yeah so it gets it gets difficult i can i can see that being a challenge for sure this is so much cute and i can't turn down cute i mean come on this is so much so much cute writing songs in your underwear is not that cute so when some little little amazing person you know walks walks in here well our lily is only five months old so she's not walking yet but um but yeah i can't i can't imagine uh having to work when when you're when your little ones are just hanging out too much fun uh mike you got anything else before i land the plane i don't think so thank you ryan that's uh great i'm gonna i'm inspired to get back to my chair and uh right i'm excited to hear what you write man i'm i'm excited to hear hear a new gunga record thanks man likewise and mike we're excited for song number three yeah we're all waiting for song number three i mean i think i'm gonna do song number three with the goal of uh creating equality for all mankind so we'll see how that goes well there you go that's what i was i mean i was thinking it's gonna have to be that big well guys thanks for listening to another episode of the liturgist podcast we're going to have some links on the show notes to things we've discussed today at the liturgist.com slash podcast we'll have the war of art and we'll have the artist's way we'll also have michael's wonderful book along with a link to where you can get a hold of atlas year two now i've noticed that the comments we get per episode have dropped a lot even as our listenership has grown since michael and i literally never ever participate in the comment section but you can go there and get resources about the show you can also interact with us on facebook.com the liturgists and we do interact there a bit more frequently and we're on twitter all the time at the liturgists uh thank you for growing this show so much listen your ratings on itunes really really help the program grow and uh it's you guys who are creating a fantastic space for people who are trying to explore new ideas about god through the lenses of science art and faith so thank you for making this program a success and thanks for listening i'm science mike i'm michael gunger and i'm ryan o'neal thanks for listening [Music] everybody