Authenticity in your music is so important in sync licensing.

Do you feel as though not enough of the real you is coming through in your tracks?

Here is a trick to sound less like your idols and more like your true self that everyone wants to hear.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

It just rained and everything smells fresh. What is it about a fresh rain that makes it feel like a brand new day?

Now, I don't know the answer to that, but it made me think of your music. Made me think, how is it that we're able to use all the same tools, all the same kind of formulas that we use, at least in the Western world, of chorus, bridge, and verse, and stuff. And still make original sounding music. How does it not just sound like the same thing all the time?

A favorite example I like to use is like the three words, “I love you.” We hear them from all kinds of different people in our life. We hear them from our parents. We hear them from our children if we have them, we hear them from our significant others. And it is completely new all the time. It's the same three words, and yet it always sounds fresh and new, just like a new rain in the forest.

So, thinking about your music, I'm thinking about getting your music into TV and film, and one thing that there's a place for are soundalikes. You can actually imitate somebody, sound just like them, and get in there because it sounds just like the other song.

The problem is, when bigger artists are trying to get music into TV and film, sometimes it costs so much money. The publishing companies are pushing them, but they're sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars if you want to have a big, big star in your show. So they could go and say, “Hey, I can get a sound alike for a lot cheaper than that and put them in.”

Now this accounts for a very low percentage of syncs, so it's not something that I would advise doing. The main thing that they're after, music supervisors and big agents and top libraries, they're after people who have authenticity.

Now, it's important to have the same language. You don't want to be completely new. I don't think anybody's completely new. But you don't want to be so out there that people have to kind of grow on you. A sleeper album, that's like the death knell for sync licensing. Your song goes by once. You have to hook them in. You've got to capture them with what you're doing. And a part of that is familiarity. And a part of it is knowing that, “Oh, this is something I understand. It's a language I speak. I can get behind this.”

And then you add the twist. The twist is your own thing. Your own voice. The way you stitch your melody together. The way you sing. The way you strum your guitar. All the things that make you, you.

Your fingerprint - artistic fingerprint - is what it's all about and getting your music out there in a way that is so compelling because it's fresh, it's new - and that's how people sort of judge that sort of thing.

Now there's a big difference between being inspired by and imitating. When you're imitating, you're in a sea of imitators. That's the problem is that even if a supervisor was saying, “Well, I'd like a soundalike,” they're still looking at all of these people who imitate, right? Or, even if it wasn't a soundalike, it's something ike, “I really want to have something that reminds people really strongly of this artist.”

Because so many people imitate, then that's the problem. You're like this fish in a huge ocean of imitators. And you see that all the time, right? Driving down the freeway, billboards, this and that. There's all kinds of companies out there, things in art, and so on. It's just the way of the world. In your music, what you want to do is you want to have your own voice, and you want to have that authenticity.

And so being inspired by is amazing. Inspired by is very different from imitating in my view. I love being inspired by things. I'm constantly asking other people their opinions. I'm always reading. I'm always listening to things. I'm trying to incorporate new ideas into what I do. In my own way though, right?

So being inspired by the world around you is great as opposed to starting off like a child who imitates everything that they see. And that's totally normal and probably why a lot of people do imitate things is because it's built in - it's hardwired and it's not a bad quality, it's just not great in creative things, that's the thing, right?

Whether you're a scientist, or you're a musician, or a business person, or entrepreneur, or whatever, you want to have your own thing, okay?

So, I'm really curious to know about if you have a problem with finding your own voice, or if you've already found it.

If you've got a problem finding your own voice, here's a trick.

The way to kind of get out of the box, out of the program, where you've been programmed to sing or do something like the artist that you started covering and you kind of sound too much like them, is to radically change the way that you're approaching the delivery of whatever you're doing.

So, here's an example. If you're writing a song that sounds a lot like another artist, and you've been really inspired by them to the point where you maybe are imitating a little bit too much, do something radical to the song. Slow it down like four times the speed that it is. Speed it up four times, whatever.

Sing it in a completely different key, like a radically different key. What it's doing is it's making you have to tackle something with your own intuition, and you're having to deal with it, and it's very difficult to transpose what you have been imitating down to this kind of radical problem you've created for yourself.

So, you'll approach it in a way that will start to inspire you, and make sure you record it.

Now, you're not going to necessarily take the song, for example, and say, “Okay, I'm gonna key it down four times lower than it used to be, and I guess that's my sound.” No - it's to put you on the path so as you're recording yourself, you're going to listen back and listen to the things where you're like, “Ooh, I like that. That's, that's kind of cool. That's something new. That's something that sounds like me or it's different than what I used to do.” And you're going to incorporate that in the way that you were writing your song in the first place. So key it back up to where it was, but bring along all those little gems and treasures of inspiration that you just discovered by putting yourself into a hard place.

Okay, so if you have already found your voice, you've been doing it for years and you know exactly who you sound like yourself, I would love to hear your story as well.

And I want to hear your story about how did you find your voice in the beginning? How did you go from imitating? Because I'm pretty sure we've all started imitating. How did you go from that very first imitation and very first cover song that you were doing and find your own path and discover who you were as a person?

I'd love to hear your story.

Submitting music to music supervisors, agents, or libraries?

Getting your metadata right is critical for sync placements!

Just thought I’d send you my simple guide showing you step by step how to get it perfect. Hope it helps!

P.S. My 9 year old daughter wanted to film this one. ;)

FREE METADATA DOWNLOAD GUIDE:  https://syncsongwriter.com/metadata

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Metadata. Metadata. Metadata. Everybody talks about metadata for sync. What's the deal?

A lot of you know what it is, but here's the problem with metadata is that if you don't get it right, it can really hurt your chances of getting sync placements you already have enough to think about and deal with.

Metadata is a simple, easy, straightforward thing to do. You just have to do it the right way.

Now, instead of you taking notes, what I've done is I've included my own custom download guide that you can download for free right now, right in the description, and just put it on your desktop. You'll never have a problem with metadata again. It tells you what you need to put in there, how you need to do it, and all of that good stuff.

All right, now we're celebrating an amazing milestone here at Sync Songwriter. One of our members got four sync placements in one film, which is a record for us. So we're super happy about that.

Do you think that they had metadata in their tracks? They certainly did.

So if you, for example, forget to even put in your contact information, what can happen is, you're going to send MP3s, and I'll get to that in a minute to supervisors, libraries and agents. They get that, they like it, they put it into their little file system because they can't use it right away.

They come back in a month, right? Three weeks later, a month, whatever, six weeks later. They type in some descriptor and say like, you know, I'm looking for this. And there's your song pops up and they're like, oh yeah, I remember that song. I'd love to use that in my show, movie, or ad.

They go to the metadata to find out who you are and how to get ahold of you, and there's nothing, right? What are they gonna do? They simply have to move on to the next track.

That has happened more times than you'd believe just talking to my music supervisor friends. And the thing is, you would never know. It would just happen. They're not going to contact you because they can't to let you know to put your metadata in.

That's what I'm here for. Okay? You've got to do your metadata, right? So click that link, download the guide right now.

Now the other thing to remember is that you're going to put your metadata into MP3s because wave files don’t take metadata, and the currency in the sync world are MP3s. They're the things that get shuffled around for different things because they're small file sizes and easy to use.

Now, you're still not going to send your MP3 attached to your email when you're sending it out. That's a huge No-no. You definitely don't want to do that because it'll end up in their inbox and they've got things set up where it'll go straight to the trash. Because could you imagine if everybody sent, who sent a song in, send it attached, right? They'd have a massive inbox, so you gotta put it on a platform where they can stream it and download it, load it straight to their filing system. So that's the beauty of it, but it's got to have the metadata in there.

So, Download the guide and I'll catch you on the next one.

Bye-bye.

Producing your music to license to TV & film doesn't have to be complicated. Here are some tips if you are doing a stripped down production approach for sync.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT 

So, I recently got a question, "What's the best way to produce your music to get it into shows, movies, and ads?"

So, here's the deal. The production itself honestly doesn't matter, but here's what does matter. The thing that matters most is that you do not want to distract from what's going on on the screen. 

Super, super important that you don't get in the way. It's not your show. It's their show, right? You're there to support that, and the idea is that you want to be able to get into a situation where your song is supporting what's going on on the screen, so that it emotes the greatest emotion, the greatest sort of concept that the director or the showrunners had for whatever media that they're doing.

And that it turns out in a way that the audience feels like they're one thing. They go together like peanut butter and jelly, or whatever comparison you want to make. So that is really the key. 

So, when you're targeting your music, you really want to make sure that that's actually going to happen where your music fits in with what they're doing, the concept.

And again, always thinking about just a beautiful pairing, you know, great wine with great food. 

So, the bottom line when you're in your studio thinking, “How do I produce my song? Does it matter if I have 48 tracks going or compared to maybe two?” (You know, what about a guitar and a vocal, not even recording the guitar and stereo? You might just have one mic on it.) - It really doesn't matter. 

But here are some key things that you need to remember when you're recording something that is stripped down. One of the easiest things to do is you can hide behind production sometimes. I've certainly done it as a music producer. I've done it for 20 plus years, and there are tricks and ways that you can kind of… if I'm remixing someone's song or something, I can pull faders down, I can tune things. I can put things in the back. I can do all kinds of little trickery delays and things to kind of add to something that may be not performing as well.

So, when it comes down to just you and your instrument, what is super critical is you have to get both of those things right. There's no hiding, right? 

Your vocals sitting there and your guitar is there, and if you record them together, you're not going to be be able to easily tune your vocal, for example. So even with tuning aside, the emotion that you have in your voice carries everything that you do. The way that you finger pick your guitar, the way you play your instrument carries the whole spectrum of what you want the listener to feel and to think. So, when you're recording things, especially stripped down, always think about drawing a picture, something that is going to evoke exactly what you're trying to say.

And you're going to do it with nuances. You're going to do it with the way that you hold your vibrato, the breath that you add in, the softness or the loudness in which you sing, the melody and how you climb into the melody. 

All of those things that could get lost in a big mix are forefront. They're things that can hurt you if you don't do them right. But the other side is they're things that are so beautiful when you can nail it.

And again, you don't have to be the best singer. You don't have to be the best player. You just have to know your voice, have confidence in it, and emote that. And that is the thing that's going to attract music supervisors to put your music into their shows, movies, or ads.

What is the best way to leapfrog to the front of the pack? (Besides outright nepotism)

It’s knowing what other people don’t… and it can be such a simple thing.

Click here for details: https://syncsongwriter.com/blog/how-to-jump-to-the-front-of-the-pack-2023

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT 

Hey, it's Chris. And I just wanted to talk about the value of knowing things to jump to the head of the pack.

So there's been a number of things that I've learned in my life. Some of them simple, some of them more complex, that have helped me move to the front of what I was trying to do. 

I've had tons of failures, just like you have, and I've succeeded at things just like you have.  The things that I've succeeded at, looking back on those, I noticed almost all of them had to do with knowing more than someone else did. It wasn't just innate talent that gets people places.

It's also what you know or who you know.

Where the “who you know,” ties into this… I had the great fortune of being able to learn from a bunch of amazing producers and engineers throughout the years as I was becoming a music producer, and a part of being around them was learning what to do and what not to do.

So just three things off the top of my head in no particular order. 

There is a litany of other ones. There's a whole ton of other ones that I learned that helped me get to where I wanted to go. 

So for you, there's this thing that I support every single year because it is awesome. It's Michael Walker's Modern Musician Success With Music. 

It's a conference that has a bunch of experts going to be talking all about the latest, coolest stuff that's going on in the music industry. From sync licensing, (that's what I'll be talking about - I'm a guest there too) and how to build your fan base; how to get your music on radio; how to increase your streams - all kinds of stuff. 

It's about learning the things that are going to help you jump to the front of the pack. And the cool thing about that is it doesn't take a lot of energy or money or anything. You just have to show up, make that one move, and you're ahead of everybody else. Okay? 

Click the link in the description. It's going to take you to register to jump in. 

It's going to be game changing. It's awesome. 

Like I said, I don't support many people every year. I only recommend people to you that I know that I can hang my hat on - that you're not going to come back and say, “Chris, that was like a sales pitch” or “that was like somebody who's irrelevant to what I'm doing.” These are people who walk the talk and I want you to be able to not miss this opportunity.

Okay. So click the link below and I'll see you there. 

https://syncsongwriter.com/blog/how-to-jump-to-the-front-of-the-pack-2023

AI is all the rage and its effects on music are already being felt everywhere.

Is it time to submit to the AI overlords or is there still time left for songwriters?

This is my take on it...

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT 

Hey, it's Chris, and today I wanted to talk about AI, the rage, right? Everybody's talking about this. 

It's supposed to change everything. It's going to have a huge impact on music and writers and recording and everything like that. Okay? 

So, I just wanted to take this with a little bit of a grain of salt. 

Now, if you look back historically at different things that changed when the internet came along. For example, there was this massive dot com bubble that happened because everybody got way over optimistic about the change internet was going bring everybody. Did that change happen? Yes, it did, but it took almost 20 more years from the time in the nineties when they were talking about. All these things that are going to happen. Everybody invested in it - and of course they overinvested in it, created a bubble and a lot of people went broke because of that. 

When color printers came out in the eighties, everybody thought they were a graphic designer. It's like, you just get a color printer and look what you can do.

Digital audio workstations, right? They can do anything. Now you can get one laptop sitting on a boat even. And you can produce stuff that sounds like anything on the radio if you know what you're doing. But it's all there, right? So, people think, “Ah, I just have to buy the latest thing and I'm going to sound like the greatest stars,” right?

There are all these examples of human over optimism about so many different things, and I really believe it's the same with AI right now. 

Now, will all those changes come, will potentially songwriters become obsolete? Will music supervisors become obsolete? Will all these things have such an earth-shaking change to the music industry and so on? 

I believe it will. I believe AI can do that, certainly. 

But just like that line in Maverick with Tom Cruise, and the guy says to him, “Hey, you know you're going to be replaced (by essentially robot robotic planes and stuff like that), and your time is your dinosaur.” And Tom Cruise looks up as character and says, “Well, not today, sir.”

That's the point of this message right now. 

Not today. Things are not going to go crazy. 

Now you can jump on to ChatGPT, and you can type in ideas for lyrics. And there are people who are actually producing music with AI, with mixed results and so on. So it's cool. There is a great tool to go out there and do that.

Should you be afraid of it or should you worse, worse, think that it's going to solve all your problems and that you can just simply jump onto ChatGPT and become a rockstar?

The other element of that is what happens when technology moves forward, or say social change happens or something like that? It is fresh, novel, sometimes frightening at the beginning. 

What happens is that people's expectations meet the change. So, what that means is that you get used to hearing the new change or seeing the new change. So, if we're talking about music, if AI is able to do certain things as humans, we just start to expect that. 

For example, auto tuning, right? We all expect to hear an intune vocal. Now, before autotune, people did their best. The greatest singers sounded perfect, and most everyone else there were like these little, you know, little autotune tune things that made it human. It made it kind of cool, right? Autotune came along and then all of a sudden everybody's tuning their vocal. Now even I will tune vocals. Very transparently. so, you can't hear it. It sounds completely natural, but it gets rid of some of the things that the human ear would notice, right? We're attuned to hearing in-tune vocals, so we just get used to it and we move on, right? 

The most important part of all of this is remembering that to connect with humans, especially with art, and especially with music, it needs a human - at least right now.

People talk about building content online, like getting it to write them emails or things like that, or writing essays in school and so on. Yes, it's a great starting block. It's a new version of the word magnets on your fridge, and it's way, way better than that. It can do those things.

But you can also tell when it's been written by AI, at least right now. So remember, we are not replaceable, okay? 

So, I'm betting a bunch of years where we're just going to keep going through this thing, and things will change and so on. 

But I am not jumping on the bandwagon here with everybody (well, at least a lot of people saying that “The time is nigh and you’d better adapt or get out” kind of thing. 

So, I think we have more time. 

DOING sync is more important than HOW you do it… and why I’m shooting this video in a car (for the first time). Let me explain…

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT 

Hey, how's it going? Today is the first day that I've ever shot a blog in a car, and you might be wondering why I'm doing that. So it ties into what I want to talk about, and it's called B+ing in my mind. 

Essentially in life, in all the things we're doing and trying to get music into TV and film and sync placements and everything, you might be thinking that a lot of the people who succeed are A+ers, right? They're A students and you are not succeeding so that must mean you're a B, or C, or maybe F.

But I have news for you. Most everybody who has ever done anything in the world successfully started out at the very top, a B+ student. They had to learn what they were doing and get there.

Now there's a saying in business, and I think in people's personal lives that the facade, the front of what you see, is always much cleaner. It looks much nicer than the reality behind the scenes. Okay? So I'm sure you probably know that from your own life. We're all like that. We want to put our best foot forward. We want to look like we've got our beat together. 

But the bottom line is we're all fighting a battle. We're all trying to do things and make things happen in our lives. And it's messy, you know? There are always these things because it's not a perfect path. The future is always unpredictable, right? So, we're always doing our best to navigate that. 

So, everybody who gets sync placements, all the bands that made it huge - like overnight successes that came out of nowhere, seemingly, like Radiohead, the Eagles, the Beatles, it took them years- toiling and obscurity. 

So, one of the things you have to keep in mind is that you have to remember that part of the process to get where you want to go and get your music into TV and film is B+ing it. The fact that your music's not going anywhere in libraries, possibly the fact you can't get ahold of music supervisors, get an agent, you just can't seem to get your music out there (and it's ready, it's going). How do you go about that? 

Now, there are certainly smarter ways of doing it than others, right? I'm all about working smarter and not harder. So much of it is about relationships and all of that stuff that comes with time. It comes with that toiling and obscurity and building yourself up to where you want to go, right? (Or of course, with what I do with The Art Of The Song Pitch and all of that stuff.) 

But the bottom line is that I'm shooting this in this car because it's super windy outside. I just ate at Waffle House -  I'm on the road and I wanted a cheap breakfast. It's been raining off and on. I just couldn't find a spot to shoot it. So, I was like, “Well, should I wait and not do a blog this week? Because I can't find a decent background for doing it?” 

No. 

I thought it's way better to B+ it and just reach out to you because the message is what matters. It's not the car, you know? 

And remember that with your music. 

Remember that when you're trying to even get your music out there in the world, let alone sync, you've got to just do it. Put one foot in front of the other, B+ it, because everybody else is B+ing it until the point where you can A+ it.

The point at which you can A+ it comes by B+ing it until you get to a point where you've been practicing what you do, you've been getting better and better and better. Then most every time it's going to start working. 

So, I remember when I was in a band and we would get on stage after maybe two or three years of having toured and played and stuff like that. And it was a big gig and we were all nervous. I used to tell the lads, “Hey, you know what? Don't worry about this. We'll do the best we can, but we won't suck. We can't, suck because we're too good for that now - we've practiced too much, right? Not because we're awesome. Just because we've just done it so much, we know we can at least get it right on stage every time and hopefully A+ it.” 

Now, that's the thing about sync licensing is that you want to always just keep your music coming, keep producing it, try and do it the right ways. Get as much information as you can. Try to always be putting one foot in front of the other. 

And remember, we're all fighting that battle, right? We all have our own challenges. So don't worry about your “behind the scenes,” which you know all too well being a B+ (could be a C, could be even an F right now - it doesn't matter). You can get to the A+ if you just keep doing what you're doing. 

And remember, everybody else has been B+ing it through life. Most of us are still doing that. Okay? 

We all have setbacks, losses, and failures.

When that happens I NEVER tell myself I need to work harder to win the next time.

I think winning is something else entirely. It goes far beyond the next attempt.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT 

Hey, it's Chris, and today I wanted to talk about how you handle criticism for your music. 

So, I was just on a coaching call for my course, The Art Of The Song Pitch, and we're doing a module called the Vetting Module, and it's about putting together a listening group. Those are the people who are going to help you figure out where your music belongs (in which shows movies and ads).

So, essentially, we did this exercise, and I did the coaching call and one of my students came on and she said, “Chris, I got this really negative feedback about my song. I don't know how to handle it. Do you have any advice?” 

So, I thought about this and the best example I can come up with is something that happened to me.

So, before music I was actually a fencer. So I used to fence, (saber, you know - fencing, not building fences). And so I used to go to competitions and all of that stuff.

So, it's such an investment to pay for these competitions. After the training, all the investment there, you'd have to pay hotel and food and the time to go there. And I was in high school sometimes taking days off to fly somewhere to compete. 

And you'd only have a short window at the competition to make things happen. Because you'd basically be in a pool of fencers. And you'd have to win three out of the five bouts (is what they were called) to move up into the next class and then to the semi-finals, and then finally to the finals. So, you really had to be on your game, not unlike you playing live. 

For example - all the songwriting and the investment of time and effort that it takes to put everything together and get the people up to your show and all of that stuff. And then you go there, once you're on stage, once you hit your first chord, there's no turning back. There's no stopping and rewinding. There's no undo button. It is what it is. You have an “on” day. You have an “off” day. 

When I was fencing with all of that in a similar way to you guys playing live, I was crushed sometimes if I was having my “off” day. If I lost something I thought I should have won or something happened in such a short period of time. You know, fencing is sometimes called “chess at a hundred miles an hour” and if you just weren't on it, and you lost, it was just such a horrible feeling. You feel like giving up or like, “Why am I doing this? Why am I putting all of this effort into this type of thing?”

I ended up moving on and fortunately was able to win the Canadian Junior Championships twice in a row. So, everything turned out well for me in the end. But on the way, on that path, there were many times where I thought, “Man, I'm not cut out for this. I should think of doing something else.”

I found a philosophy that really helped me get through the hard times, and that was the idea that the one competition, or even the one bout that you're in and trying to win is not the end all of anything, right? It's the whole career. It's your whole fencing career.

So, for you in music, it's not about one gig that you're going to get or one rejection, or somebody says something bad about your song or something like that. It's about your whole career. 

So, all of those little, what we call “failures” or “losses” are really detours along the way, because don't forget, you're learning every time that it happens. You're learning about yourself. You're getting better because you went there and actually competed or got on stage and played, or whatever it is that you're talking about. You did something to do that. You've got that under your belt now, right? 

It didn't work out that day. That's the way things go. The trick is not just saying, “I'm gonna stick with it and work harder,” which most people say. For me, what worked better was imagining my whole career as one motion, the one movement that I was doing with whatever I was doing in fencing or any other thing I was doing in my life. 

So, I coined that in my mind as “moving towards winning.” I was always moving towards winning. 

So, think about that with your music. Think about that with everything that you do. Move towards winning.

No matter what happens, be a pinball in a pinball machine. You know, just bounce off and keep going. Okay? Move towards winning.

Do you know the songs that work best in the music licensing world? 

You might think they are the ones that are specifically written for sync, but you’ll be surprised to find out it can be something else.

There is something you might already be doing that makes your music ready to go...

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT 

Hey, it's Chris. I'm in one of my favorite places, Cambria, California. It's a gray day. The ocean's slate gray out there. And, I've been talking to you a lot about writing the last couple of weeks. And thank you so much for all the comments. They've been absolutely amazing. It's been great seeing a window into what you do as songwriters.

And as I was walking along the shore here, I was thinking about this week's episode and I thought, the gray clouds and ocean work perfectly to ask the question, “If this is the sync world, what kind of music works best in it?” What is going to basically color the sync world in such a way that's gonna work for the shows, movies, and ads you're trying to get your music into?

Now, the truth is a lot of people think that you're supposed to go and write for sync. You're supposed to learn how to write songs and write music and maybe sell out on your art for a little bit and just sort of write something that the directors and producers are gonna want. And how do you go about doing that?

Here's the deal. Really, what music supervisors - who are the people who put music into TV and film - what they're looking for is authenticity. They're looking for music that's going to help tell the story of the drama on the screen. Something that's real, something that really touches people and makes them really feel for the characters on the screen in terms of the plot and everything that's happening.

So, the best way as an artist to get your music into TV and film is literally to write for yourself. Write authentically, write for the people, your fans, the people that really admire your music, and write from your heart and your soul and make something great. And then instead of writing for an opportunity, saying, “Well, I want to get into this movie or a show and I need to write the right thing,” write your song, then find the opportunity for that song. That is the very best way to go about that. 

And a lot of artists think, “No, I gotta become a composer. I gotta write for other people.” You do not have to. And that's the most beautiful thing about it.

So, think about it as a complete blank slate. Think of this and just say, “How is my music going to make its mark? What sort of sunset is it going to be? What kind of weather is it going to be? And what sort of day are you looking for in terms of fitting your music into, if it was a film?”

Is it a sunny day?  A gray day? Whatever it is, “How can I write the music for that?”

So, if you were standing here right now, beside me, looking out at this, and this was the movie show or ad, what music will go with this? How would that work? 

It's certainly not me sitting here talking. There's a road here. You can hear cars going by. The surf's nice…

What about the music? How is that going to work? So that's something to think about.

And always remember that sync is such an amazing thing because you can be true to yourself and find the opportunities that are going to work for your music. And that's called targeting - and that's a whole other story. Maybe we'll talk about that next week.

Alright, have a good one. And we'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.

Last week I asked you to tell me how you find your muse. Today I would love to know how you handle its dark side. I shot this episode to tell you how I do it...

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT 

Hey, it's Chris, and last week I asked you, “How do you find your muse?” How do you figure out what is going to inspire you to create? 

I got lots of responses back. I was thinking about your answers to this and I thought it would be really interesting to figure out an extension of that question.

And that is, “What do you do about writer's block?” You know, negativity - we're all human, right? We don't all have perfect days. I certainly, even though I'm generally a happy person, I certainly wake up on certain days and I don't feel like doing anything. I'm not motivated, maybe a little bit depressed, just not myself.

And I was really curious to know how you deal with this. 

So my solution to it is maybe atypical, I’m not sure. I'm not one who wants to just go out and try to change things, you know, like I wake up and I'm depressed and I'm like, oh, I gotta flip this really fast and I try to ignore this thing. 

I actually do the opposite. I actually wallow in it. I embrace it, I bring it in tighter, closer to me, and I live that negativity. And I find that by doing that, I sort of get down to the rock bottom of whatever that feeling is, and I sort of sit there at the bottom and I think, “Alright, so this is the way I'm feeling. This sucks, but how am I gonna turn this around?” 

And at some point, I generally say like, “Beep it,” you know, “What's the solution to this? I've got to make things happen,” and I turn it around much quicker by really breathing it and bringing it into myself. 

Now today it just started raining. Today I'm in Santa Cruz as a perfect example, right on cue of what it's like to be out in bad weather in California. So I'm hanging out in California at a family reunion, and it's been foggy and gray and rainy for three days. It's probably gonna be like that tomorrow. And it literally started almost pouring rain right now while I’m shooting this video. 

So, my whole idea is to embrace it. It's to find the beauty and not care, you know, bring it in. I'm getting soaked right now - but just bring the whole thing in and really enjoy what the beauty is of what this is. 

And so I'm really curious to know how you deal with things, how do you handle this? Let me know how you handle the writer's block, the creativity when it's not happening. The maybe slight depression that happens, when your heart and soul are just not in it. How do you deal with that? Love to hear from you. 

There is something that I have seen in every great artist I have ever worked with…

It wasn’t just talent.

Or hard work.

It didn’t depend on luck...

It was something specific they did when they weren’t writing songs.

A sort of ritual.

I talk about it in this episode and how it has helped me get songs into TV & film.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT 

Hey, it's Chris and I'm coming to you from Costa Rica. 

I'm running some rivers here. It's absolutely amazing. I'm with an amazing group. Took a week off to come out into the beautiful jungles of Costa Rica. The river's just down there. You can probably hear it. And we're just hauling in the kayaks to start hitting the white water.

But the bottom line, why I wanted to just take this moment to reach out is that I want to  talk about creativity. 

The reason that I'm here is about… it's about trying to refresh, recharge the batteries. 

As you know, inspiration and creativity are not just patterns in your synapses that create these amazing new inventions we call songs… but anybody who's inspired to do anything creative has to have some sort of muse. They've gotta have some sort of understanding of what is going to create that muse, what is going to actually inspire it, right? 

For me, it's by being out in this. It's by challenging myself on rivers. It's by being around people who are different than me -  learning. 

And for you, it could be anything else. You know, it doesn't matter. It could be like a hot shower that you could have ideas in. It could be going into the city, maybe having a beer on a patio, who knows? 

But find your passion. Find your muse. Find your source of inspiration, because somehow it all comes together and creates this perfect scenario, this perfect environment for things to start to happen.

And if you just figure out what that thing is for you, you will write the greatest songs of your life. 

For me, coming out here is really getting away from the whole bustle of doing what I do with Sync Songwriter and figuring out brand new ways to serve you, to help you, to make things even better. 

How can we increase the number of sync placements we're getting? How can we bring more people in? How can I expand my music supervisor network? 

All of these things are things I've been thinking about on the river kind of tangentially. You know, they're not like pure thoughts that I'm having constantly while I'm on the river. I'm having fun. I'm not thinking about being at home. I'm not thinking about Sync Songwriter even. 

It's the moments in between, in the eddys and the flow of the day that all of these ideas sort of seep in.  Falling asleep at night, listening to the creek nearby or crickets and frogs in the forest and so on. 

So find your muse is all I want to say.

So, I'll see you on the next one when I'm back home, hopefully full of amazing ideas in how to further your music career in sync.