16 My Songwriting Process

When we begin our process of developing our own spiritual practice, we look for rituals and practices that we can use to feel a connection with Spirit. We actively seek ways to initiate that connection. Creativity is an important part of my spiritual practice and writing songs, especially songs that I hope communicate a sense of connection to others, is very powerful for me. I hope you enjoy this peak behind the creative curtain while I share my creative process of writing songs. This may be a bit technical so hang in there.  I truly  hope it's fun for you. :)

Transcript

 Hi, I'm Laura Pallatin. Welcome to the Practically Spiritual Show, where we take a practical approach to spirituality and create our own personal spiritual path.

In this episode of the podcast, I'm going to share with you my process for writing a song. I don't know if that automatically sounds like a spiritual endeavor, but for me, everything I create. Everything I do is part of my spiritual walk and my spiritual practice and writing songs certainly falls into that category, especially this one because I wrote it to share with you and with all the people that I get to meet and invite to sing along.

It's a positive, aspirational song that's uplifting and wonderful. I'm really excited to share it with you, so let's listen to the theme song and then we'll get right into it. 📍 



 My goal with everything I do, including creating art, writing books, songs, this podcast, everything is to help break people out of miserable, contradictory paradigms and paradoxes.    Keep us trapped in misery.    I know, I know. It's a bold, idealistic goal. I, I know. For as long as I can remember, this has been something that's important to me as an intuitive empath, I feel when people are miserable. I know when people are unhappy and there are so many aspects of our daily lives that make us miserable because we have bought into certain,  paradigms and paradoxes that we believe to be true simultaneously. Cognitive dissonance, holding two things to be true at the same time that cannot possibly actually both be true.

Although I was born an intuitive empath, I spent a lot of years trying to find a spiritual path within religion. I started to break this in my thirties and by my late thirties I was really on my own path. I've started to have some real awakenings.  Don't get me wrong, people who are in religion can definitely be on a spiritual path.

Unfortunately, religions often have a lot of these paradigms and paradoxes that keep us confused and unhappy and unable to fully realize our true spiritual nature. Especially if we're women,  almost without a doubt, if we're women, there are religions that recognize female gods, but until we can actually put aside a person's role in human reproduction and see that person for the person that they are, until we get to that point in any religion  we still have these paradoxes. We still have cognitive dissonance, so that's one of the reasons I talk about breaking religious indoctrination. I've seen people who are happy within their spiritual practice when it's religious and they are able to be in it. And still feel completely fulfilled. 

That was just impossible for me and for a lot of people I know, but not for everyone. So back to the reason I'm making this podcast. So since my late thirties, I have been following my inner knowing and gathering my tools, my particular set of skills, which has led me to explore and grow my talents without having an idea of how these wildly different skills could possibly come together to help people in the way my vision is driving me to do.

Recently I finally brought all my interests together into one mission that I honestly believe could reach people, could help free people. So my dream is that this podcast will touch people and I will be invited to speak and sing my songs, sell my books, and help people to find their own way, independent of cultural and religious indoctrination, that will lead people to personal fulfillment. It's a very big goal, and as with any lofty inspiration, the beginning is always the same. I'm putting one foot in front of the other.  

I've written a few songs that are uplifting and positive, but I wanted a new song that I write specifically as a sing-along song. Singing has such a powerful effect on us.  I thought it would be fun to ask my TikTok following to suggest words they would like to sing or hear sung to them. So thinking from my perspective as the performer, I'm gonna sing the verses and everybody else sings the chorus back to me. And I got so many suggestions from TikTok. Here's some of the words:  I am worthy of love. I'm a work of art. I am healing. I am grateful for this journey. I am whole.

There were a lot more responses, and so I wrote them all down in a book, and then I started writing the lyrics for the song. When I write a song, I start with the lyrics. A lot of people, I think most people start with the melody, but I've just always been a lyrics first person. So the first chorus, uh, of the song was, um, "special as a single flower. My uniqueness is my power. I am joy. I am love. I am strong. I am whole. I am perfect for my purpose, uniquely me spiritually free." 

And then the three verses. Um, first we, well, the first line is first we go within. Negate original sin, build our inner knowing, self-confidence growing. The second verse talks about building a community around ourselves.

The first line is we surround ourselves with love, a community as one. And then the third verse is talking about sending all this love and light out to the universe, out to all the other humans. So that first line is reach out from us, share light with the universe. The brighter we shine without fear, the more souls we draw near.

So that was the very first set of lyrics. And what's super fun about writing a song is, for me, it feels like a puzzle. So these lyrics that I have in front of me that I was just reading from, They don't have any chords because like I said, I write the lyrics first. Now, if you're not into music at all, a chord is three to five notes that sound good together.

And there are some rules about chords because some notes just don't sound good together. If you've ever seen somebody playing guitar, uh, the hand that's on the fretboard, that's the long stick. They are holding down notes and what they're holding down is sometimes multiples of the same note in different octaves.

So you can have an E that's a low E and a high E, right? And if you think of it on the piano, they have their fingers spread apart when they're playing. Those are chords also. So because I wrote this song as a sing-along song, I wanted to make the chorus as easy to follow as possible. So I wrote the song using the chords in the key of G.

So when I play it on my guitar, all the good, the chord shapes I will be using fit into the key of G. If you're really into music and you're gonna listen to the song at the end, you'll know that I put a capo on there because most people find it easier to sing along if there's a capo at the second fret. So that's what I chose.

I knew in the lyrics of my song that there was one, uh, set of lyrics in each verse that is about letting go. So it's the, um, Instead of building, its releasing. So I used a minor key for those, and basically what I did is just went through, uh, usually you start. Usually there are really no rules to writing a song. I think it's more interesting when you don't follow rules. However, when you're trying to invite other people to sing along, you really want the song to sound familiar and comfortable. So people are happy joining in, and that's what I did with this song. So I start with G and I end with G because that's what is familiar and comfortable for most people.

Once I had chosen my chord progression, which is the chords in the order that they're played for the song, I then started playing around with melody. So I sat down with my guitar, I strummed through the lyrics of the song, and I added variation.  As a rule, a songwriter chooses notes that are in the chord. That way, once again, everything sounds good together. Of course, I have to have the pencil handy because as I'm working on the song, it shifts a lot. 

It feels a lot like building a puzzle. You start out with an idea and grow from there. And I'm sure that people who write the music first also do this. Start with an idea, start with a little germ of an idea, and then grow it from there.

Okay. So at this point I have my lyrics and I have my chord progression, and I have the rough idea of what my melody is gonna sound like. And then comes the very meticulous work of taking the words from the page and turning them into lyrics that you can sing. 

I heard a song on the radio while I was driving the other day and I thought, oh my gosh, this song perfectly illustrates the process of taking spoken word and turning them into singing lyrics.

And this is something that I had to take into consideration when I wrote the part I wanted everyone to sing along with because, it isn't as simple as it sounds like I had the word spiritually free. Well, uh,  it's spelled spirit tuly, right? We don't say spirit tool, we say, Spiritually. And when you sing it, you break it down to, uh, my daughter did this for me.

Thank you, Rachel. Um, how did she spirah-ch-lee Spiritually, but when you hear it, it sounds right. Okay. So,  I was listening to the radio and I heard Jack Johnson's song, where did All the Good People go? And it occurred to me that,  what he does, how he changes the word so that it works musically is just brilliant.

So what we hear is where did all the good people go, right? That's the phrase that he's saying. But what he's really saying is, where did all duh da? And he doesn't say good. He uses the P in people to end the word. So he says, goo people go. You hear that song and you hear him saying the words, where did all the good people go or where'd all the good people go?

In reality, if you listen to it closely, that's not what he's saying, but you change lyrics so that it flows musically, and that is a very painstaking process. Fortunately, it's super rewarding, especially once you get down to having your song so complete that you're ready to share it with other people.

The other element for me, that takes a lot of time, As I sing the song over and over, I notice that some parts fit together better, that maybe in a one area it isn't as interesting as I'd like. So I add some embellishment, maybe a little trill, and  then I have to make notes or record it for myself because no matter how much I love an idea as it's flowing, if I don't record it escapes me, and then I'm disappointed because the idea I forgot is always so much more brilliant than the new one I come up with. 

 I was really fortunate to have a wonderful group of women sing this song for me last Sunday. What was really cool about it is I just started the song the Sunday before, so I wrote this song in a week, which I mean, I know people who  are accomplished songwriters write them in a moment. Write them in a day. But for me it's usually a couple of weeks. So coming up with an idea and having people sing it to me within a week of inventing it was.    Miraculous. It was amazing. And they changed the phrasing, which is fantastic because that was just how it was easier for them to sing it.

And as I've been saying all along, this song is all about inviting people in to sing it with me. So obviously I want it to be as accessible as possible.  I believe I can do a better job of recording the song and then inserting it into the podcast. Then I would do just playing it for you. So, Let's give that a listen.

  



 Well, that's my latest song. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you enjoyed listening to a podcast about my process for writing songs. And I really wanna say how much I appreciate you listening to the Practically Spiritual show. Every time you show up for me, there's really no point in making a podcast unless somebody's listening.

So, You're really the big part of this. I'm doing it 'cause it's fun and 'cause I really hope that I'm reaching people and like I said at the very beginning, helping people find their own spiritual path. Finding their own emotional freedom. If you enjoyed the podcast and you have friends that you think would enjoy it too, I would be so honored if you would let them know about it, reach out, and just share it with the people that you think would love it and would get something out of it.

If the platform that you listen to enables you to leave a review or like, or subscribe or follow, all of that stuff would really help me reach more people and achieve my goal of helping people. I'd love to hear from you. If you have an idea for this show. I make it very easy to find me. I made a website for the Practically Spiritual Show, ThePracticallySpiritualShow.com.

I also have a website for me and my art laurapallatin.com. If you enjoy reading, I've written Jane Street Cooperative Garden about a secret society of Wise women. I think you'd enjoy that. Or, uh, walk in your own Footsteps, which is a book for building the life that you wanna lead. 30 little bite-sized chapters.

I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, and I think that's it. Until next time, take care of yourselves. And remember... There is no them, there is only us.