The Crazybrave Songwriter: A Spiritual Guide to Creative Songwriting

by Lisa M. Arreguin Narrated by Lisa M. Arreguin

Overview

Find Your Song. Fall in Love with Your Creative Journey. Discover a Piece of Your Heart.

Are you a songwriter who feels frustrated? Do you have unfinished masterpieces sitting in a drawer somewhere? Do you feel stuck, confused and paralyzed in the process? Do you have feelings of inadequacy, comparing yourself to other great songwriters out there?

Then you've picked up The Crazybrave Songwriter just in time. In Lisa M. Arreguin's breakthrough guide on the craft of songwriting, she will show you a way out of your creative malaise by helping to clarify, build, and deliver your musical message in every song you write. 

This book is for the Crazybrave songwriter who:

• Is just beginning and wants to challenge themselves to achieve something beautiful, creative, and new in their lives
• Is unsure about how to craft a great song and needs some real working tools to support their efforts
• Wants to write songs for the world to hear, despite what others may think
• Is searching for creative authenticity in the music they write, wanting to feel the love of music again
• Might be frightened to move forward, but knows that they must honor the nagging pressure they feel in their gut that says, “Do it!”

No matter where you are on the songwriter's journey, this book will inspire you to trust in the unfolding of your own creative spiritual process. Crafting a song is not about the notes on a piece of sheet music, a flurry of melodic lines on your instrument, or the accolades you might receive from adoring fans-although these have their place. This book is about Crazybrave courage and challenging yourself to move ahead on a sacred path of self-discovery, using the powerful creative medium of songwriting. Welcome to the journey. 

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173797384
Publisher:	Balboa Press/Hay House
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Crazybrave Step #1

Spark
The Intro: Whispers of Inspiration

The minute I start to play those first notes [of "Friends in Low Places"], the crowd goes nuts.

— Garth Brooks

Music is such a powerful thing that even a short, recognizable intro from a song we loved many years ago has the capability to instantly change our mood and connect us to a past relationship or a memory.

First impressions are everything. Here's how to make yours powerful too.

Elements

• Typically, the intro does not have lyrical content.

• It uses any combination of musical cues such as rhythm, melody, and harmony to communicate a mood and texture.

• It should create a quick flow of musical and emotional anticipation as it pulls the listener into a brand-new experience.

• Keep it short! No more than two to four measures, and no more than fourteen seconds for pop usage.

• If you get stuck here, try pulling musical or lyrical elements from the chorus or verse once you have them written.

The Song That Showed Up before the People Did

Can't start a fire without a spark. — Bruce Springsteen

Every song has a beginning.

It was one of those hot summer afternoons in Southern California when I pulled up to my bank's drive-through ATM. As I waited my turn behind two other cars, a strong, beautiful melody popped into my head. Working on original music was a regular activity for me, and on any given day, it was quite normal to have a number of melodies and lyrics dancing around in my consciousness. I was on a mission. For the past year, I had been working hard on crafting songs for my first album, and I had strong deadlines to meet and good money I had spent on this lifelong dream of making an album of original material. I am like most songwriters, spending days and months beating away at combinations of melodies and piecing together strings of thoughts that, in the final analysis, will hopefully make sense to someone other than me.

Upon pulling up to the ATM, I began to automatically put words to this new, haunting melody. "It won't be long till I'm gone," I sang out loud as I put my bank card in the slot. "Turn the water into wine, say my name inside the forest, deliver me a sign."

That's weird, I thought. A song about suicide?

Despite the odd subject matter, I immediately recognized that to have melody and lyric flow so effortlessly was highly unusual. I repeatedly hummed this new idea so that I wouldn't forget the bones of the song, and then pulled into a parking space to write down the words that so quickly flowed.

For the next month or so, the suicide song would not leave me alone. It was stuck on repeat in my head while I was shopping in the grocery store, while I was doing the laundry, and particularly while I was driving in the car. When songs want to be worked on, they can be annoying, but in a good way — like a two-year-old kid pulling at your shirttails and asking for more candy every five minutes. I knew I didn't want a song about suicide on my album, and so I chalked up the songwriting annoyance as another example of my crazy brain working overtime — that is, until the unbelievable happened.

"I got a call today from a screenwriter," my music producer said one day while we were finishing up a session.

I was intrigued. "Really? What about?"

"They have just finished editing a short movie and are looking for some music. They are coming by today because they're in a hurry to finish the project."

"I would love to be there, if that's okay," I said.

Little did my producer know that I adore movies. In fact, out of sheer passion for the subject, I had taken screenwriting classes at UCLA and read a bunch of books on the craft. I even had several unfinished screenplays sitting on my bookshelf at home.

Several hours later, when the director and screenwriter/actress for the film showed up, quick niceties were exchanged, and we got down to business pretty quickly. They popped the movie into the player, and we sat back to watch.

The first image on screen was the close-up of a lit candle. From there, the camera began to slowly pan around a disheveled bedroom, and eventually it landed on the image of a girl lying in bed, pouring water into a cup, and taking a handful of pills.

"The first thing we need is a song over this scene," the director said. "She's committing suicide."

After a long pause, I started laughing. Silence fell over the room, and I got the feeling that they were trying to size up the emotional stability of this crazy person they had just met who, for some reason, was laughing at the idea of a person committing suicide.

"I already wrote the song for this," I managed to say through my chuckles.

I couldn't help but feel weirdly happy, and I must have smiled like the Cheshire cat for the rest of the meeting.

When they left, my producer and I had a quick huddle about the opportunity.

"They don't have any money for the use of our music, and I'm not sure I want to do the job without being paid," my producer began.

"But you don't understand. I wrote the song before the people showed up. How is that possible? Don't you think that's remarkable, maybe even miraculous?"

Although he wasn't impressed with my little miracle story, we decided to record the song anyway. At 1:00 a.m. the next day, we were recording the song in his studio with just piano and vocal. Exhausted from our busy lives and dreading the into-the-wee-hours-of-the-morning recording session, we joked that it was a good thing this song was about suicide because I sounded half-dead while singing it.

That little piece of music fit over the opening scene like a glove. Even the lyric "turn the water into wine" landed exactly over the moment when the character poured the water into the cup before she swallowed a handful of pills. The music didn't have to be edited one bit. It played cleanly over the images, as if the song had been written especially for the scene — which, of course, it had. The movie editor called the next day to thank us personally, wondering how we had managed to crank out such a perfect song so quickly.

The song, entitled "It Won't Be Long," went on to play in the short film Details on several cable channels, and it had other multiple placements on TV and film. Over time, that song went on to earn a nice amount of royalties.

Years later, as I reflect on this story, I am still astonished at how it happened. How did these events collide to create a back-to-back series of synchronistic events? How did I hear a new melody, almost in its entirety, before it was needed for a specific purpose? How was I able to pluck out of thin air a song designed for a movie I had never seen?

The short answer is, drum roll please, love.

Net Love

And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

— Paul McCartney

Imagine that a net surrounds the world — not a virtual Internet, but a spiritual one. Imagine that this net is layered over billions and trillions of other nets that crisscross the atmosphere, stretching from the earth to the heavens.

This universal net is comprised of a countless registry of thoughts, feelings, and experiences that have been generated by everyone in the world since the beginning of time. This accumulated information, formed for our benefit and usage, is constantly collected, sorted, multiplied, sifted, and organized in the most efficient card catalog in the biggest library ever created.

The number one governing principle of the net is love with capitals: LOVE. Spiritual characteristics of unconditional love, like kindness, patience, sacredness, caring, empathy, sympathy, tenderness, healing, joy, and oneness, are built into the net. The net's primary function is to spread and connect love everywhere, which you can imagine is a fairly large job. It is busy attending to its job twenty-four seven in a giant, reciprocal turntable of net love, responding to conscious and unconscious prayers.

All desires, dreams, and wishes are imprinted into net love, and when we send up a request, it listens and responds. Connecting with the wisdom of the net is instinctual, fairly simple, and natural for all human beings.

How the net connects to us, however, is a very interesting question. The net has access to every physical thing, and its loving job is to respond to our requests. It can use anything in the world to send us an answer. It can use a friend, an enemy, a beloved song, a scene from a movie, a televangelist talking on TV in the middle of the night, or the synchronicity of a beautiful pink rose given to you by someone who didn't know that your grandma, who'd just passed away, loved pink roses.

The concept of net love is now a matter of deepening scientific study in the field of quantum physics, and it gives us a glimpse into understanding synchronistic events, oneness, time travel, and miracles. Just as scientists eventually proved the nature of gravity (despite the fact that man had long ago figured out there is some sort of force keeping us glued to the ground), quantum physics is now offering explainable theories for unexplainable human phenomena through the observation of tiny atoms and subatomic particles. What scientists have begun to understand is what people have known all along: the power of net love is built into our human DNA, connecting everything to everywhere, all the time.

The strength and power of the net is nothing to shake a stick at, and it's not wise to underestimate the grand power of net love. Music functions as a powerful communication tool used by net love to fulfill global spiritual requests, both individually and collectively. As a function of net love, music is used as a device for the purposes of connection, communication, and healing across the planet.

Over many centuries, we have assigned names to net love by calling it God, the Creator, El Shaddai, the Great Comforter, the Holy Spirit, higher consciousness, the universe, and the gods of old and new. By some accounts, there are over nine hundred names for God. As far as the net is concerned, it doesn't really matter whether you believe in the teachings of the church or have never stepped foot into a religious temple. The properties of net love work on your behalf regardless, and they work simply because you are deeply loved, precious, and uniquely important to the future of our collective human experience.

And here's the kicker, the truly unbelievable thing ...

With all its power and infinite knowledge, net love cannot create music without us. It needs us — you and me — to participate in this global creative process. It needs the cooperation of capable songwriters, musicians, composers, and singers who have the willingness to send up a prayer, the eagerness to receive a spark of inspiration, and the courage to commit to the process of translating that spark into a final, completed, finished song.

There is an unspoken agreement among most songwriters, an acknowledgment in our songwriting spirits, that net love is the real answer to most everything. We say it in a million ways through all the songs we write, especially when we are courageous enough to share our vulnerability so that others might learn from our mistakes. Through our work, we remind people all over the world that our human hearts are fragile, but our spirits are strong. Through our songs, we encourage others to love themselves more, surrender to good things, and be happy. As we search for love in ourselves, and as we build messages in our music, it's no wonder that love ranks as one of the most repeated themes addressed by songwriters since the beginning of time.

Songwriters have a job to do. First, we have to trust that net love knows what it is doing, even when we are not sure. After all, this is the force that created the oceans and the Grand Canyon and a yellow butterfly, so second-guessing its creative strength is counterintuitive.

Second, we have to strive to believe deep in our hearts that the spark of musical insight might be so important that it will benefit a higher calling of connection for ourselves and for other people we might never meet. Although we choose to stand firm in our belief of this idea, we must also embrace the mystery of not knowing the outcome because it is beyond our full comprehension.

Third, we have to have a sense of trust that our impulse to write is important enough to keep going, despite frustration and uncertainty in the process.

Armed with the knowledge that net love is working on our behalf in small and large ways, it becomes easier to take the first step, and then the second, and then the third as we move toward our dreams.

First Love

In the night, there's a voice, if you listen. He sweetly says, "Come back to your first love." — Kirk Franklin

I find that it is important to be clear about your song request. Clarity of intention ensures that you have authentic focus from beginning to end. The process of songwriting, despite your reason for doing it, will stretch and challenge you in every way. If you are not clear about the core reason for putting out the effort in the first place, the wind can fall out of your sails before you leave the shore. It is important to connect to your first love over and over again, asking yourself why music is so important to you and why you want to write that song.

Why do you have the spark in your belly and the impulse to create a new song?

You might want to write songs because it gets you out of the house on Wednesday nights, or you might want to write because you want to become a famous singer-songwriter one day. The number of variations and possibilities are infinite depending on your personal history, perspective, and desire.

Here are some reasons why you might want to write music.

For Personal Growth

I want to write because it feels natural to me.
For Professional Success

I want to write to make more money doing what I love.
Before you begin the journey of songwriting, become aware of your intention, your heart's desire, and the musical dreams bubbling inside of you. Most of us have been taught that prayer is a religious practice used for communication with God. We are told that if we close our eyes, place our palms together, drop down to our knees, and look up for an answer, God will help to heal our hearts. But a prayer of intention can also be a quieter, more yearning reflection about something deeply important and meaningful to us, and sometimes there are no words to express its depth or scope of meaning. Prayer requests, whether overt or covert, automatically send a vibrational impulse away from our bodies to someplace else. The law of the universe is immediately prompted to fill our desires and answer our requests. What we send out comes back to us in ways that speak volumes about how much the universe is in love with us.

The old saying "Be careful what you ask for 'cause you just might get it" is a very real concept when big dreams are in play. Pray for your dreams and ask for the next turn on the road as you go. Send up a prayer frequently, hold steady to your first love and gently put your foot to the pedal as you begin the ride.

It's a Lot Like a Tuna Sandwich

You're the meaning in my life. You're the inspiration. — Chicago

In the beginning stages of writing a song, when you have a spark of an idea, there is no real way to tell whether your idea is a good one or a bad one. Sometimes you have the twinkling of an idea that you think might be workable, but for the most part, the only thing you can tell is how it feels in your gut — its emotional strength and potential expansion.

It's a lot like a tuna sandwich. Let's imagine that it's lunchtime at work, and for days now you've been craving a tuna sandwich from your favorite deli down the street. Your feeling about having that specific delicious tuna sandwich is fairly strong, but perhaps not overwhelmingly so.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "The Crazybrave Songwriter"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Lisa M. Arreguin.
Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Videos