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Welcome to the Aid is English podcast.
My name is Jack and I'm here with my co -host, Sochal.
And today we are talking about writing music or composing music.
That's a better collocation, right?
Compose music. um social i know you're a songwriter and you have a great voice because i've heard your uh recordings on on facebook um yeah and you sing in spanish and english yeah mostly spanish right usually um i would say both but yeah a lot of my material is in spanish i would say that's true yeah
it's because spanish is a more it's a nicer sounding language more musical language you know what I mean I would say it's more romantic and there's like yeah it's like the vocabulary is so colorful choogy is something that gen z like we say and it's like it's just the same as tacky or cringe basically
okay all right if I use the word choogy and it will be choogy yeah if you start using the word choogy it'll become choogy by default so right um okay so what I guess I came up with the topic today because um i i had never written a song in my entire life um but i've been playing the guitar for 30 years
but but not not consecutively you know i would pick it up from time to time play it for 10 minutes put it down uh since i was 19 years old um and there i went 10 years without playing because my but when my daughter was young there just wasn't any time to go in my man cave and play my guitar um right
but uh i picked it up again and over uh during covid um i bought like this like uh kind of a travel guitar so that i could learn some scales like i've never been able to play um what we call high on the neck of the guitar where you know you play like the pentatonic scale and stuff like that um and and you
write solos and blues and things like that uh blues music that's a genre but I learned it um during COVID uh kind of and uh like passable and um so in August I was like tried to write my my first song and then I finished it and I wrote another song and another song and I just looked at my YouTube channel
I have 162 original songs that I've recorded, um, since August, which is too many.
Like it makes me look like a psychopath or something.
No, you should see how many songs I have.
Thousands of songs tried to write my, my first song, and then I finished it and I wrote another song and another song.
and i just looked at my youtube channel i have 162 original songs that i've recorded um since august which is too many like it makes me look like a psychopath or something no you should see how many songs i have thousands of songs recorded oh you do from here i mean i started writing songwriting when i
was about 16 okay okay so that's 12 years of songwriting now but i have thousands of songs so oh i don't feel so bad oh wow okay i thought my 162 was going to be like like boom check out that number and you're like i got thousands no but you have to think like i think it is impressive but but again i
have been songwriting for a long time since i was like 16 so i think because of that i just have thousands built up and one thing i don't know if you feel the same way but for me it's like not all of those songs are stars or saw the light of day or anything like that because not all of them are good
or not all of them are complete like sometimes i'll come up with a part of a song and then i can't figure out how to finish it or how to structure it um so yeah what's that next chord what's that missing chord you know that yeah or just like what's the the bridge like i have kind of the verse or the intro
i need the bridge and stuff like that i think it's what can make it difficult or the chorus you know yeah yeah yeah sometimes like for students out there like a normal song has like an intro sometimes there's no intro there's like a verse a pre -chorus chorus verse pre -chorus chorus bridge verse pre
-chorus chorus something like that right that's like kind of the the structure of a song there's like a song structure um which again is is just a general rule because you can break those rules all the time right you can rule rule because you can break those rules all the time right you don't need a pre
chorus you don't always need a bridge um i guess you always need a verse i mean i can't imagine a song that's only a chorus um i mean there are some that are pretty close to that some of this usually the even the most basic structure includes a verse a chorus and usually a second verse yeah yeah for sure
for sure um except the happy birthday song that's uh only a chorus right i think yeah pretty much um so i guess for me like um writing is has become very like therapeutic for me it's like um it's my my form of meditation or something um my my way of uh decompressing after like a long day or whatever
i just love to come home and like come up with a riff on my guitar come up with a drum track that i can use to play that with and i don't make my own drum tracks i just use like a preset you know just like a straight four you know so i can just keep the the rhythm and i'll add like a bass guitar and i'll
add i don't know like a keyboard or something like that you know you're building this wall of sound and uh and it's it's very exciting and sometimes it's like it's like a path of discovery because you don't know what like i don't know if this song is going to sound good until i record the vocals and then
you listen to it and you're like oh that's just average you know like that's not very special and then once in a while there's something that's just kind of um I don't know what what is that like when you know it's good or not not good necessarily but you know that it's it's better than your other stuff
you know how do you how do you how do you be maybe sadness maybe anger maybe happiness maybe love it can be a lot of different things but I feel like the the more material I have to pull from for that specific song I feel like the better that it comes out because you're more passionate kind of about the material
does that make sense it makes total sense i know you hate when people ask you that i meant am i making sense you know i hope you yeah no no that's okay i'm over the you know what i mean it's okay it's okay i've accepted it i've accepted that i'm wrong i'm wrong in that scenario i should never uh uh
hold a grudge or raise objections to uh people using you know what i mean so so how about you jack what do you think about your material i find it's way more well part of the problem here's the problem is like um i'm i i have to sing in this room and my wife's in the living room and she's too close
like there's so sometimes i feel like maybe in my music i my my vocals i'm not really like i'm not going to number 11 you what i mean i'm going to like eight or seven you know every progressive slot every parlay and prop bovada .lv gets you ready for every way you want to play spin to win hourly hot
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like full potential um and really let it rip and not feel self -conscious you know yeah that's a big thing because for me if there's someone else listening to me the entire time like it's more embarrassing because like what if you like really let out on your path to protect your privacy you think they
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When she's gone, I feel like I can sing to my full potential and really let it rip and not feel self -conscious, you know?
yeah that's a big thing because for me if there's someone else listening to me the entire time like it's more embarrassing because like what if you like really let out on your vocals and then you croak or like make a mistake or you fall flat and it's just embarrassing because you know someone's there
like listening it almost gives you like a touch of like performance anxiety um yeah i yeah i think it does exactly and it adds this any self -consciousness or yeah i just singing for me is, is like, um, is vulnerability, you know, it's a, it's a moment of vulnerability and nobody wants to be vulnerable.
You know, it's why we, when we're home alone, we still lock the door to the bathroom.
You know what I mean?
Like no sense, but it's just that feeling of vulnerability is, is we don't like it as human beings.
Some people don't. Right.
I think most people are at least somewhat uncomfortable with it especially as you get older and being vulnerable and raw has like a lot of drawbacks as you get older because it it gives you it like you ever go to karaoke and somebody just kind of joke joke sings like through the song yeah because they're
that's a form of protect self -protection right it's like oh i wasn't trying anyway you know right um and i hate that i'm like you go to karaoke you got to sing that song the best that you possibly can You have to totally commit to it a hundred percent.
And so that's the way I feel when I do my music.
Otherwise, I'm robbing myself, like, what's the point of the exercise of making the song if I'm not, if I'm just going to, you know, only go 50 % on the vocals, you know?
yeah there's actually sorry did i cut you off there no no i was gonna say there's a musician that i really um i haven't kept up with her work lately but i really really liked her even a few years back i would listen to her work a lot and her name is orla gartland and um she she did an interview i believe
where she talked about how um if the lyrics aren't uncomfortable for you like if they if they aren't so raw and real and like in that in your emotions and like in your truth and sincerity that it's not it's like not uncomfortable to like write it down and put it on a page and sing it like it's almost
not worth it because like that realness that rawness and that vulnerability like that's giving like your real human experience that other people can really relate to right right yeah i i totally i i would agree with that that's that she's a true artist you know and i would say we have another word for that an auteur you
know like almost above an artist you know like like a real like a real artist you know um and i'm i'm you know for me this is a hobby i do it for fun so you know sometimes i'll uh write some lyrics and i'll throw it into chat GPT to help them organize it a little bit.
Oh, cool. You know, rhyming words to help me out, you know, with a difficult passage or whatever.
So I don't know, you know, for me, like, it's just, I do agree with you though.
You have to commit like a hundred percent into what you're doing, you know, when you sing, you can't, you can't joke sing your way through it because people it's funny because when you're doing it live and somebody's listening to you record and you sing sincerely they feel embarrassed but when they
turn on the radio and the and the artists on the radio are singing super sincerely there it melts their hearts you know and it's like why in that situation is it okay to listen to sincere emotional music but when I do it it's you know cringy or whatever so I don't understand that dynamic yeah I think
it's yeah you know and she talks about that like it's like almost like if you're cringe if you cringe like that almost that's good like that that really says a lot about it's hard to be that vulnerable but I think that's when you hold back on that like you aren't delivering the relatability that people
go to music for, you know?
Yeah, that's right, that's right.
If you sing it just kind of meekly, meek means weakly, W -E -A -K, then people are going to, your music will be forgettable, you know?
There's no emotional substance behind the songs.
so anyway we've been going on for a while about this I think we could we're getting too deep in the weeds here with music writing but thank you for sharing that with me this was very thought -provoking talking to you about this so thank you I appreciate it, I felt like it was inspiring for me because I
actually haven't written music in a while that whole this whole year of 2024 you know after my grandmother died and my grandfather died music is usually something I turn to to process my grief or my sadness or my anger like a lot of emotions but I honestly just felt so fatigued and lost it was like
I wasn't even to the part of processing it musically you know and I really kind of uh walked away from music for a while and haven't really felt like a musician anymore and like talking about this you know it reminds me like you know that was one of my favorite parts of life was music and writing music
playing music listening to music and listening to others you know who are singer -songwriters and so yeah I appreciated this conversation it definitely gave me a lot to think about and kind of rediscovering that side of myself as well yeah yeah pick a dust off the old guitar and and uh yeah strum it
a few times yeah i had a dream a couple months ago and i was like playing uh piano in it and like um my brain was lighting up different colors in the dream and i was like super happy and i was like oh i gotta start playing music again you know that's an amazing image actually the metaphor because i
think that's exactly what happens i mean not literally but you know what I mean like parts of your brain that you don't usually access when you play music are stimulated your brain is actually yeah that's that's a great uh wow your dreams are way deeper than mine uh I uh I was hanging out with a monkey
and we were eating bananas uh that's cool that honestly sounds fun you know what I mean I wish I had dreams like that mine are only like very vivid and intense like that wasn't that was a happier one but sometimes I have nightmare dreams we should have you know that's an amazing image actually the metaphor because i
think that's exactly what happens i mean not literally but you know what i mean like parts of your brain that you don't usually access when you play music are stimulated your brain is actually yeah that's that's a great uh wow your dreams are way deeper than mine uh i uh i was hanging out with a monkey
and we were eating bananas that's cool that honestly sounds fun you know what i mean i wish had dreams like that mine are only it's like very vivid and intense like that wasn't that was a happier one but sometimes they have nightmare dreams we should have we should do an episode about that next as well
our weirdest dreams yeah our weirdest dreams yeah all right listeners well if you like this episode make sure to leave us a comment down below at a to z english podcast .com shoot us an email let us know how you feel about music are you a musician do you like music what is music like in your culture
what genres and artists do you enjoy shoot us an email at a to z english podcast at gmail .com you can always message us in the website and we chat groups and we will see you guys next time bye -bye Start your next California adventure behind the wheel of an exciting new Toyota Hybrid.
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