How to Learn Something You Have Absolutely No Clue How to Be Great At?
I don’t mean in a general way, like “you don’t know how to learn.” We have way more tutorials now from sources like Google and YouTube. But beyond these tutorials—how do you execute, how do you internalize, and how long do you expose yourself to something to let “greatness” grow into you? That’s the part no one can teach you.
Fake it.
Usually, you won’t have a clue how to write a good song. But you can make a song. Steal some chord progressions and make up some lyrics with ChatGPT.
The essence is, you have to start from something you truly care about or feel excited about. Like me—I’m really moved by people who keep working even when they’re down on their luck. There’s fire in that situation, even though it’s pure bad luck.
Besides that, I’ve studied 10 songs, and there are parts I really like. So I try to combine them, use them. ChatGPT is really good at learning this kind of stuff.
And for the parts—like melody—that GPT and I may not be good at, I discuss them with my teacher.
With the intentional “fake it” approach, you get an integrated piece you can work on. I also learned that all I need is Chords → Groove → Melody → Lyrics, and that’s enough to make a song. This only came to me because I tried to “fake it.”
This approach gives me an opportunity to find a workflow that increases my songwriting quantity, which provides raw material to experiment with improving quality. Also, the “workflow” I learn in the process lets me reuse it and free up my time from the curse of social media—constant content creation. This gives me time to focus on how to improve instead of being stuck in the fear of “I want to be original, so I won’t steal anything.”
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