Welcome to MMM!

Hello and welcome to my first ever blog. I've considered writing one before, but this is the first time it's actually got past the consideration stage. I've tended to avoid blogging until now, mainly because a lot of blogs I read are self-indulgent and fairly uninteresting. The only thing I've done recently that might be of any interest to others was a trip around South-East Asia, and I knew there was no point doing a blog for that, as I'd never keep it updated.

So why start now, you may ask. Well, I think most people tend to begin writing a blog following a major change in their life. Maybe they've had their first child, and they want to share their experiences. Or maybe it's one of the thousands of travel blogs, where people decide that they want to abandon their comfortable 9-5 job to experience new cultures and broaden their horizons.

For me, I feel like I'm at a turning point in my life. At least, I hope I am. For those of you who've known me since I was a young'un, you'll know that I've always been involved with music. Ever since I first plonked a couple of notes on the old out-of-tune family piano, or realised that I could make a guitar sound reasonably tuneful, I knew that music would always be a part of my life. And it has, to some extent, but never really to the extent that I would have liked.

As of today, hopefully that will change. Today I enrolled onto a Masters course in Songwriting; indeed it's the "world's first and only Masters degree in Songwriting", according to the online blurb. It's aimed at people like me (I think), who know they have the potential to succeed, and really want to dedicate themselves to giving it their best shot.

I am like so many other musicians. I can play the guitar, piano and perform to a reasonable standard. I can write what I consider to be decent enough songs that people seem to like and enjoy, but yet I find myself playing the same old sets in same old dingy little venues. It hardly inspires and gets the creative juices flowing. I hear songs on the radio and see musicians on the tv and think "I could do better than that!", and friends and family are always saying "well if such-and-such can make a number one record, then I'm sure you can!".

I'm guess I'm stuck in a musical rut. I remember when I was a kid, I used to write songs every day. Admittedly most of them would be complete nonsense; my old school mates will remember a tape that went around called "Tractor yn dod" - Welsh for "Tractor is coming". Many of the songs were written in Welsh. I'll never forget the eternal lyrics "Tractor yn dod, tractor yn dod, mami dadi mami dadi tractor yn dod". Or the track on there which was an Oasis song, but backwards. I wrote all the lyrics out, then learnt to play and sing it backwards. I was an odd child (see pic!).

Anyway, my point is that somewhere along the line, I guess I lost focus of why I was writing music. I'm an incredibly self-critical person. This can be a good trait, but not to the point where you let it stifle your creativity completely. If you're always worrying about the credibility of your lyrics, or the technical quality of your instrumentation, you'll probably end up writing something pretentious and inaccessible. The best songs I've written are the simple ones that come together in an hour, where everything just clicks into place. At the end of the day, music is something that you write for your own enjoyment; if you don't enjoy what you do, chances are others won't either. Hopefully this course will help me rediscover what I'm good at, and help me focus on what I really want to do. My music will be criticised every week, which is nerve-racking, but it's exactly what I need.

I realise that at the start of this blog I complained about self-indulgent ramblings. I'm only one post in and already it's headed that way. For that I apologise!

So anyway, today I registered at the University and met the other students who are beginning their songwriting journeys. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was pretty much a 50/50 male/female split, and there was people there of all ages. There's only 28 of us, but they range from twenty-somethings like me, eager to advance their craft, to fifty-somethings who have toured with large bands and had commercial success, but want to further their own songwriting careers. A really interesting, diverse and enthusiastic group of people, and I'm fascinated to hear the music that they'll be coming up with.

Already we have our first assignment. We have the weekend to prepare a song, which we'll present to our newly-assigned groups on Monday. Daunting, but a great way to dive in at the deep end.

That brings me on to the main point of this blog. It's not all going to be about me (thank god, I hear you say). As well as keeping track of my progress, I'm also going to be talking about the other musicians, and share my thoughts and views about all the music that is being created. I'm also hopefully going to post all my musical ideas on here, so that as well as my music being critiqued by my peers, I can put it out to a wider audience. The more viewpoints, the better!

Ok, I'm going to leave it there for now. Thanks for reading, and please leave a comment if you have anything to say. Over and out.

Pat