Last Night I attended the Songwriter/Composer Series featuring Enrique Gonzalez Müller & Matt Nathanson, which was put on by the awesome people of the Recording Academy San Francisco Chapter.
It was inspiring and the energy of the evening was great! Enrique has a great sense of humor that came out a lot in his presentation and made it very fun. He took us through the process of listening to a demo from artists/bands that considered their song “done” and then showed us the end result after he produced it. I believe as a producer he served the songs well and kept them unique to each band/artist, which was refreshing.
Matt Nathanson talked about the “artist side” of things and shared quite a bit about what he has learned in his career so far and how he hopes to grow as an artist. It was all very motivating and tugged at my heart strings.
One thing that really rang through for me was Nathanson’s message to be the “best you”, which I believe is a reoccurring major theme for all of us. Now who knows if Nathanson has been hanging around Tony Robbins lately (I am actually a fan of his) or if he is just awakening to a lot of introspection himself, the message is a universal one. To some people, this might seem like a great big “duh”, however, I believe it is one that needs to be repeated over and over. We live in a world where we are constantly told by outside sources who we should be and what we should be and it so easy to feel unworthy if we do not measure up to the “they say” standards.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to what music means to each person individually. (Both the artist and the listener.) Is music a way you heal yourself or a way you avoid yourself? Is music a way for you to get emotions up and out that need to be shared? Do you get to be the real you or the imagined you through music? This all is a choice we make as music creators and music listeners and we will connect to what we create and/or listen to based off of where we are at in our lives, so each song we choose to have in our lives, has it’s own special journey.
Nathanson considers himself the “King of Revisions” and expressed how a lot of artists can get stuck in the “revision” trap. I related to this on many levels because I believe a song is “done” when you let it be “done. There is always a different way you can rearrange and change a song. That is why your first instincts are the way to go and Nathanson stressed that as well and even shared he needs to take his own advice when it comes to that subject.
Overall, it was a great evening filled with useful information and I’m assuming ignited fires in people’s hearts. (It did mine…) The message of “just do your thing and they will come” was awesome, but did not leave out the fact that it still takes a ton of work to find the “they” in the “will come”. Now, more than ever we have access to what us artists would consider “our people” and I don’t know about anyone else, but I am excited! Let’s Rock and Write!
*Much love and musical cartwheels*
~Starr
