Pen to Performance

My son once said to me after I informed him that I am going to be a full-time songwriter, why? It’s just a hobby. After composing myself and informing him that there is a bit more to it than throwing some golf clubs in the car and thrashing around the course for a few hours each week. Or going up into the attic leafing through an old stamp collection. Being a songwriter, whether you sell or release a single song, is a full-time mind pursuit. It is with you every waking hour. Even when you wake, songs have filled your sub-conscious and demand your attention.

Still how many of us still go to a party and get introduced to someone and never let on that the most fitting description of what we do is songwriting. We stumble and stammer talk about all the paid professions we do but struggle to mention that the biggest part of our life is creating songs. It took me until I was mid-40s to say to people I’m a musician. Then inevitably the question is asked do you make a living out of that? Even my own family, who have known I have been a songwriting since my early teens, rarely ask me about it. They will always enquire about whatever paid work I was undertaking, the weather, anything except the one thing that got me out of bed in the morning. Admittedly that has changed a little since I had no other real profession, but still it isn’t really spoken about much.

My journey through songwriting has always had a strong resolve to get my songs out there. I certainly don’t want to go to the great beyond, with hundreds of songs locked inside me.

Yes, I could just sing them in my phone, put the on a hard drive and hope that someone may hear them. But when I wrote a song, I usually could hear how the finished production could sound.

So, I started the journey of not only writing songs, but learning how to arrange, produce, market, and release them. In this day and age, releasing songs via streaming sites, give your songs every opportunity to be not only heard, but a place they can live and breathe, long after we don’t.

It has taken the best part of 10 years to able to do this at a level that my songs can be played in the same ballpark as any song you would hear on the radio or on streaming sites.

Everyone has a different goal with their songs. But the one thing that is constant, whether you are aiming for fame in Nashville, or getting your songs forwarded to established artists to record. Your songs deserve to be presented in the best possible light. That is not to say if your goal is not to embellish them too much or you don’t really have huge expectation of them, that you should just bash them out in any shape or form. You still need to be able to present them in a clear, clean, and presentable fashion. Even for yourself to appreciate them.

I have created this pathway, Pen to Performance, to allow you to get your songs out there, wherever that destination you are aiming for may be.

Next time you get introduced to somebody, look them in the eye and say “I’m a songwriter, look me up, I have an album on Spotify”

There are so many steps on the journey from pen to performance and for most people, myself included, this is a huge learning curve. I have spent decades honing my craft and countless hours uploading courses on sound engineering, song writing blogs, YouTube tuitorials and workshops. It is a minefield out there. This pathway will take out all the excess baggage, cost and time to give you a clear pathway to release your songs.

I am looking forward to sharing my journey and will be right by your side, to enable you to gain from my experience and get your music out into the world without the trial and error and time I have experienced.

 

Ian W. Beer