Successful Musicians Podcast – Episode #48: The Psychology of Songwriting: Valuable Insights from Friedemann Findeisen

Successful Musicians Podcast Episode 48

Interviewee: Friedemann Findeisen

Interviewer: Jason Tonioli

Hey, this is Jason Tonioli. I’m a piano player that grew up believing it wasn’t possible to earn a living and support a family with music. I’ve proven that idea was wrong and I’ve met hundreds of other people who have found success with their music. This podcast features stories of musicians who have found their own personal version of success and fulfillment in both music and life. This podcast is meant to inspire musicians and help them believe in their abilities and motivate them to share their talents with others. This is the Successful Musicians Podcast. 

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Jason: Welcome to the podcast today. Our special guest is my friend, Friedemann Findeisen. I probably didn’t say that right because I don’t speak German, Friedemann, but we met in Costa Rica almost two years ago now. We were on a musician retreat with a bunch of cool people, and we had a blast down there. I wanted to bring you back on the podcast because, of anybody I’ve ever met in my career, you were the most prolific with songwriting. I just remember you taking a song and analyzing it in a way deeper than I’ve ever seen before. It was almost like I could see your wheels turning, like, ‘Okay, that’s what’s happening here.’ It was amazing to me. We had a lot of fun. I actually took away a few things from that, and I’ve tried to step back and think a little bit deeper about what’s actually happening in my songs. I thought it’d be fun to have you share with people. I know you’ve got a bachelor’s degree in music, right? You’ve been a teacher for, I think, eight or nine years now.

Friedemann: Yeah, since 2015. 

Jason: Okay, perfect. You’ve got a whole series. I know you’ve got a whole bunch of different courses, which we’ll talk a little bit about, but welcome. I’m excited. People that are listening to this, you guys are in for a treat because I hope you’re going to be able to take several things away from advice that this guy is going to give us.

Friedemann: Thanks so much, man. I really appreciate it. I love being here. Yeah, dude, Costa Rica was absolutely incredible. Definitely one of the highlights of my life, for sure. Thinking back to that, it’s always good times, man, for sure.

Jason: You live in Germany, though, right? I do. That’s home for you. You had an extra-long flight. I do remember you got in and you’d done just some brutal flight to get over there. We all felt bad for you as we were on this bus and you just wanted to be at the hotel in a bed, I’m sure. Anyway, we got another two-hour drive, sorry.

Friedemann: I had been awake for 25 hours and I threw up so much on that. That was terrible because I landed thinking like… because I try to stay awake because of the jetlag. Then I arrived and I thought, oh, finally, I’ve done it. I’m done. I’m here. Then we drove for another hour or so or maybe two hours. Yeah, that was hell. That was terrible.

Jason: But we made it through. We made up for it after we got you there, and it was awesome, right?

Let’s dive in. I like rewinding back to the beginning a little bit with musicians because the whole point of this podcast was, I wanted to do it for somebody who’s maybe young, maybe they’re a college student or in high school or maybe they just are curious about is music even a viable career path? There are so many different branches in music that I think the normal day I play piano and then become a piano teacher, that was the world that I grew up in, I think in music, or you can go teach in a school as a music teacher. There’s just so many paths that I don’t think most people that are practicing piano and complaining to their mom about practicing ever even have it crossed their mind. Let’s rewind all the way back. When you were younger, were you just super into music or how did you end up getting to where you were at?

Friedemann: Oh, yeah, I was. I mean, my mom made me play half an hour everyday -guitar. I started when I was five and didn’t really get into it for a while. I had to do jazz and stuff that I was really so into. Then when I was 15, I had my first band, and that’s when it really exploded for me because I found… Honestly, songwriting is what kept me alive in school because I was bullied a lot. Like most creative people, I was a bit different. For me, it was the long hair and the odd name, so I was bullied a lot. For me, songwriting was just the way out. It was a way to build confidence and to do something that I was really proud of. Yeah, for me, it was absolutely vital. I really feel like I wouldn’t have survived without making music and getting the opportunity to have a band that I was writing for, and every week I managed to write songs at home and get it to practice and see what they sound like with actual players. It’s an amazing experience that I hope everyone can still have at some point because it’s so useful to hear your songs in action.

Jason: Right. Well, I think one of the challenges I see, and I don’t know whether they call it the traditional classical way to bring people up in music, is your sheet music gets put in front of you and you’re told to play it. If you really get a stricter teacher, I feel like a lot of them will say, well, it’s got to do it. Look at all the way that Beethoven wanted this played. It takes a little bit of that creativity factor. I felt like sometimes I didn’t have permission to do the music the way I may have felt it versus what somebody else felt like, somebody felt like when they wrote it down there.

Friedemann: Yeah, totally. Classical musicians and jazz, pop musicians are very different kinds of people. They think about music completely differently and you can see it down to the music theory, down to the way they hear music, down to the way they treat music because it’s all based on classical music. It’s really all about performing the piece as it was meant to be played and doing the best possible job at it. It’s really about perfectionism, whereas popular in music like jazz and pop and rock and all those kinds of things, it’s really more about expression. It’s about taking the thing and making it your own. It’s way more about the individual, whereas classical music is really just about the piece and performing it as it was meant to be played.

Jason: I guess if you rewind the clock back 200 years or however many years between the Bach’s and the Beethoven’s, I have no doubt they played with emotion but depending on their mood, I almost am certain that they would have played it differently every time depending on what they were feeling like. I think there’s, not to discount classical players, but I do feel like there’s maybe some of that emotional connection to the original songwriters gets lost sometimes when you think you know what they were writing.

Friedemann: It’s an interesting question because I think like Mozart and composers like that, it was really like… Because there was popular music back then as well, which was way more fun, so to say but if you look at Mozart who wrote at court, it was really about the skill of writing. I’m not so sure if it was actually so much about fun as it was just about… Maybe it was, but it’s a difficult question to answer. I really feel like the emotion only comes into music when we go into romantic music and late Bach or early Beethoven and things like that. That’s when emotion really started to become a thing in music, I think.

Jason: Sometimes I’ve always wondered if it’d be just so fun to be a fly on the wall with some of those older, just watches like, okay, he wrote it this way, but that’s not actually how he even played it.

Friedemann: Yeah, totally. I mean, a lot of them weren’t even being played on equal-tempered piano, so it was playing on different instruments that would sound terrible to us nowadays.

Jason: Oh, yeah. You started writing. As you were in that band, take us down the road a little bit more. How did you end up where you are today?

Friedemann: Through a lot of twists and turns, but I ended up studying music. First, jazz guitar, which I heard was the thing to study if you can play jazz guitar, you can play anything. Although I was always more of a rock guy. I’ve always been into grunge and heavy stuff. That wasn’t really the thing for me. I did that for two years and then I quit. It wasn’t really for me. Also, it wasn’t really about creative playing. It was really more about getting the scales down and really learning how to do the stuff. I’m really happy I did it because it taught me a lot of things that otherwise never would have attempted to learn, like ear training and the music theory and getting really quick at that and getting the analytic mind for it. Then I went to the Netherlands to study media music, where I teach one day a week now as an ear training teacher and songwriting teacher. That’s when songwriting really exploded for me. That’s when I really started to see like, oh, hey, I am good at something because when I study jazz guitar, I felt like, this is a really interesting thing that happens to a lot of young musicians because when I was in my small circle in my Podunk town that I played guitar in when I was a teenager, I thought like, Wow, I’m the best guitarist I know. I’m pretty amazing. I’m pretty awesome. Then you study music and you’re like, oh, whoa, I’m bottom of the barrel, barely. I wondered how I even got into this study? You realize like, oh, man, there’s so many good players out there, and it puts things into perspective. It was a real damper on my confidence. Then coming to the Netherlands and realizing like, oh, hey, but I’m actually really good at songwriting and the whole creating music stuff, that’s something I’m really actually good at. That completely changed my experience. How I ended up here, because what I do now is I’m a songwriting teacher. At the end of my studies, I wrote a book called The Addiction Formula. Then two years later, it was the first time I first released it. In my first month, I sold two copies, which was disheartening because I really pushed it and tried all the marketing and all the stuff that you’re supposed to do, and it really didn’t do very well.

Then two years later, I’d been building and working on holistic songwriting on this platform. Then I finally had my breakthrough. I had a YouTube video that I put out that I worked on for two months, and it got several 10,000 views. All of a sudden, my book became a bestseller. Now it’s a best seller and the YouTube channel has 400,000 subscribers. I’ve done a Kickstarter in the meantime, which went really well and some other stuff. It’s all taken off from there, so to say. That was really the beginning of my career was that YouTube series that I did.

Jason: I have no doubt you probably intentionally thought about, okay, how can I monetize this or help sell this book? Most of the time, the musicians that are really good, half the time they don’t even bother to write the songs down, I feel like. A lot of that is just one and done, lost to the world because they don’t take the effort to do that. As I look back on my time and how I ended up starting to write music, I’d play stuff a lot of times at the piano, but it wasn’t until I actually sat down and had the goal of writing the sheet music out so I could play it again and again. It clicked for me. From an addiction standpoint, somebody if they didn’t know if we were talking about music, the addiction formula, you could go all kinds of different directions with that. For me, I would say I’ve become addicted to being able to write down enough of my music that then I could share it with people because I loved being able to come back and do it again and again and again but then I even love more and more hearing people, oh, my gosh, I liked that song. That was so great. Just being able to share it, it wasn’t even necessarily the money thing.

Friedemann: Oh, yeah, totally. The best thing about music is just I really feel like the process, that’s my favorite thing. All the marketing and the business side of things, that’s… I wouldn’t call it a necessary evil because what I learned after a couple of years was that it’s actually really creative as well, and it’s totally a way to express yourself as well. It’s way more fun than it sounds if you’re doing it well, like so many things. If you’re doing it badly, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s not fun. But the second you really start taking control of it and realize, oh, hey, I could do this, or I could do this, and there’s so many options that I have. It’s a way of expressing yourself in a way as well. But yeah, my favorite thing has always been making music and the writing of the songs. That’s my favorite thing. I was in a couple of bands since then, but I quit a band a couple of years ago for the single reason that I love the writing of the songs, but when it came to performing them live, I was like, Oh, yeah, I don’t really enjoy this. This is not my thing. I don’t like being on stages. I really love sitting in a room with people and writing songs together or even writing them by myself. That’s the thing I love most, is watching or hearing a song come together from nothing and at the end of a two-hour session. Do you have a song you can listen to? That’s the coolest feeling in the world to me.

Jason: With your classes that you’re teaching with songwriting, take me through a little bit. What are the steps you feel like people need to take and sometimes even probably overlook when it comes to writing songs?

Friedemann: Oh, gosh. There’s so much. 13:03 I feel like a big thing people miss is dealing with processes. We just released a course called The 24 Hours Song, which is about how to streamline your process, write songs quicker, better, and so you enjoy the writing process more. I think what so many beginning writers focus on is only skill. It’s only like, how do I write better melodies? How do I write better chord progressions, grooves, production, sounds, blah, blah, blah, blah, lyrics. That’s all important, but that’s all, in a sense, just prep work. It all prepares you for the actual session. When you sit down to write… I think my students sometimes think, this is part of the reason I created the course to dispel that myth, that I sit in front of my DAW with a big dictionary of musical terms and just be like, What should I do here? Okay, let’s look up this chord. What does this say? That it’s a very theoretical thing but 14:01 when I write, it’s super quick. I make decisions super fast because I have that theory so baked into my brain that I don’t have to think about it anymore. I don’t have to look it up anywhere. I don’t have to look up how to write a woodwind section or how to arrange a complicated four-part harmony setting or whatever. That’s all in here. And that’s the best part about it, is it’s flow. You learn the stuff, you practice the craft so that when you sit down to write, you can just write and it’s pure flow from start to finish and you can just go until it’s finished.

Jason: Got it. So if you could rewind back the clock back to when you were sitting in your college classes or that late teenager person, if you could give yourself some advice, what advice would you have?

Friedemann: To me, myself personally, it would be… 14:58 Everyone has their weak spots. For me, those weak spots that I see now were sound design or music production and lyrics. Being German, we don’t have the same connection to the English language that you do, of course. For me, I had to really relearn that. I even meet a lot of native speakers who haven’t yet learned that, I think, and who still think that lyrics are just a nice added bonus. It’s like the cherry on top, but it doesn’t do anything for the song, basically. There’s some truth to that depending on the genre, depending on the song, but it’s definitely more than a cherry on top. It could be so much more than just the cherry on top is what I’m saying. That was a really big point for me. On a larger scale, I would say, it would be to trust myself. That was a big thing I had to learn is if you think it’s good, it’s good. 15:50 You don’t have to check in with anyone. You don’t need to get the green light from music theory. Music theory is not there to give you any rules or things that you have to do. Music theory just is giving names to everything you can do. The deeper you get into music theory, the more you realize, Oh, yeah, I can do everything. It’s just that music theory, the deeper you get into it, the more it allows you to do. The more you understand the less rules there actually are you realize. Just trusting yourself.

If you hear something, you’re like, Oh, I think that’s cool. If it’s something that you don’t hear that often, don’t think like, Oh, that’s because it must be bad, but maybe it’s just because this is something new and original and maybe you should pursue that. I’m not saying that anything can be good. You still have to work on it to make it great. The hard work is figuring out how to distill it and to make it strong. That’s really the work, I think, as a songwriter, is to reiterate until it’s great. Everything has to start out, I really believe that, at a shit level. Everything has to be shit at the beginning in order for it to be great at the end. 17:02 You don’t try to write something perfect right away. You write something that’s bad, but is doing something that you haven’t seen before, and then you iterate on it over and over again until it’s perfect. That’s how the process works.

Jason: I’m just thinking of times I’ve been in the recording studio. I’ll go in as prepared as I can be. Sometimes you’re just in there trying to be as most efficient as you can. I think some of the most magical song moments and just songs in general, as I look back at the studio time, is when I’ve recorded something in, but then I’ve been open to, as a composer, musician, saying, Hey, is there anything you think I could do differently? Or did you feel like it’s made it to this point, but did Olivia just be like, Oh, that was perfect? I think when you take it out to people who are willing to give some good feedback, but then be able to have some thick skin and be able to self-critique yourself too. I see a lot of musicians where they think this is the way it is and they only know so much. I’m one of those that I don’t know all of these crazy chords. I have some music theory background, but when you get into all crazy, Ninja-level chord iterations, that’s just over my head. I play more, I like the sound of it, but couldn’t tell you exactly what the chord is.

The nine chord with whatever flat, where it gets really crazy. I don’t know, I think being willing and getting feedback is something that I would give myself advice on. Ask for it sooner than when you’re in the recording studio or when it’s too late. Do you see that a lot with artists when they come into studio sessions? Is there advice you have for people as they’re going through those iterations that can help them get… Are there questions you can ask that help with that?

Friedemann: What I do with artists when I produce them is just… Including myself, because everyone likes to spend a lot of time on parts and we love working on details before the song is finished. What I do now is I have a concept I call Freight Train Through, and it’s really about getting to the end of your song as quickly as you can. Really get the sketch out, sketch the section and then move on. Before you work it too much, finish the song because what often happens is you finish the song and then you realize, Oh, that section that I spent so much time on, it’s not really that good or it doesn’t actually work. It doesn’t make any sense with the rest of the song. Then you’ve wasted a lot of time on writing that section. Or you can’t figure out how to finish your song. Maybe the section you wrote is so big and so monumental, so epic, so early in your song that you can’t figure out where to go from there. Again, you’ve written yourself into a corner.

Whereas if you already know where your song is going and you know like, Okay, that’s going to be my finale so I have to build down from there and go backwards towards the beginning. It just helps you so much to figure out how you’re going to go about writing your song. I really like the concept, this is something Quincy Jones said. You start with pencil sketches. You get out the rough outlines. Then you do a little bit of watercolor, which you can still move around really easily. Then you do the oil paint on top of it at the end. That’s where you fix it to the paper. I think that’s really smart. It’s really in that watercolor stage of moving the paint around a lot. That’s massive. It makes such a big difference to approach music with that mindset of none of it is set in stone. I can still change anything. Any of these ideas that I have are just rough first ideas, and let’s figure out how it works together and then slowly build the quality up of all of those little elements until I’m sure everything is working. Working with fail-saves, checking yourself every once in a while and saying, Is this working? Is this fun? Does it work? Is it cohesive? Does it make sense? Does it tell a story? Am I enjoying what I’m hearing? And asking those questions over and over again, listening to the whole thing start to finish over and over again to get a sense for how it feels as a whole instead of just playing a four-bar loop over and over again until that’s perfect and then not knowing what to do with the rest of your song.

Jason: Right. Got you. Interesting. I guess if I was sitting in one of your songwriting classes and we’ll just use me as a piano example, I’m curious if I’ve got a brand new song, what are some of the questions you’d ask if you were trying to help somebody like me to evaluate a song and make it a little bit better?

Friedemann: Usually what I’d do is probably just listen to your song and then analyze what I think where your weak spots are, and then we just talk about that. That’s usually how I go about things because it’s so hard to set… People don’t know what their weak spots are. Everyone always wants to know how to write better hooks but that’s honestly rarely the problem. A lot of times I hear really great hooks. A lot of people are really able, especially producers, are really good at writing hooks, generally speaking but what they’re usually bad at is introducing those hooks. This is a common mistake or mistake or something I see that often doesn’t quite work, is that they have a great hook in their chorus, but their chorus doesn’t come across as a chorus. When their chorus hits, it doesn’t hit. It’s just like, Oh, and by the way, here’s another section. That’s what it feels like. The drama is missing in the song. It’s not building up to that moment. There’s no tension created towards that moment, no anticipation. There’s never a moment where the listener goes, Oh, I can’t wait for this to happen. I wonder what’s going to happen, or I can’t wait for that chorus to hit again.

It’s just like, Oh, okay, and here’s the chorus again. Okay, here’s another melody. It’s more like, And here’s something more, and here’s something more, and here’s something more rather than, and because of this, now this is going to happen. That’s what we want. We want that push to… We really want to feel like the song pulls you through. That’s what I mean by the addiction formula. It’s so addicting, so strong that once you turn it on, it’s impossible to turn it off again because the storytelling in it, that’s really what we’re using is psychological triggers that are also used in storytelling, is that the storytelling triggers are so strong that they pull you through from start to finish. That’s something I see quite often. That’s a really important formula to learn, I think, is the addiction formula. I think it’s really important to learn to listen to what the song tells you.

I feel like a lot of writers are… I hesitate saying I’m doing wrong, but to me, it seems sometimes, I think this is a mistake, is when they wrote a song, say you wrote a song two weeks ago. We’ve all had this problem. You return to the song and you’re like, Oh, this is not really that good. I have to rewrite this, or I’ll add some stuff to it, or you have a song that you initially liked and then you’re like, Oh, I have this new chord progression that I learned, or this new lyrical idea that I just had. I need to cram that into the song now. What you’re doing is, over time, you’re mutating your song, and it starts to get all this outgrowth, and it’s no longer recognizable as the original idea that you once had and so it kills the original song. 24:29 The thought I want to put out there for writers who are struggling with this, who are mutating their songs, who can’t get to a finish line, who don’t know when their song is finished, think about it like this. Instead of thinking of your songs as a diary that you keep writing into, that you need to update based on how you, yourself, have changed over the last two weeks, so you need to update your song to reflect your personal changes, that’s what we want. Instead of looking at it like that, don’t see it as a diary, see it as a diary entry. It’s your job to go back to that diary entry, reflect on what you were thinking the day you wrote that, and then to get that across as clearly and as powerfully as you possibly can.

So it’s about containing something that you felt back then. It’s not about adding your new perspective on it. We have that all the time. We wrote something that’s actually really strong and there’s a lot of tension and then we come back to it like, Well, I can’t say that. That’s embarrassing, or I don’t think that anymore. I was so stupid back then. We do that all the time. Those are usually the strongest songs, when you’re willing to be a little naked and to say something that has a little bit of attention to it, that has a little bit of guts to it. Those are the most exciting songs. The worst thing you could do would be to edit it back down to something that’s really this boring, average message. Instead of making it bigger, saying like, Oh, this is what I was thinking then. This is how I was feeling. I disagree with it now, but let’s really work that out because this is how I was feeling and this is my authentic self from that day. Let’s make that diary entry as strong as I possibly can.

Jason: I think what I’m hearing from you there is you talk about finding that story behind the music or how you felt. I find a lot of artists aren’t very good sometimes at sharing the stories behind their feelings or behind the songs. Taylor Swift is a great example. She’s got all these amazing songs. She’s like the biggest pop star of all time, but most of her songs come from some story and there’s something behind it, I think, that she uses to connect people to her music. I’ve been to a lot of great concerts, but a lot of times the artists just want to sing the song and they perform and it’s great and it’s fun and you dance around but I almost feel like they could connect better with that audience if they just take maybe a minute or two minutes even just setting up the song and just having a… personalizes it. What’s your thoughts there with… I mean, do you coach people to say, Hey, you need to find… Or you should write down the story behind that song before you just perform it? Or what do you find when it comes to.

Friedemann: Mental stories? Not really, actually. I actually think the idea of that songs need to tell a story is a little outdated, in the literal sense, because what I think a lot of people will misconstrue this when you say storytelling and songs is that a song should have a beginning and then something happens and then there is an ending, like The Killing of Georgene would be an example, or there’s some songs that really literally tell a story.

When I use the term storytelling, it’s really more in the sense of using psychological principles from storytelling, like anticipation, like gratification, like contrast, for example, to make your songs more engaging. That’s really what I mean. I think what you do live with those songs is something that I don’t really teach. That’s something I’m personally not very interested in because I don’t do a lot of live gigs. Personally, I agree with you. I love it when an artist tells me a little bit about their song. I don’t like it when they do it for every song, but one or two songs per concert, I think that’s really cool. I really enjoy hearing where that song is coming from.

When I hear a song, I feel like a story, a literal story in the lyrical sense can often get in the way of the song because if I know the resolution of the story, what’s the point of listening to it again, almost? Second, I already know what the punchline is. Do I need to listen to it again? I have some issues with that. It also forces me to really actively listen to the lyrics. I happen to be like so many people, I just mostly listen to the music, and there are so many other things in the song that I’m so interested in, that I only listen to, I only catch bits and pieces of the lyrics anyways when I hear a song for the first time.

Jason: I’m almost the same way. I do not hear the lyrics. If I really focus in, I can hear them, but I hear all the music that’s happening behind it. What’s the bass doing? What’s the violin? What’s the piano doing? I just feel like for me, that’s what I hear naturally, and I have to make an effort to… I’ll hear the notes the singers are singing, but I have no idea if they’re saying good or bad words or what the song is even about usually.

Friedemann: You’re a native speaker, which is, yeah, it’s crazy to me, but yeah.

Jason: I just hear the melodies. For me, music is music. I find that there’s not very many people that are weird like you and me where we don’t hear the words nearly as much as the music part. One of the last questions I’ve got, I’d love getting this input from different people who’ve been successful. You’ve got 400,000 subscribers on your YouTube channel and you’re helping a lot of musicians. In your mind, what is a successful musician? That’s a loaded topic and it’s been so fun to get the different takes from each person on what successful musicians mean to you.

Friedemann: To me, it means being able… First of all, passion needs to be there without the question. 30:34 Without passion, you can’t be successful. I really think so. Then I think it’s having a message, something that you want to communicate with people, and then being really good at communicating it in a way that people haven’t seen before.

Jason: Awesome. Cool.

Friedemann: For me, it’s really about having something to say and then also being good enough to actually say it because that’s also very hard to do well. In a way, it’s being a storyteller. 31:02 I think successes that other people might see as money or things like that or fame like that. I always think, I think this is Eben Pagan who said that, but 31:12 personal success comes before public success. I always focused on those. I’m always so much more interested in how you feel about this? How are you feeling about your music? Are you feeling it’s a success? If you feel it’s a success, then I think it has the potential to actually become an external success as well. I don’t think it’s possible to make something that becomes popular that people like, that people buy, if you don’t yourself 100,000 % believe in, if you don’t think that it’s the coolest thing you’ve ever heard, I don’t think anyone else will.

Jason: That’s great advice. Well, last question for you. What’s the best advice you feel like you’ve been given that comes to mind regarding a music career for you? If you got two, we’ll take two value bombs, too.

Friedemann: Okay. A big one for me. I have a very stressful life, meaning I’m not necessarily stressed, but I definitely have a lot of stuff on my plate at all times. There’s always a lot of things going on. Several projects at the same time that all need 100 % attention, and that can be very, very challenging. There are moments when I get overwhelmed and for me, I think the biggest thing in recent years has been a quote that I read, I think in Mastery, I’m not sure, Robert Green, I think it was, which is 32:42 you can’t do everything, but you can do one thing and then another. That’s what I tell myself whenever I get overwhelmed. I read that to myself and it instantly calms me down. You can’t do everything, but you can do one thing and then another.

Jason: That’s awesome. Very cool. Well, Friedemann, thank you for taking some time to just share with people. I know we were just out on your website looking. You’ve got some really great resources for people out there. We’ll put those in the show notes. Where’s the best place for people to go look you up and try to find you?

Friedemann: I think a good first touch point. We have my baby at a Holistic Songwriting Academy. That’s our flagship course, which has everything that I’ve figured out about writing music in the past. Well, I started doing this eight years ago, but I’ve really researched music way longer than that. This is just when I started teaching. It’s a subscription, so I feel as a first touchpoint, maybe that’s not the ideal one. We have a course called the 24-hour song, which you can buy as a standalone course on our website. The 24-hour song is about how to write songs faster, better, and so you really actually enjoy the process. This is what we talked about earlier. So skill and process. Skills are basically what all of HSA is about. It’s about teaching you how to write better lyrics or hooks or chords or groove or whatever, production. This course, this is really about the other half of things that is almost never looked at, which is that part. How do you actually not get crazy writing these songs? How do you find the time to write your songs? I’m a dad, we have a two-year-old and we share them 50-50, looking out over him. It can be very stressful, but I still manage to write songs. I’m writing a musical this week, for example. That’s one of the coolest things. I can write a musical in a week. That’s an amazing feeling. That’s our act, one of the musicals. That’s seven songs, I think, this week. I’m excited about that. It’s my favorite thing. The songs don’t suffer from that. I think the songs are actually better because I can write them fast. That power, that’s something I really like to give to people. I’ve given that… It’s just released, but I’ve actually been teaching that course for a couple of years now at different conservatories and universities, and it never fails to get a really strong reaction from people. A lot of people just go like, Oh, of course, it’s so obvious. So many of these things are actually really… Once you realize how easy it could be, you start thinking you’re crazy for having done it any differently over the past couple of years. I’m really excited about that. The 24-hour song is what I’d recommend as a first starting place.

Jason: Awesome. Well, if you’re listening, we’ll just put that right in the show notes so they’ve got a direct link. Friedemann, we need to get together more often. I would love to have you criticize or help me do better with my music. That’s one of those… Criticize is probably the wrong word. I don’t know if that translates how I’m meaning it.

Friedemann: Yeah, give feedback too. Yeah, just give feedback.

Jason: I love getting feedback and I know with your talent, you are so good at doing that. So if anybody’s looking for feedback, go research more about Friedemann and his courses, his stuff. I’m sure you have some level of coaching or teaching that you do even one on one on-on-occasions too. Awesome. Thanks so much.

Friedemann: As part of HSA, we have three weekly Zoom calls basically, and one of those is just giving feedback.

Jason: Oh, wow. That’s worth the money right there. Yeah, go check them out. Definitely one of the most talented people when it comes to this that I’ve ever met in my life. Thanks again for being on the show and taking time to share.

Friedemann: Thanks so much for the kind words and thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. It was great. Cheers, everyone.

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