Tips to Improve Your Skills in Songwriting

Drew Farney is a student-athlete of Hyde Academy, a college-preparatory school in Maine. At Hyde Academy, he is a quarterback on the football team. Besides his studies, Drew Farney enjoys playing the guitar, making beats, hunting, and songwriting.

Songwriting does require some talent, but it also takes very learnable skills. There are many ways to approach songwriting. Here are some tips:

1. Paint the Picture

There's an old saying that "A picture is worth a thousand words". A thousand words may be a little excessive in songwriting, but the picture is part of the music. History's most famous songwriters have been able to crack the code of composing excellent song lyrics, and their works all revolved around the ability to tell a decent story most of the time. Painting a picture entails using lyrics to illustrate what the songwriter wants to express visually.

2. Express Yourself Freely

This tip is perhaps one of the most challenging arts for any artist to master. The biggest critic is inevitably oneself, and self-doubt is a high impediment to motivation and creativity. Sitting down with the purpose of self-expression rather than the aim of writing a hit record is essential. Make mistakes, embarrass yourself, improvise, and inside the raw expression, you will undoubtedly find gold flecks.

3. Take Breaks

Taking breaks is perhaps one of the best songwriting tips. Taking breaks for 15 minutes, or even a couple of weeks concentrating on life outside music and other activities is essential. Often, you have to rekindle your passion for something by forgetting first and foremost how much you enjoy it!

The Elements of Music

Drew Farney is a student-athlete at Hyde Academy in Bath, Maine, where he plays basketball and football. Beyond sports, Drew Farney is a songwriter who plays the guitar and makes beats that are widely used by Soundcloud artists.

Understanding the building blocks of music helps us enjoy music more. Although music may be soft, loud, slow, or fast, it interprets several elements. Music professionals differ on how many parameters music has, but there are several essential music elements:

1. Beat (regular or irregular) is music's pulsating pattern. A meter is a pattern made by combining weak and strong beats.

2. Dynamics, the volume of the performance, are used to point out the intensity of specific notes or show moments of emphasis. Pianissimo means a low volume, while fortissimo is a loud volume.

3. Harmony is the sound produced when two or more chords/notes play simultaneously. Harmony can give balance and complement the melody.

4. Melody is the tune resulting from a mix of notes. A musical piece may have one repeating melody or multiple themes. However, the melody usually persists throughout a composition.

5. Pitch comes from the size of a musical object or the frequency of its vibration. For instance, a piano has an identifiable pitch from each key, unlike cymbals.

Other musical elements include rhythm, tempo, texture, and timbre.

Introduction to Types of Guitars

Drew Farney is a student at Hyde Academy in Bath, Maine. He is an academic high achiever and a quarterback on the school's football team. Drew Farney is also a talented musician who plays the guitar and writes songs.

The guitar is one of the most recognizable musical instruments today. Guitars come in different variants but are basically of two categories, acoustic and electric.

Acoustic guitars usually have a hollow wooden body that amplifies the sounds of the strings. There are two popular variants. The first type is the nylon-stringed classical guitar, which is also known as the Spanish guitar. This instrument is what many beginning guitar players start with, and is used to play classical music. The steel-stringed acoustic guitar is the other type. These guitars, also called flat tops due to their flat face, are played by musicians in genres like blues, rock, and country.

Electric guitars have solid bodies, meaning they need to be plugged into an amplifier to make their sounds audible. These guitars are used in commercial music genres to produce significantly different sounds than acoustic guitars. They can also be as loud as the audio system that is amplifying the vibrations of their strings.

Some guitars are a mixture of these two variants. These include semi-acoustic guitars, which combine elements of both acoustic and electric guitars, and electro-acoustic guitars, which are acoustic guitars that can be connected to amplifiers.

 

Combat Stress, PTSD, and TBI

Drew Farney plays basketball and is a quarterback on the football team at Hyde Academy in Bath, Maine. Besides his academic and athletic endeavors, Drew Farney works with charities, including Lone Star Wounded Warrior, an organization helping veterans with PTSD recovery.

There are three main forms of mental health conditions that may result from exposure to combat situations. Combat stress is among the most common and reflects a normal reaction to the extreme stress of combat. It can lead to fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and decreased reaction time.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a more serious condition that many veterans develop, and can result from exposure to an exceptionally traumatic event. Symptoms vary between sufferers and can include increased risk of suicide, trouble sleeping, and both mental and physical distress.

Traumatic brain injuries are the result of physical damage to brain tissue. Its symptoms depend on the area of the brain affected, but can include anything from loss of motor control to headaches, and may even involve trouble speaking.