4 Months in…

Hi everyone,
Those who take a mild interest in my music are aware that I’d made a pact with myself in January of this year. I promised I’d write one new song per month this year until I got up to ten songs for my first full length album. Yes, with all the music I’ve written over the past few years, I’ve never actually released a full-length album. All my music is available only as singles or extended play albums (4 – 6 tracks only).

To be honest, the past four months have totally snuck up on me! I should’ve been four songs in, but life has really gotten in the way. I guess most of us can relate. Being (almost) a middle-aged man, the responsibilities of husband, father, provider and supporter to my wife (who homeschool’s our kids) has really made it difficult to get a moment to reflect and put pen to paper in terms of writing music. Coupled with the fact that my Songwriting process is based quite a lot around the way I feel at the time. I usually must be “in the mood” to write a song. I guess that’s pretty much the basic flaw that I may have when it comes to writing songs.

But then, how do we separate ourselves out of the mundanity of our daily lives. Surely one must be emotionally and spiritually tuned-in in order to extract the best from your creative side? Maybe this is the case but what I am finding is that if I rely solely on the way I feel, I will get very little done. Perhaps this is common to all aspects of one’s life? If we are controlled by our feelings daily few of us wold even bother getting out of bed.

I am learning that I must push through regardless of our I feel at any moment. Sometimes keeping a schedule is the best way to solve this problem. When you keep a schedule, you are accountable to yourself for the way you spend your hours. Time is one of the most precious commodities we have and yet we are so blasé about how we use it. I’ve broken up my songs into various sections where I will literally write just four or five lines today and continue my next free day. It has helped me at least catch up to where I’ve gotten another two songs done over the last two weeks.

Inevitably one must have the discipline to follow your program or schedule and my personality is such that I have trouble with structure. But this is something I have to learn how to do if I am to achieve my goal of ten new songs this year!

Look out for my new tunes on Apple Music and Spotify:
www.soundcloud.com/riaanpretorius
www.facebook.com/riaanpretoriusmusic

PS. Thank you to the person in Trinidad who seems to have my music on replay 😊
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