The Songwriter Reset
Day 1 + Day 2 Runsheet

• Open with the watercolor analogy — "I picked up painting because I love it. I'm not good. But I keep doing it." That's the spirit we need in this room.
• In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few. Most of you are walking in trying to be experts. We're going to unlearn that today.
• You and Matty: the only difference between us and you is we were stupid enough to try music instead of a career. We never stopped. We just stayed with it through the awkward parts.
• The adults in this room feel like they've earned the right to skip the fledgling stage. You haven't. Nobody does. The fledgling stage is where you find your voice.

• The frame: Lyric, melody, and chord structure must all communicate the same emotion. When one is pointing a different direction, the song breaks down. That's what we're diagnosing today.

Breakdown 1 — Guitar

• Simplicity: Are all your guitar choices pointing at the same emotion? Over-complicating forces the listener to work too hard to follow melody AND lyrics. They detach. And you detach too — you're so in your head about the playing you're not serving the song.
• Dynamic control: Does your playing create contrast and space? A listener who has never heard your song before will feel the chorus coming if you've built the dynamic correctly. If you stumble into it at the same volume — they won't know it's the chorus.
• Directing the artist/topliner: The way you play in the room is conducting the vocalist's performance. Flat guitar = flat vocal. If they can't feel where the chorus is, their melody won't lift. Your instrument is directing, whether you intend it to or not.

Breakdown 2 — Song Structure

• Cohesion — one emotion: Ask them in one word: what do you want me to feel in this song? If the answer has multiple clauses — "well, it's kind of about a few things..." — that's the diagnosis. The song doesn't know what it is yet.
• The one sentence test: Before locking a single lyric — write one sentence above each section. Verse 1: what are we setting up? Chorus: what is the song actually saying? Verse 2: what are we adding, not repeating? Bridge: what are we reframing? If those sentences don't lead to each other naturally, you're writing more than one song.
• Showing vs. telling: Especially for sync — stop trying to write Ulysses. The listener is already doing the work of following melody, chords, lyrics. A complicated story is too much. Be concise and clear. Immerse, don't narrate.

Breakdown 3 — Workflow

• Creating vs. editing: These are two separate jobs. They cannot happen at the same time. First pass: just get it out — verses, chorus, the whole shape. Second pass: look back, does it flow, does it serve the sentence you wrote?
• Recording too early: Opening the DAW before the song exists isn't producing — it's avoiding the write. Get the song written before you get near GarageBand.
• Co-write guardrails: When everyone's doing everything, nobody owns anything. Before the session starts, decide: who's the primary lyricist? Who holds melodic direction? Who's the gut-check voice — the one who asks "does this still serve the song?" Guardrails protect the song, not anyone's ego.
• Co-write silence is death: I sat in a write where two talented writers sat in silence for five minutes, both independently trying to figure out what to say. Don't let silence creep in. If you're in sync, it should take 15 minutes. Throw the idea out. You don't have to know if it's right — that's what the other writer is there for.

• Each song needs a job: Sync song or artistry song — those are different processes. If you're writing sync, you're a hired gun. If you're writing artistry, you're an artist. You can do both — but only one at a time, and you have to know which one you're doing.
• Direction determines process: If lyrics are the most important thing to you, sync might not be your path — half the time lyrics get omitted anyway. Know what you're actually writing for before you write a single note.
• The practice phase people skip: Gathering knowledge is not the same as honing skill. That hour you spend in a course? Go practice the chord voicings instead. Application and accountability — that's what moves you forward.
• Listening to more music: You write the same song over and over because your color palette is limited. The more music you take in — critically, with curiosity — the more colors you have to paint with. It doesn't dilute your artistry. It expands it.
• Critical listening: What's the difference between a flor tom and a snare? What's a tag vs. a refrain vs. a motif? Having this vocabulary lets you inspect and interrogate songs — not just consume them. That's how you get better faster.
• Reference tracks aren't copying: The most important thing in a reference is the structure. Start there. Plug your own things in. The vibe, the vocab, the production decisions — those are learnable by listening, not by avoiding.

• Pull up the Focus Filter on screen. Walk the assignment: pick the song you keep opening and closing. Name the breakdown. Apply the diagnostic question. Fix only that.
• Remind them: every song has a job. Even if that job is just getting the wheels turning — that's a valid job for a song. Not every song needs to be a finished, placed, streamed masterpiece to count.
• Close with the beginner's mind. "When we were young, we wrote terrible songs and we didn't care. That freedom is available to you right now — if you're willing to take it."

• Quick recap — ask the room: who went back to a stalled song? What did you find? Pull two or three answers from chat.
• Here's what we know happens: yesterday you had clarity. You named the thing. You knew what to do. But within a week, most people will be right back where they were — not because they're not talented, but because clarity without structure doesn't hold.
• Introduce the switching pattern in depth: I'm going to write songs → it's not working → I'll focus on the DAW → that's not working → pitching → not working → social media. Every pivot resets the clock. You need 90 days minimum to build a habit. You can't measure what you don't understand how to measure yet.

• Bring someone up who shared their diagnosis from Day 1. Start with: "Tell me about your stalled song in one sentence." Watch how hard that is. That's the teaching moment.
• Walk through the one sentence test live — Verse 1, Chorus, Verse 2. Let the room see how the framework actually works on a real piece of music, not a hypothetical.
• If it's a guitar breakdown — ask them to play it. Listen for dynamics. Is the verse smaller than the chorus? Is there contrast? Narrate what you're hearing in real time.
• If it's a structure breakdown — ask: what does your chorus promise? Do the verses earn it? Read the chorus lyric aloud without melody and ask: does this land on one emotion?
• Close the hotseat with: "This is what mentorship looks like. Not getting information — getting someone who can look into your specific process and say: here. This. Fix this."

• 90 days minimum: That's what it takes to build a habit. Not a week. Not a month of dabbling. Rob was with Matty for years before his first placement. That's not a failure story — that's how long it actually takes. The people who succeed are the ones who stayed.
• The time excuse: Most people say they don't have time. What they mean is they're using their old metric — trying to do everything alone, which takes hours. Editing a song with the right framework takes 30 minutes max. If you tell me you want this bad enough to be here, and you can't find 30 minutes — maybe the desire isn't what you thought.
• Motivation vs accountability: Motivation is insular. You're measuring your own progress, but if you're new, you don't know what to measure, when to measure, or how to measure. That's insane. Accountability is external. Someone looking into your process who can say: you're not an anomaly, this is normal, here's what to do next.
• The metric problem: If your metric of progress is a finished, streamed, placed song — every song you write is a failure. Change the metric. Practice songs count. Co-write warm-ups count. Finishing something that you'll never release counts. Application is the metric.
• The finite song illusion: People think they have a limited number of songs inside them. They don't — they just haven't listened to enough music. The more colors you take in, the more you have to paint with. You're not protecting some sacred internal reserve by writing less. You're depleting it.

• Acknowledge what they've done this weekend: they named their breakdown. They saw it worked on a real song. They understand why effort doesn't always equal progress.
• The question isn't whether they have talent. They do — that's not why talented writers get stuck. They get stuck because they're solving the wrong problem, switching too fast, and measuring progress with the wrong metric.
• What changes: having someone look into the process who can say "here — not there." That's what the next step looks like. Not more courses. Not more free events. Guided, specific, 90-day minimum work.
• Close with the beginner's mind one more time: "You don't have to be good at this yet. You just have to be willing to be bad at it long enough to get good."