How do we remain inspired to create during trying times? How do we silence our inner critic? What’s the difference between a poem and a set of lyrics?
Rob Seals, songwriter, producer, educator, and founder of The Songwriting School of Los Angeles, gives his wise and unique take on these questions and more.
This is one of my favorite conversations with one of the most soulful and inspiring people I know. We chat about why he and his wife founded The Songwriting School of Los Angeles, how to befriend your inner critic, and how to contribute as an artist at this critical time.
Songs Rob has written or produced have appeared on tv shows like Pretty Little Liars, Ghost Whisperer, Men In Trees, Brothers and Sisters, The Hills, Keeping up with the Kardashians, Dreamland, MTV’s The Real World, Road Rules, Fox Sports, and many others; in feature and documentary films; and on KCRW. He is the proud father of two young daughters, and with his talented wife, Ashley, founded The Songwriting School of Los Angeles.
The Songwriting School is the only full-time non-degree school of its kind devoted to the artistry and industry of songwriting. Instructors and distinguished guest lecturers have included #1 writers, Grammy Winners and Nominees, Rock & Roll and Songwriters Hall of Fame Inductees, and inspiring industry thought leaders.
Students have ranged from those writing their first songs to multiple Grammy-Nominated Songwriters, from those playing their first open mics to multiple Grammy-Winning Artists, from Billboard charting artists to those writing the first songs they truly believed in.
The Songwriting School seeks to inspire, instruct, and empower people of all ages to create work that matters. It opened in 2009 at its Burbank location and offers a professional recording studio, as well as classes, lessons, and workshops year-round, on-campus and online: thesongwritingschool.com. ***During the pandemic, all classes are offered online in a fully interactive format.***
MENTIONS:
SINGING LESSONS:
- The critic is that part of us that has experienced expertise in the world and may have been a part of accomplishing that expertise herself.
- If we can get the critic out of the way for a little while and just teach it how to spot the interesting things, the artist is gonna get busy generating all kinds of stuff some of it will be interesting, some of it won’t, and the critic just gets practice spotting the things that interest us.
- If the critic can become diagnostic then suddenly it’s constructive.
- We’re wired to do amazing things — to look at situations and respond with something unique. That’s our fundamental state.
- What a songwriter has to learn to do is take things away so that the space remains, and in the space we get to feel the thing that the line is trying to say.
- Words will come and they may not even be the words you’ll settle on. They may not be the best words in the best order yet, but they’ll be words, and then your craft gives you the facility to examine the truth of whatever came out.
- In a co-write you bring what you have, you bring who you are, you open yourself to who the other person or people, and then you try to find the strongest ideas and give them a fighting chance of making a difference.
- Whatever you perceive to be your shortcomings and limitations are invitations for somebody else to uniquely enter your creative space and contribute their thing. When you operate that way you quit apologizing for what you aren’t. Then you just come with an enthusiasm for who and what you are and who and what they are… and then see how that works together.
- Your job in a co-write is to be the best listener in the room, and if you’re the best listener in the room, you’re in the business of handing the other person back their genius. When you proceed with that kind of presence you put everyone in the room in a state where they feel the permission to be bold and the faith that something just might come of this that could be transformative.
- We’re all seeking connection. Sometimes it’s to our purpose. Sometimes it’s to our voice — whether we’re singers or writers — it’s all to something that matters.
- Community is where authentic relationships begin and are maintained.
- What a great class in any arena does is it reshapes our relationship to an idea, to a skill, to an experience.
- Whatever it is that you love, attend to it. Love it with your time, and your attention and intention and when you do that it will give you the capacity to turn it in the light so that you can see it anew. We just might discover something that we might’ve felt, but not known and known, but not articulated, or maybe even articulated, but not truly felt.
Thanks for listening!
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Special thanks to Rob for joining us this week!