We’re skipping the prompt this week because this Sunday is the start of the next Fearless Challenge. The challenge of the Fearless Challenge is to write seven songs in seven days. Writing seven songs in seven days can sound pretty intimidating, especially if you’ve never done it before. That’s ok. Not everyone who takes part in the challenge does it with the intention of writing seven songs. Some just want to write one or two. The Fearless Challenge is here to give yourself an opportunity to write songs, if you write seven that’s great, but it’s also great if you write just one.
Years ago, I first decided to write seven songs in seven days because I was frustrated by not writing any songs. It had been years since I’d written a song. I was also about to return to The Rocky Mountain Song School. I didn’t want to show up to the Song School again without any new songs.
I didn’t care if the songs were good.
I just cared if the songs were done.
Even “done” was negotiable. Done for me was, done enough so I could come back to the song and work on it later. Anne Lamott might call that a Shitty First Draft. Leonard Cohen might call it a few blackened pages. If you’re a frustrated writer like I was, deciding it’s enough to just show up and write a shitty song or two could be exactly the thing to help you feel better about songwriting again. One or two songs could be enough. Deciding what is enough is important.
Community and support is important too. In the Fearless Challenge, the songwriters who are doing the challenge with you will be your support system and community. You may think you’ve written a trash song, they’ll tell you the part of it that song that are working. (Often, I’m not aware of any working parts in my songs). You’ll get the chance to see what’s working in other people’s songs too. They’ll be so grateful your there to give them new perspectives on their songs.
The challenge isn’t for everyone, but if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that it could be for you. Hope to see this Sunday, the 22nd on the Fearless Challenge’s Facebook Group.
If you have any questions, check out this FAQ about the challenge.
Enjoy!
The Musical Idea:
Here’s a page I worked up this week. It’s a map of the chords in BEAD Guides Chord Flow. (I skipped the flat and sharp chords for this sheet to keep it simple). The first row is major chords in BEAD GCF order. The second row is minor chords. The third is (dominant) 7s. Eventually this will all be part of my book.
Here’s a downloadable pdf of the worksheet above:
timmyr.com 