It’s really hard to keep high standards in a co-writing session. Everyone in the session knows there’s a limited amount of time to make a song happen and so there’s a slant toward agreeability…because if you work for an entire afternoon and come out with a mediocre song, it feels better than having no song at all in the name of ‘we were trying to find something great’.
In a co-writing session you’re not just sifting through ideas, you’re also juggling the attitudes and emotions and energy of the room. There’s (at least) two games at play. The game of the song and the game of the people writing the song.
ie...Someone seems checked out and despondent so you incorporate one of their crappy ideas just to make them feel better. It happens all the time.
On the other hand…When you’re writing by yourself the exploring is endless. You can keep molding your bad ideas until they get better and better. No rush. No pressure or impatient on-lookers. You go into the abyss alone and follow the bread crumbs.
You don’t care how long it takes because the only goal is to create something good…while the goal of many co-writing sessions is to get something good enough to act like you have something good. You are more patient with yourself when you’re by yourself. You’re not annoyed by your own tinkering. And the freedom to tinker is what it takes.
You don’t have to go it alone…but when you do, you get back to just you and your imagination…and there’s a lot of great stuff there.
