Group Effort

My guitar teacher recently encouraged me to record one of my new songs using his in-home studio equipment, an offer I heartily accepted. It was loads of fun working with him on it, me laying down the voice and piano, and him providing, well, everything else. Apparently, he was having fun too, because in between our lessons he did additional work on it. He was very excited to share the guitar riff he’d added as well as some cool sound effects to my voice.

“Good stuff!” I said when he played the additions for me. And it was. The guitar in particular changed the song in a way that I thought improved it, like he heard something that should have been there but I just missed.

It took us four solid lessons to get the two-and-half minute composition just so, each of those one-hour sessions flying by as we raised and lowered levels and added strings and took out bells until we finally agreed we’d finished it.

“Sounds good, doesn’t it?” he said. “I mean – I know I added a lot of stuff to it—”

“Of course you did. That’s the point! That’s why this was fun.”

Yes, I love the solitude of writing, am perfectly comfortable working alone at my desk, but there is something immediately exciting about another person bringing their imagination to a project that had previously lived entirely in my mind. Perhaps the best part of writing, after all, is when that new idea arrives, the one that seems to have always existed but that I didn’t know about until I saw it. How nice to experience that elsewhere, to remember that everything from a novel to a movie to a symphony is a group effort, whether we can see the ones we’re collaborating with or not.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com