Why I, A Non-Musician, Wrote An Album

I like to push myself creatively.

Over the years, I’ve taken lessons in a variety of instruments including guitar, piano, and getting so good at Guitar Hero that I was winning city-wide tournaments at 10 years old. None of those really stuck (except for some reason I can still shred some Guitar Hero), but I still think of consuming and listening to music carefully and critically as a beloved hobby of mine. Recently, I’ve been infatuated with artists who are willing to open up and share stories of their personal struggles, which is different from the version of me who used to avoid that kind of soul-searching and sharing. I’ve been so interested in it, in fact, that I decided to go about some of it myself.

I wanted to write about something both relatable and true to me. As someone who suffers from sometimes severe anxiety, I decided that the collections of “songs” I was to put together would tell the story, from beginning to end, of when I have an anxiety attack. These attacks give me tunnel vision, like a vignette on a picture, but nothing is clear as everything is shaky and chaotic. The title of my album would be called A Vignette Swarming, which is an artistic description of one of my anxiety attacks.

I wrote song titles that allowed me to put my undeveloped songwriting skills to the test, such as the opening track that sets the stage “Storm’s Rolling In”, the revealing and admittedly depressing “Hitchhiker’s Thumb”, the sentimental “Keep The Good Ones Close”, and the happy ending “Not A Cloud In The Sky”. At 13 tracks in total, I was comfortable with the length of this project. I’m very familiar with basic song structure because I listen to so much music, so the only difficult part was artistically conveying the lyrics and ideas that I wanted to get across. I worked on this project on my phone from time to time, until eventually I had complete lyrics and a developed tune for every “song” on the project.

That’s where I am now. I have a fully written “album” of 13 tracks packed full of personal, introspective, and revealing lyrics and accompanying mental tunes. I also don’t have much knowledge as to how to put together a nice-sounding song, and certainly don’t have the singing voice I’d love to have, but maybe that will come one day (the instrumental part - certainly not the singing barring a miracle.)

This little project perhaps is not complete, but has been a very relaxing and transformative hobby for a couple of months. I encourage everyone to push themselves creatively, to make something out of nothing, and to tackle the biggest battles you fight every day head on, embracing them for what they are and making something beautiful out of them. Not every beast has to be defeated (some are perpetual, and that’s okay), but they should all help you grow in one way or another.

Maybe one day I’ll be sharing with you a Spotify link to a fully mixed and mastered project of mine… who knows. Maybe I will adapt these “songs” into short stories, I’m not sure. But I’m happy with where it is now, and I just wanted to share. Thanks for reading.