Cohorts in Collaboration

I have been writing songs for myself and for various bands for over 30 years now. It all started with the rock band I was in during my high school days. And, it still continues today. Over the years, I've been fortunate enough to be a part of bands whose musical styles varied greatly: mainstream rock, metal, country, bluegrass, folk, blues, americana, and even jazz. As a song writer and musician, these collaborative song writing efforts have been some of my most rewarding experiences. So, no matter how much you enjoy writing on your own, and no matter how insecure you feel about opening up your "process" to an outsider, I encourage you to consider collaborative writing, too.

One of the most beneficial rewards of collaborative writing is the exposure to other creative ideas. I learn so much when I write with other musicians. It's a typical situation during the song writing process to be somewhere in the middle of a song saying to yourself "Okay, now what should I do?" With more than one brain actively working on this, you're likely to get lots of good ideas that you would never have thought about on your own. This exposure is great for the song writer to broaden their horizons. Nothing adds creativity to your song writing like observing others right there next to you as they engage in the song writing process as well. It's not only good for the song that you're working on collaboratively, it will also fuel your creative fires later on when you are writing alone, too.

There are other benefits as well. Your song writing partners will also very likely introduce you to different styles. Sometimes it'll be just a slightly different style. But, other times it will be a drastically different style for you. I find such moments very liberating, and often this new stylistic approach shows up in the writing I do alone as well. Too often, song writers get stuck in the same old style, writing songs that sound very similar to one another. Artists who are under contract to a record label have to do this for marketing reasons. But if you're not signed (yet), you don't have this restriction! You should embrace this freedom and opportunity to learn and incorporate new stylistic elements into your songs. So don't be rigid and dogmatic when you approach song writing with someone else. Don't force a certain style just because it's what you are most the comfortable with. Allow yourself to venture into new musical territory. Remember, it's a "collaborative" effort, meaning it is give and take. Don't approach this as a necessary evil of having to abandon some of your ideas due to a "compromise." Leave your ego at home and approach your partner's ideas with an eagerness to learn and expand your own musical horizons.

Looking back over all of my collaborative experiences, each has contributed something to my writing style that is still audible in my work today. There's something I take away that influences and improves my own work. I cringe to think of the song writing ruts I'd still be in if I had not been open to new ideas, new ways of thinking, new ways of feeling, and news ways to express those feelings musically.

But there is another benefit to collaborative writing that actually extends beyond song writing. When I look back at my own collaborations over the decades, I realize that these turned into some of my strongest friendships as well. I've spent a good bit of time analyzing this aspect of collaboration, and it goes beyond just being musicians with a common goal. I've been in a lot of bands, with a lot of corresponding musicians in those bands. But when I look back and evaluate my friendships with all of those musicians, the bonds that I developed with the musicians that I wrote songs with, are much stronger and longer-lasting than the bonds with the musicians who I simply performed with. But when you take into context what "music" and "song" really are, i.e. the expression of feeling, then this makes total sense. Because when you sit down with another human to create a piece of music that combines elements of what you both are thinking and feeling, the development of an emotional bond is inevitable. And if this collaboration is a productive one, with a lot of common ground, and lot of mutual understanding, and mutual expression, then the development of a strong friendship is just natural as well.

Bands come and go. Even though bands break up and musicians go their separate ways, strong friendships last forever. When I take inventory of the musicians I've played with over the years, I realize I've lost touch with most of them. But those musicians that I collaborated with in song writing, my cohorts in collaboration, well these folks have been my closest friends and have remained so, even years after those bands have ceased to exist. As a matter of fact, that same group of folks, my cohorts in collaboration, these are the same folks from whom I'm most likely to get a call or an email suggesting we write some more tunes together. So, the collaborative writing doesn't stop because the bands do.

I suspect that as long as I am alive, I'll continually get together with those folks who are my cohorts in collaboration. I also suspect that year after year, I'll add more folks into this inner circle, too. And I know that in doing so, I'll continue to expand my abilities as a song writer, but more importantly, I'll be expanding my circle of best friends.

So I encourage you to approach collaborative song writing, not with apprehension and insecurities, but with the same eagerness and enthusiasm that you'd have when spending time with one of your best friends. Because chances are, your new song writing partner soon will be.

Copyright ©2009 W.A. Blevins