Oh man, oh man. Man alive! It is time for another blog post.
The day I am writing this is 3 days following the challenge’s grand finish. I am so happy with how it went and the songs are now all available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, all of the popular music services… The links are at the bottom of this post but read it first (that’s why you’re hear right).
Day 25
Song 9 meant I could sense the finish line was near but not so near that I could start getting excited and sprint along to get the medal. When you are racing in running there’s a term coined ‘finish line syndrome’ which is essentially where your brain see’s or senses the end and thinks that you have already reached it, meaning you start giving up before you’ve actually reached it. There’s plenty of famous videos of people collapsing metres from the line, ‘finish line syndrome’ is exactly what is taking place.
Well on day 25, I woke up with finish line syndrome. I felt unenthusiastic about songwriting and I certainly didn’t feel up to talking to Instagram and keeping everyone updated. Luckily for me, I know exactly what to do in these situations. There’s plenty of lessons to be learned from sports and endurance events, they apply the same way in real life.
Day 25 I decided to take a back step, I posted that I wouldn’t be on the screen and that I needed to take some ‘inspiration’ time. Laura and I spent the day walking in nature and I didn’t think about writing once.
Day 26
The problem with having a day off was that on Day 26 we had plans with family. This meant not a lot of time to put into writing. Though, as said before, I’ve done this before I know how to handle it. Instead of panicking and getting stressed, I kept cool and simply talked about it with them.
We had an incredible BBQ, we even got the guitar out, but I made sure that I didn’t let it get to me that I was leaving myself just one day to write, record and release the song. In fact, I got a little excited – this is exactly what this type of challenge is for. In order to produce great work, sometimes you need to have a bit of pressure. A strange energy came over me as if to say, ‘if I wait until tomorrow, then I will produce a better song than if I was to stress and try and squeeze one out over 2 days’. I took it as a good sign.
Day 27
Now the challenge had really started, the clock was ticking and I was just hours away from needing to release a song to the world. A song that, the morning of day 27, didn’t even exist.
There was only one thing I knew to do. A few years ago I was listening to a podcast with a musician, he said ‘If you can play the blues, you can do anything’. I loved the quote and it’s always stuck with me. I’m not sure if I even believe it, to a play a blues it’s actually pretty simple and something you’re usually taught quite early on (I think it might even be in the primary school curriculum). But it is something I’ve always said to students when I’m teaching guitar.
I love the quote and it seemed very appropriate for the moment. If I can write a song and release it in one day, then I can do anything. And like that, I had a hook. The blues is what I had to write, so I did just that. I wrote a blues song. Within a few hours, it was written, recorded and out in the open for everyone to hear.
It’s a great song and nothing like I’ve ever written before, let alone compared to the songs in this challenge. This left me with just song number 10 to go, which I will write about in the next blog post.
I present to you “Play the Blues”…
Links to the whole album:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/05A419SFtaiDDp9lauQIIM
Apple Music:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/id1525570272
iTunes (UK):
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/id1525570272?app=itunes
All the love.
BG
benedict. 