How Can YOU Tell If Your Music Is GOOD?
Have you ever sat down to write some music, you come up with an idea, start adding more and more to it, and after hours of meticulous work, you sit back and think; “is this even any good”?
Well, let's see, you have just two possible categories of people you can ask if you music is good:
Yourself, and
Everybody else
Now, the catch in asking anybody else is that they are not qualified to judge. See, you know what you want to express, and if you succeeded in expressing it - other people don't!
(Now if you want to write a songs that sells, or a song that will score you a date, or a song that impresses your friends, that's another story... of course I'll be happy cover these three things in other videos if you request them...)
Other people may also have reasons that can bias their answer:
- They may not want to hurt your feelings.
- They may want to hurt your feelings (ever posted anything on YouTube?)
- They may want to flatter you
- etc.
So asking anybody else is not a good idea.
"Oh, Tommaso, are you about to tell me that I should look into my heart and deep down I know if the music I'm writing is good?"
... No.
Because, quite frankly, when you are creating something, then you are not objective about it at all. Indeed, even knowing what you wanted to express and if the songs succeed at that, you still may not have the faintest idea if the song is "good" or not.
Raise your hand if this happened to you...
So, what is the solution? How do you know if your music is any good?
Well, that I answer in the video below:
Now of course, if YOU want to be more confident about the songs that you write, it will of course be a massive help if you are knowledgable on chords and harmony.
To learn more about harmony on the guitar, check out my Complete Chord Mastery guitar course
Video Transcription
Tommaso Zillio 0:01
Hello internet so nice to see you. Let's say you write music. You could be a songwriter, you could you could write instrumental music, you could write the music for solo guitar, you could write music for orchestra or you can write the music for acoustic guitar and voice, it doesn't matter.
Okay, as long as you've write something, this video is for you. One of the problems that most writers and songwriters and composers have, it's to know if the music you're writing is good, or not.
Because I mean, we all want to know if the effort you're putting into music is actually bringing something good into the world, if you are actually writing music, that it's worth, to be listened, and worth to be written and played and performed and recorded and arranged and mastered, etc, etc. Okay, so how do you know, if you're writing good music? A student asked me exactly that. And this is my answer.
Speaker 1 1:06
I'm looking for ways how I can know when I'm creating a melody, that it's really a melody that sticks in the listeners ears and really nice catchy hook line.
Tommaso Zillio 1:18
They want to know how do we know? Yes, come on, are these good notes? And the answer is don't Great. Jazz Bass, okay. I told you I was able to get through even now. I'm gonna put more details into that. Okay, so the thing is that some people will tell you that you can use music theory to tell you if you're writing good music or not.
And those people are wrong. Simple as that, because the theory is there to help you write something but the ultimate judge if music is good or not, it's you and your listeners. Okay? Sometimes you're writing something and you genuinely do not know if it's good or not. Guess what? Nobody can give you an answer. Some people are gonna like it, they probably not gonna like it. But there is no such a thing as an ontologically. real measure of quality, okay, of the melody, okay.
The only way you can do is other people listen to it. Hopefully they give you constructive, constructive criticism, I value I like it, or I don't like it and then make up your mind about that. Just put it in the album and see how it goes, okay. But there is no way to while you are in the creative process to decide if something is objectively good or not. And it's really hard to describe objectively, okay, I'm not saying it's impossible, some things can be made objective. But it's hard to say if something is good or not.
You are in the same situation as every other musician who ever existed. Okay. Welcome to the club. Okay. Especially the thing is that, when you have this feeling, it could be something absolutely great. Or it could be worse, the giver of some traffic. But you never know. And the thing if you never take a risk, you risk losing all the great stuff you can ride. I'm actually more concerned when I write something and I know like, that's great. That's good.
Because more often than not, it means like, either it's a song somebody else has written or just writing it or I'm already used to it, or it's an old thing, or I'm just using cliche, gave live this immediate thing. Like if recognition is probably some for not all the time, but probably it's something that yeah, maybe I can even make him make it better than us. Okay. That's normal. That's normal. We've all been there, everybody who compose something and took it seriously. As eventually been in that situation.
Okay, you just have to take a mean, for lack of a better word, a leap of faith. Okay. And just trust that what is coming out from your compositional process is good. This is also why a number of people don't write music.
Have you ever wondered why why everybody else is not writing music? I mean, like, of course, we should write music. Obviously, we are writing what what else? That is life for me and if not more music, okay. All those people are not writing music. What's wrong with them? This is what's wrong with them.
I mean, I mean, maybe not just music, but any kind of art before not doing anything art wise or aesthetic wise, okay, they're not doing anything beautiful. What's wrong with them? They have crippling self doubt. And every time they do something, they don't know if it's good or not. So they stop. Well, I'd rather have you or me compose crap all our life than that. They're not even trying. Okay, that's right. Because at the end of the day, even just by chance, we're gonna hit on something good. We have to have fun, okay.
And more often than not actually what we write when we put in our heart and our soul and all our effort is going to be good and somebody's Unlike it, so the effort is worth it. Okay. But you cannot use music theory to certify a this song is good music theory certified stamp from a is not going to happen. People have been trying to use music theory this way. Some people are still trying to use music theory this way, if you write music for a competition, people are going to do that exactly that those people completely misunderstood what music is all about, okay, it's not checking all the boxes.
It's transmitting emotion. And sometimes you have to break the rules sometimes down. Sometimes you do. Okay. And sometimes. I mean, all this thing about music theory is existed so that people could make music. And to use it as a judge music is a perversion. The technical term have a perversion of the original intent, the thing that will not be part of the original, okay. Okay. So, compose. Have the courage of your notes.
Okay. Write it, publish it. If you notice our nobody ever compose a song that literally every human liked. Yeah. So okay, important in playing somebody like it. Because other people have counted. Everybody else doesn't get to vote. People like it. That doesn't your audiences, everybody who doesn't like it, they are totally free to get out of the room listening to something else. Okay. And that's the way it has to be.
And when you don't like something, get up in the room, don't stay there. And don't don't listen to the stuff you don't like it does. It's useless. I mean, how many people have you heard like, rap is not really music? Don't listen to it. Okay. Don't stay in the room. Don't talk about it. Turn off the radio, but just shut up. Some people like it. Same for every other kind of music. Okay, yeah. So that's the thing. There is no way to know. There is no way to know,
Speaker 1 7:05
not the answer I was hoping for, but I guess there isn't. I know looking for.
Tommaso Zillio 7:10
I know. That's not the answer you were looking for. But that's the answer we have. I mean, and I mean, the question you asked me, it's literally equivalent on how do you know if, if you live your life? Well? You tried. Okay. That's the only. I mean, it's this kind of big and tragic quest here. Okay, you can, but but that's what it is.
Music is an expression of your soul. Yes. At least you tried. Maybe Maybe you hit something great. Maybe you get recognized now, maybe you get recognized in 100 years, you will never know. But never, maybe you'll never get to recognize. We don't know. So first of all, have fun while doing what you're doing because that's what you get. Okay. And then for the rest. It has to be what is going to be the more or less. I know everybody will like a different answer. But every time you expose your soul, it's a risk.
And nobody can tell you if it's right or wrong. Yeah. All right. All right. Good. And with this existentialist answer, okay, we are ready to go to dinner. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.