Why I Love Open Mic and The Songwriter's Challenge
The Songwriter's Challenge is in full swing, four weeks in, and it's pretty much all I think about anymore.
@Meno is the mastermind behind this incredible challenge. His generous offer to award a guitar to the winner has been a huge motivational force for the contestants. I believe that this Songwriter's Challenge will go down in Steem history. Literally hundreds of beautiful pieces of original music will have been created as result.
My Musical Story
I'd like to share a little about my background. I've never considered myself a songwriter until the last few months on Steemit. I didn't write songs at all. I wrote poems sometimes, but only for the last year or so. I studied music when I was a kid, and I've always had a stong interest in music, but if you asked me a year ago if I thought I would ever be a songwriter? Nope. Creativity works in strange ways, and I never imagined that something like Steemit would come into my life.
Years ago, I was an actor. I did musical theatre, dinner theatre, outdoor theatre, classical theatre. I was beginning to make a career (struggling moocher), when I left it behind completely for reasons I don't fully understand. I've told a lot of people a lot of different reasons why I left, but looking back now, it all boils down to confidence. I didn't have it.
I'm incredibly happy that my wife and I moved to the mountains, completely changing our lives so many years ago. My wife is @carrieallen. Follow her. She's awesome. I was living a basically art-free life for years, and comfortably. It felt like retirement, even though I still had to work for a living.
With Steemit, I noticed early on that the best way to get engagement (besides huge investments) is to participate in contests. I have made some great friends and connections through contests on Steemit, and I've won a good chunk of SBD as well. More importantly, I realized with these contests that people actually wanted to hear from me and support me. This kind of blew my mind. Once I knew that I had the incentivized support of the Steemit community, the creativity started flowing like nobody's business!
I have always had a somewhat manic artistic... thing. As in, When it rains, it pours. That's why I'm writing songs nearly every day now. Today I wrote two, including my entry in the Challenge. The #OpenMic contest has given me confidence, motivation, inspiration. I'm so grateful that it's difficult to express.
I thought about doing a sappy speech before my song, but decided making a separate post might be best. So consider this post my sappy speech. I even wrote a pretty sappy song for the Challenge this week, on the theme of Because We Can. Check out my entry here!
It really makes me feel good knowing you're inspired by this little thing of ours. That's the whole reason behind these contests to begin with. Getting people inspired and singing in this world is a beautiful thing.
Thanks for being part of Open Mic and inspiring us all.
Ain't no little thing. ;)
It gets me really excited for the next generation of Steemian musicians that come to the platform. They're gonna blow us away! Actually my wife @carrieallen and I are just finishing up a little meeting with an excellent local songwriter who is really excited to join Steemit. He even plans to bring others along! Finally doing a little recruiting.
Not that I'm a big fish, but it may not be a small pond much longer. :) Thanks for everything!
That's awesome!
One of the best ways I have found to recruit musicians to Steemit is to show them the trending page for the openmic tag.This usually gets their attention and is easy for them to understand.
If they are still reluctant, ask them to allow you to record them playing a song on your cell phone and permission to post it on your Steemit blog. Then show them the earning a week later.
Make them a deal. If they join and start posting you'll transfer the SBD from the original post to their new account. If they don't join then you keep it. This usually works pretty well.
That's awesome! You've clearly done this a few times. Luckily, our excitement was contagious. He's coming back on Monday with three more people that want to join!
I have also experienced Steemit rebooting my creativity nodes. Its a wonderful platform and this songwriting competition is the most exciting thing for me right now as well. I feel like too often creativity isn't nurtured in people or it becomes a thankless grind and it damages peoples spirit. Its so painful when its treated badly or when you lose your love for it and its so easily dropped because its often not valued in the same way as other skills. You can 'get away' with leaving it behind because although people miss it, they don't feel they need it, but THE MAGIC that it brings to our experience of life, the empowerment, its therapeutic qualities, the playfulness, the quality of relation it enables, all of these things are so important to me and I am very thankful to this community for providing such an incredible environment to share my expression in. Thanks for this post. Its nice to be inspired to write about how inspired I feel :)
Absolutely! I'm sure we all feel it. I'm definitely a lot happier when I'm creating. :)
That was rather nicely stated, Basil!
What a wonderful post, Chris! I am quite certain that many throughout the world who participate in the Open-Mic and Songwriters venues feel exactly the same way that you do! Therein lays the true beauty of it all! The Open-Mic and Songwriters’ platforms literally have the power to be truly life-changing in the most positive and enduring of ways. Thanks for being a part of it, Chris!
You're welcome, and thank you! ;)
I was just sharing the whole #openmic scene with a local musician yesterday. He's incredibly excited to join and bring other songwriting friends! We've actually got another meeting with him, and like three others on Monday. We haven't tried that hard to promote locally, but I should have known that people would eventually hear what we are doing and want to get in on it.
Exciting times! Let's ride that Steem wave of inspiration!
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