Comparison and Contribution (with Tero Potila)

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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