Author: musicalitywrld

Do you ever see what other musicians are up to and feel intimidated? Like you could never do that. And if we’re talking about songwriting or composing or other creative musical activities, well, forget about it!

Today I want to share a short but powerful clip from Tero Potila’s recent masterclass here at Musical U, and he says one simple thing in this clip, which I think can change everything for you.

So yesterday we had our mini-interview with Tero. So if you missed that and you want to know more about him, his background, and why he’s someone to really pay attention to, on the topic of creativity and collaboration, definitely go back and listen to that one.

In the full masterclass, he went deep on everything related to creativity and collaboration, building a career around writing music. He talked about the practicalities, things like how to build your network the right way without any tacky pre-rehearsed spiel or tedious schmoozing. He also talked about the mindset, how to cultivate the best mental attitude towards your creativity, and also factor in the money side in the right way.

It was packed with great stories and really powerful insights, but there was one part that stood out the most to me, and that’s what I want to share with you today.

Just as he started to talk about collaborating, working with other people to write music, he said a few things, and one line in particular really hit home with me and with others on the call. I think it can shift everything for you if you’re creatively inclined, if you’ve wanted to get together with other musicians and come up with music together, but you felt at all nervous or sheepish or you don’t know if you have what it takes.

This one thing he says can have a huge difference. Here it is.

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Another big thing I’ve learned along the way is, especially if you’re doing this for fun, and music should always be done for fun, in my opinion, even when it’s work: It can be hurtful to compare yourself to others, you versus them.

Especially today, you know, with social media, I’m sure everyone’s now there. If I open my Instagram, I see a massive feed of absolutely amazing performances. This perfect looking guitar player playing the most awesome guitar lick ever. I find it’s not healthy to compare to that.

Even now that I’m doing this for a living, what I try to compare to is myself yesterday, or a month ago, or a year ago, or ten years ago.

Have I improved? And if I haven’t improved, what should I do about it? What can I do to get over? There has to be something blocking me from improving if I’ve been working on it, instead of comparing to someone else.

Like, yeah, sure. Once you do this professionally, there are certain things, you know you do need to compare to.

Like, let’s say you’re trying to produce a top-40-sounding pop song. Yeah, I do need to compare to those tracks, how those producers do it. I will pull up their YouTube videos. They usually give tips how they do it, and I will compare how my music compares to that.

But that’s more of a healthy kind of learning opportunity.

Comparing the kind of… At least I’m guilty of this still, if I hear another composer on Instagram post a snippet of what they’ve been working on, it’s easy to go “oh my god, that’s so much better than what I’ve done”.

Don’t focus on that. It doesn’t matter what they’ve done.

Focus on what you are doing now and what you can learn and push forward. I find that kind of switches it into, like, a positive instead of a negative.

I’ll talk about this a little bit, too, because this all relates to collaborating: Typical thoughts that probably everyone has when they get started.

“I’m not good enough.”

Or “oh, my god, how can I work with this co-writer? They’re so much better than me. They’ve done all these great songs, these massive hits. I’ve done nothing. I work in my bedroom. How can I work with this person?” Imposter Syndrome, as I already mentioned.

And then the other – this is very typical for everyone, myself included, for sure: Automatically assuming others are better than you and more talented, more experienced, more connected, their ideas are better. Especially the ideas part.

If you allow yourself to go through that process, like I described when I was a little kid learning this, and you just keep working on that craft, your ideas are just as good as anyone else’s.

I mean, your ideas are already as good as anyone else’s. But to dress them into music is the process you need to learn.

We all have our own unique experiences and emotions that we feel. And music is all about dressing that into music so that someone else can hear the music and connect to, and they feel the same emotion they connect to.

So the thought of someone else’s ideas being better is not true.

Without an exception, they’re not. They might be better describing their ideas, or they might be able to think of the more fitting idea for the situation that’s needed. But your ideas are just as valid and good.

We all have them. If you are able to think of creative things in your head and even just a little bit, dress it into some kind of musical idea, then your ideas are just as good.

Now it’s just a question of going to the gem of music. Learn the craft of how do I take this in my head and how do I describe this in music? And it could be, there’s many ways to go about it.

I’m a very technically minded person outside of my creative thinking. So for me, what helped most is learning music theory. Like going to theory classes and studying the books and really learning how it works, learning orchestration, learning history of music, like all the different reasons why music is structured the way it is now. And all that for my brain and way, I think that was most helpful.

It might be different for you. I have many co-writers who couldn’t name a note. They don’t know what a scale is. They’ve heard the word. They can barely play an instrument, but they write absolutely amazing music. So they just approach it differently.

But the craft of music, either way, is the process of crafting your thoughts and emotions into a musical description of it.

That is the key. And anyone can learn that.

It’s a gym you go to. This is kind of like, I always talk about this gym analogy because, you know, I’m a skinny guy. I will never be a bodybuilder. I’m not going to like, there’s Arnold Schwarzenegger type guys at my gym, and they’re bench pressing more than I could ever do. It doesn’t matter. I’m still getting better at the gym.

I’m comparing to myself. How good was I a month ago? Well, I’m better now because I’ve worked out really hard the whole month. That’s all that matters.

Same in music. If you focus on that instead of comparing to others, you will get better. And it’s amazing how fast you can get better, too.

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I’m curious, did you catch it? He said several really powerful things there. But the one thing that jumped out at me and really hit home with a lot of our members who were there with us, live on the masterclass, was:

Your ideas are as good as anyone else’s.

They’re already as good as anyone else’s. You just need to learn the process of how to express them in music. Or, I think he said, how to” dress them up” in music.

Your ideas are as good as anyone else’s. And that’s coming from a composer with a string of world class hits to his name.

It was super cool, after the masterclass, the following week, he was in with our Next Level gang, and what he did there really proved this point.

And just for context, in the Next Level program, it’s our top level program, but the people in there aren’t necessarily super expert. It’s not just for advanced musicians. And so we had a whole range of people participating, and the workshops he did with them were collaboration focused.

So the idea was they all brought something along, some musical idea, some little riff they’d recorded or something, and then he showed them live how to produce them into polished tracks and how to combine these ideas and so on. Anyway, it was this really cool collaborative thing, but it really demonstrated that each person was bringing their own ideas. And some of them had great instrument technique, and some of them didn’t. Some of them had really advanced theory, and some of them didn’t. But the ideas were what mattered.

And I loved that as an illustration and just kind of proving that point, that the idea is separate from how skilled you are at expressing it musically.

And for me, it feels very identity related. Like I referenced yesterday in the episode, you know, when I first started collaborating musically, I felt very nervous and sheepish and intimidated.

And if I had known this point that, you know, there were two separate things. One was “how good are my ideas?” which feels very personal, right? “How creative am I inside? Is the stuff I come up with any good” separate from “Am I as good as the other people expressing it musically? Have I had as much practice as them ‘in the gym’, as it were, getting it out through an instrument or in whatever way?”

If I’d understood those things could be separated, it would have relieved so much pressure. And I think if you believe that, if you really believe that, that your ideas are just as good as anyone else’s, doesn’t it just change everything when you think about collaborating? When you think about getting together in a room with people and sharing musical ideas?

I hope you will pick that up and run with it, especially if you’re someone who’s wanted to create music with other people but felt too nervous to. Just remember: my musical ideas are as good as anybody else’s.

So if you’re a member of Musical U, that full masterclass is waiting for you inside the members site, and it is packed with gems like that one. So do go check it out.

I’ll be back tomorrow with our next episode. Until then, cheers!

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If you’ve ever felt intimidated by songwriting or composing, then you are going to love this. Today I have an interview to share with you from our recent Guest Expert, composer Tero Potilo.

In our Meet The Team episode on Friday, with our Community Conductor Stewart Hilton, he mentioned he had got in touch with one of our Guest Experts to talk about collaboration and songwriting, and that was Tero.

So in this interview, we talk about the mindset and attitude you need to be musically creative. We talk about balancing financial needs and artistic creativity if you’re trying to make a career out of songwriting or composing. He shares the truly inspiring origin of his own creative pursuits, how he came to realize that he too could compose great music, and he also talks about the shift in perspective on songwriting that helped him see how he could continually improve at his art and his craft.

He also gave a little hint of the collaboration stuff he presented in his masterclass right after this interview, and I’ll be back tomorrow to share a little clip from that masterclass with you that I think you’re going to love. Please enjoy this mini interview with Tero Potila!

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Christopher: Today I’m joined by composer, songwriter, and producer Tero Potila.

Tero has had a fascinating and varied musical career so far, including co-writing hit K-pop songs, writing music for Red Bull, PGA golf, X-Box, and even scoring music for a Superbowl commercial and the 2018 Olympics.

We’re fortunate to have Tero in with us as our Guest Expert here at Musical U this month. He’s in coaching our Next Level members this coming week on collaboration, and today is presenting our monthly masterclass for all members on the topic of collaborating in music. Tero, welcome to the show!

Tero: Awesome, thank you, glad to be here.

Christopher: I would love to start with my favourite question to ask musicians, which is, what does musicality mean to you?

Tero: It’s a big question!

I guess to me personally, it means ability to connect to music. When you hear it emotionally, you feel what the writers felt when they had the music in mind and also ability to do the same the other way. So describe your ideas and emotional state with music and other people then able to connect to it through music.

That’s how I perceive it.

Christopher: Fantastic. I love that question because it’s remarkable the variety of answers we hear, and it brings out so much of each musicians or educators individual perspective.

I’m really keen to hear a little bit more about your own creative process and how you bring that emotional connection through in your music. But I’d love to go back a little bit to begin with because I think you have a particularly interesting story in that you started music very, very young, and you were clearly devoted to music from an early age, but you actually took your career in a different direction then and only a bit later made music your full time profession. So tell us a little bit about that backstory, how you evolved as a musician and how your career developed.

Tero: Yeah, so I was, when I was born, my dad was still teaching at a music institute, and he, he was very patient with kids. I have kids myself, and I have been unable to teach them so far. They’re two and five.

Anyways, he was very patient with children, and he was able to get me learning already. At very young age, I learned to play the clarinet, a few notes on it, two years old, that’s a picture of me playing, played my first gig with my dad at three years old and learned to read music at three years old. None of those things make you long term a better musician or something.

But it’s just I was already so interested that my dad saw the kind of the drive I had already for it. And so starting from that point, I was very much into all the music I heard around me. My dad’s big bands, choir practice, orchestra he played and all those different things he was involved in at the music institute.

And I was always at the concerts. And I remember listening to the orchestra when he’s playing a clarinet solo in a piece. I was so impressed, and I already knew that’s what I want to do.

And it just grew from there. I was able to just, like, daydream like a child daydreams about stuff. I was able to continue doing that to my adult life.

That, honestly is one of the key things, just being able to keep the let’s say the spark going from music, because as everybody who’s tried to make music more than a hobby would say, it is incredibly difficult to make any money from it. Definitely difficult to make a living from it, unless you just happen to get lucky.

And that’s very rare that just luck makes your career. It’s typically hard work, perseverance, and just sticking with it through thick and thin and that kind of, let’s say, imagination and being able to just zone out and be just obsessed with music kept that going. And I’ve always fallen back on that, even on the hard times and hard days. And that’s, that’s what laid out the career, really.

And along the way, as you move out of your parents and start your own life, you have to pay bills. And sometimes I was able to pay bills by touring with my bands and stuff. But, you know, overall, I still needed to do other work.

And, you know, I’m a tech nerd too, which seems to go well hand in hand with music nowadays, especially. So I got into programming, multimedia, online training, and actually created a thriving career in that too. And it’s not that I didn’t like it, I enjoyed that work too, but my heart wasn’t in it.

I still knew music is the career I’m going for. And so I was always doing that the same time I was, you know, when you’re young, single, live on your own, you got time. There’s no children who need your time or money.

So I was investing all my time and money into music, and I reached a point, I want to say, 16-17 years ago now, when I could not do both anymore, it was not possible. And if I was to make a full time move to music, I had to quit the day job. It’s as simple as that.

I wasn’t quite making the money for music, and so it was just trusting that this will work and just went for it. And overall, it has worked out.

There’s been, you know, it’s like being a freelancer in any business, but especially as unpredictable as music. There’s still interesting months sometimes I’m like, ooh, I’m raising a family on this. This is crazy, but it always works out. You just have to get back to, why am I doing this? Because I love music.

I go back to listening to something awesome, get inspired, get back into it, and then remember, what’s the alternative? It’s, you know, there’s nothing wrong with working in another career that pays your bills and provides for your family. That really is the honorable thing to do and everyone needs to do it.

However, if you’re able to go for what your passion is, it’s most days I’m not working and I’m doing 60 hours weeks regularly and I don’t feel like I’m working. I just go to my studio in the morning, come up with ideas, and then money shows up. It’s pretty incredible. And I’m actually very thankful I’ve done all the other careers along the way, and jobs.

You know, first of all, gives you a perspective of really appreciating, even on a hard day or a hard month, when you’re just making zero money and you’re like, oh, my God, how am I going to make this work? Gives you the drive and energy and the positive outlook that you need to find your next project.

If you get stuck in the negative mindset where you’re like, oh, my God, it’s not working, none of this is good enough, and you just let that cycle go, then you’re not going to find more work. I find that the, just like everything in life, you have to look at it from a positive angle. Then when you’re approaching people, they can feel your positive vibes, you know, especially us musicians, we can tell when someone’s very positive and they’re adding to your skillset rather than drawing from it.

And that’s how it’s always worked out for me. I just stay positive, go back to the main reason why am I even doing this? Especially when the business gets crazy.

And just focus on the love of music. As soon as you focus on money, the music starts sounding terrible and it’s kind of like lying. If you’re pretending, let’s say you’re writing a piece of music, that’s just because someone pays you a lot of money to do it, but you don’t enjoy making that kind of music.

It’s. It never works out. It just doesn’t.

So, um, yeah, that’s my backstory. And the tech career has ended up helping me a lot. Building my own studio, being able to do my own tech support, all kinds of benefits from it. And actually, I still keep in touch many friends from that industry as well. And it’s all around great.

I think that’s it. Other than, yeah, just every morning, wake up with that open mind, positive attitude for what I’m going to do today. That is key, I find.

Christopher: Fantastic, yeah, and definitely one thing I love about you, and one reason I’m really excited to have you present this masterclass today is that you have such experience and insight, both on the kind of practicalities of collaborating and having a career in terms of networking and relationships and that kind of thing.

And the psychology, as you’ve touched on there, with the positive mindset and the letting yourself daydream in an optimistic way. And also the creative side. Talk a little bit more about that creative side. How do you think about your creative process? You mentioned there the importance of not putting the money first and letting the music be the music.

How do you think about creativity? Or where did you develop your creativity along the way?

Tero: So, actually, I have a very interesting story for that. I was twelve years old, and I had not even thought about trying to create music yet. I just listened to music, learned music every day.

I was already studying at the music institute, also where my dad teaches, so I was learning music on piano, keyboards. I was starting to get into playing guitar, and I thought, you have to be just some crazy special person that I’m not that creates the music. I never even thought I could do it. Never even crossed my mind.

Then one day, this, I remember this was in the summer between school time off. So I walk over to my best friend’s house who lived across the street, and he also had gotten into playing guitar.

Really cool dude. And he was just like me, a regular guy who just got excited about rock music and started learning how to play guitar. So I walk over one morning and he’s like “hey, dude, you should sit down and listen to this. I wrote a song”.

I’m like “what? No way. Like, you wrote a song? Let’s hear it.”

And he played it, and, you know, it was like an instrumental on guitar with some cool chords and some lead parts that he was planning on and stuff like that. And I’m listening to him like, man, this is actually really good. And I could not believe it.

I went home after, I’m like, hmm, if he can write a song, he’s just like me. Like, I should be able to do it. And I went home and I just sat down with my guitar, closed the door, and I started trying, and it just… It was so difficult!

But eventually I came up with something that. Something that sparked more inspiration and felt good. And in the end, it was a. It was a decent song. I mean, nothing impressive, really, songwriting wise, but just a good start.

So I was super excited. I was able to write my first song. And that made me realize, actually, anyone can write a song.

You just need an idea, and then you just work on it, and you don’t actually even have to be good on your instrument to write a song. It helps if you’re good on an instrument, but you just need to know enough to get the idea out. At that point, I wasn’t thinking of, like, all these things, you know, putting in production and drums and bass and guitars and vocals.

I wasn’t even thinking about singing yet, but that is how it started, and I realized I can actually do this. So I started regularly doing it every day, and as I was doing it, I noticed it was getting easier. So a few weeks into it, I sit down with my guitar, and I’m like, wow, these ideas just keep coming.

Like, I remember how hard it was the first time. This isn’t that hard anymore. And later on, I got to learn, as I started studying this in school and I collaborated with others, I started realizing songwriting or composing is actually more of a craft than art.

At least I always imagined, like, probably most people who don’t write music, that you have to be in this special mood. You need something’s wrong in your life, and you bring that in, and you use that as an inspiration, and that can be true, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

You can actually have a perfectly happy, good life, and you can tap into a story you heard on TV. You talk to a friend who’s like, oh, man, I just broke up with my girlfriend, and he says something. A line.

You’re like, ah. Oh, okay. And you go home and you start working on that, and you can feel what they felt, because us humans, we can relate to each other’s emotions.

And so I’m like, oh, man, the world is full of ideas. I don’t actually have to torture myself necessarily. I mean, you know, life happens to us all, and we all have lots of things to write about from our own life as well.

But you can also write what you hear somewhere else, reading a book, anything. And so I started tapping into all kinds of things like that. And slowly, my styles, also of music that I started working on, were expanding, and, yeah, that’s how my creative process started, realizing that it’s kind of like going to the gym.

You don’t have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger to be good at the gym. Yes. If you want to be the best in the world, you have to be like him.

You can be a skinny guy like me. You can still go to the gym and work out, and you will get stronger. Right? Same with songwriting.

You focus on your strengths and keep making them stronger. And, you know, let’s say you’re not so strong in lyrics. Well, you know, you find a friend who’s really good in lyrics, you bring them in, let them do the lyrics, and you do the music.

And now you are bringing together a skillset that will most likely result in a better song than if you did it on your own. So that’s kind of how I learned the whole creative process on my own before I even really started studying. And then obviously going to school and studying more helps refine the process.

But really, it all comes down to that.

Christopher: Wonderful. And when you touched there on bringing other people into the process, I know that a lot of people watching or listening might have tensed up at the idea of, you know, working with someone else and sharing your work while it’s incomplete and so on, which is maybe a good point to ask you to share a little bit about what you’ll be covering in today’s masterclass for members. What are you going to be talking about?

Tero: So we’ll be talking about how to collaborate in music and how to both professionally and just for fun, I’ll cover all of it. But the big point of it is getting over your fears of doing it and getting over the imposter syndrome. Everyone has that.

I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t have that. They might not admit it, but they still have it. It’s just all in your head.

It’s crazy how much of this is in your head, especially because music is such a personal thing. You’re, even if you’re writing, let’s say you’re working on a song and the idea is based on a story you heard from someone else life, but it’s still you using your personal emotions, creating the music and putting it out there.

So now if you go to a collaborative situation, it’s a lot. It takes a lot to – I don’t want to call it safe, but, like, you are exposing yourself, you’re giving this idea out, and if someone shoots it down, it’s easy to take it personally.

So I’ll be talking a lot about those things and how to approach it in a way that, first of all, you sort of assuming that you have mutual respect with this person or people you’re working with in a session now, you don’t need to worry about it. If they say, well, I don’t really like that melody, can we try like this? So instead of thinking, oh, my God, he doesn’t like it, focus on, oh, yeah, let’s try your idea, let’s see where this goes. And just focus on the positive.

It’s a learning opportunity. That’s what collaborations end-to-end all about. It’s someone introducing ideas you would have never even thought.

And I mean, without an exception, every single collaboration I’ve ever done, the songs came out way better than I could have ever done. And it’s just, that’s the beauty of collaborating. So we’ll be talking a lot about that.

Christopher: Terrific. Well, I can’t wait. And I can see our members are already piling up in the waiting room, so we should wrap it up there.

If you’d like to learn more about Tero and his work, check out teropotila.com and we’ll have a link to that in the shownotes.

Tero, thank you for joining us for this quick pre-masterclass interview, and I hope to have you back on the show again soon.

Tero: Awesome. Thanks, Christopher!

———

Christopher: Wasn’t that cool? I loved getting a glimpse into how he thinks and how he built his career.

And that masterclass that followed was just fantastic because, like he said at the end there, you know, it’s hard enough for most of us to create and bring stuff out of ourselves with the vulnerability it involves, but to do it with other people is a whole other thing. And in the masterclass, he really, he just nailed it.

And so it was quite hard for me to pick, I wanted to share a clip with you guys, and it was quite hard to pick!

But there was one bit where he just said one sentence.

And, you know, as I watched the masterclass back at the time, it stirred up all of these memories for me of when I was first trying to collaborate musically. When I was maybe 14 or 15, I was playing in a band. We were trying to write songs, and it was so uncomfortable.

And it was funny because I was older than the other guys in the band, not by a lot, but a bit. And so generally, I wasn’t nervous around them. You know, the dynamic wasn’t that I felt like the newbie or anything, but when it came to creating stuff together and sharing ideas, I was just terrified, quite frankly.

And there was one sentence in Tarot’s masterclass where if I could go back in time and have him say that to me back then, it would have just completely eliminated that fear for me.

So I’m going to share that segment of the masterclass with you tomorrow, and I hope it will have the impact on you that it can, I think, for any creative musician who’s excited about the idea of collaborating, but maybe still feeling nervous.

So stay tuned for that coming up tomorrow. I will see you then. Cheers!

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