New Year's Resolutions

I've accomplished a lot this year! Looking back at the files I was working on this time last year, I can see that I've progressed musically and lyrically. Looking at this site, I can see that I've achieved a strong musical identity and purpose. This took a lot of work and studying. Here's how I did it:

• Music Lessons with a university composition professor. Every week or so, we get together to analyze whatever I wrote, or any song by Steely Dan, Radiohead, Beatles, Zeppelin, Depeche Mode, jazz standard or Bach prelude I'm into.
• Classes from Berklee School of Music Online. "Hit Song Forms" taught me how to arrange music to make it accessible to more listeners. "Music Publishing 101" was about getting my music heard more widely and how to collaborate with other writers. "Writing Lyrics to Music" was about putting strong syllables on strong beats, and various rhyme and lyrical strategies. My current class, "Music Marketing 101," is about creating a strategy for success as an "indie" artist, without the support of a major record label.
• I read the second half of a college level music theory textbook. Each chapter expanded my musical vocabulary, and I tried to incorporate what I'd learned in a new piece.
• "The Songwriter's Idea Book" by Sheila Davis. This provides a fusion of personality psychology and grammatical/literary theory to provide a "whole brain" songwriting method. I learned that my brain is very left hemisphere dominant, which means I seek closure. This book helped me break the habit of spending 15 minutes writing lyrics to a tune I'd just spent 7 hours composing.

I did all this without setting any specific goals, but this year I make these resolutions:

• To set aside an hour each day for writing lyrics or music
• To spend half an hour every day improving my craft by either reading about songwriting or getting inspiration from analyzing music or lyrics.
• To spend an hour every day reading blogs, listening to podcasts, reading music publications, or cultivating relationships with the bloggers, podcasters or journalists to promote my music
• To keep my mind uncluttered by applying the "Getting Things Done" method by David Allen, keeping a list of projects and action items.
  
• To keep a diary of whatever I'm doing in my calendar, and review the calendar each Saturday.