Following on from our last lesson on Songwriting 101 I promised that this time we would look in more depth at the first two of the four main elements of a successful pop song. To recap, these are the four elements I speak of:

Universal Themes
Strong Hooks
Audience-Friendly Structures
Radio-Friendly Production

Today we’ll only explore the concepts of Themes and Hooks as I don’t want to overload you with you information. The goal of this Online Classroom is to inform and inspire, not exhaust!

THEMES

In a nutshell, these are found in your lyrics. Sometimes the music can support the themes, for instance a song about being a proud drunken larrakin would not go so well with a gentle orchestral arrangement. An Irish pub band sound might suit the theme better. Likewise, a song of angry rebellion often suits rock, and songs of sensitive and/or chauvinistic seduction often suit RnB sounds. The first thing to consider here is what your song is actually about. There are only really three themes that people relate to, and if you study the lyrics carefully you’ll find that most of the great hits of the last fifty or more years fit into one or more of these three themes:

Love, Loss, and Partying.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a successful song that doesn’t fit into one of those. Why is it so? They are universally human themes. No one can deny that the strongest emotional states they have ever experienced have been during the processes of falling in or out of love, or when getting a bit tipsy and dancing to Loveshack down at the local watering hole! Obviously each of these themes can be explored with much more depth than I just did, love is a complicated thing, and your pain is deep like the ocean, and celebrating is your God-given right so let’s get this party started. See what I just did there? I expanded on the three basic themes to create the illusion of greater depth or even, perhaps, a shred of originality.

Whether or not you try really hard to break away from these themes (and I strongly suggest you explore your own experience of them rather than resist them), the first thing you need to be clear on is WHAT YOU ARE SINGING ABOUT (one final clue: it is probably either love, loss or partying…. just saying…).

HOOKS

You’ve no doubt heard this term before, and whether or not it has ever been explained to you I’m sure you have a sense that the hook is the greatly sought after and oh so mysterious holy grail of hit-making. Truth be told, a hook is not just a songwriting device, it is prevalent in all of the arts including the written word, visual artists, and most especially in film making and advertising. In music a hook is simply a musical or lyrical device that grabs the attention of the audience quickly and lodges itself firmly in the listener’s brain, creating an almost haunting effect as it resounds long after the song has finished. Easy right? Alas, it is a difficult and sometimes unpredictable pot of gold at the end of the songwriting rainbow.

Lyrical hooks are pretty important as they link your musical ideas to your themes. Every hit song has one. It’s the big line of the chorus (usually) that everyone in the pub bursts into singing together, loudly and proudly because they know the words of that part (and often ONLY that part). That is what makes it a lyrical hook – it’s memorable, even to a bunch of drunk folk.

Take Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” (again). Every pub gig I have ever played (and believe me I’ve played more than a few) this song absolutely goes off when we play it, and if we don’t play it, it most certainly gets requested. Come the chorus, every person in the venue is roaring a-melodically “you my…. brown eyed girl… do you remember when, we used to sing…. SHA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LALA DE DA…” and so on. Bless Mister Morrison, he didn’t need to use anything resembling well structured language to create one of the great lyrical hooks of the 20th Century. I’m sure you will quickly work out what the lyrical hook of any chosen pop song is.

The key to creating one yourself is simplicity. Choosing to say “Ooh baby I love your way” is much more hooky than choosing words with the same meaning, and perhaps more depth, but less charm. For instance: “Ooh baby, the things that you do make me realise that you are a really special person in my life and I am very impressed by your uniqueness and beauty… every day… heeyyyy”. Not quite as punchy! To find the ideal lyrical hook, you need to go back to your THEMES, and if you’ve already written a page of lyrics that comprise your verses and perhaps your bridge, clues about what you’re really on about will undoubtedly be in here. If your song sticks to one of the above common themes, chances are it has some amount of direction and flow in the lyrics and from that you can create a natural lyrical hook.

For instance, I recently wrote a song whose lyrical/melodic hook had not yet presented itself to me. The verses read like this:

You’ve got a lot of nerve showing your face ’round here
To get another serve of my affection
You’ve been safe and sound, I’ve been here working
Just to find solid ground after shaking you

I see you standing there hoping for a handout but it’s not fair
I ain’t gonna give it to you, no.

By the look in your eye I’d say you’re lonely
Babe you try and try, but where is your truth?

I see you standing there, I gave you everything don’t that make us square?
I ain’t gonna give you no more.

So although I had already fleshed out my structure and some of my production (more on these in the next lesson), I hadn’t yet created a hook, lyrical or otherwise, because I hadn’t yet read back over my lyrics and gotten to the bottom of the themes. As it turns out, rather obviously from what you read about, this song is about loss, specifically the story of an ex-lover reappearing to ask for more after they’ve already dished out a feast of hurt. Naturally the lyrics are loaded with anger and resentment, so the lyrical hook would need to reflect this as simply and universally as possible.

What I came up with very quickly after considering the theme of the song was this:

I’m all worn down,
You won’t leave me,
While you run around,
You freely bleed me.

Now, from reading the words alone it is difficult to get a sense of how those words add up to a hook, so I will put the song in a player below for you to listen to and connect with. With any luck this song will be a single released at some point, but the version below is just the demo as it currently stands at the time of writing this lesson!

All Worn Down (Demo) by The Quick Brown Fox

To boil down what makes the chorus a lyrical hook, it is simple and uncluttered. There are only four words per line and they are in a typical ABAB rhyming pattern. The melody also follows the same ABAB pattern, so there is enough repetition melodically to make up for the fact that over those four lines the lyrics are constantly changing. The basic lyrical idea is a metaphor of being physical worn down like an old pair of shoes or tyres whilst the “enemy” in the song is freely roaming unhindered by such deep feelings of pain and remorse. To break it down even more, the lyrics say “I’m hurt because of you” and that is a feeling that most living humans can relate to. The create a lyrical hook that says this much in just 16 words is definitely something to strive for. Now its arrogant of me to say that this song is THE way to write, because its certainly not yet a hit, but I wanted to share it so you get an understand of the process of finding the natural hook of a song, and that is an insight I cannot offer when discussing Van Morrison or Peter Frampton and how they write.

This brings us very naturally to the MUSICAL HOOK. This concept is just as, if not more important than the lyrical hook. Music (without words) connects with us on a very primal and visceral level. Rhythms, melodies and patterns within those are inherent to nature and our understanding of our surroundings and the experience of life, so when a melody or rhythm conjures feelings of nostalgia, elation, depression, excitement, or even just foot tapping, we are onto something good as a songwriter. Everyone responds differently to different musical stimuli, but it is clear that not all musical hooks are created equal.

Musical hooks most often exist as the melody that carries the lyrical hook of a song, but sometimes they are a guitar riff (eg. “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC), a keyboard line (eg. “Jump” by Van Halen), a sax solo (eg. “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty) or bass line (eg. “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson). Some great songs have a combination of these things leading to multiple hooks. Going back to our prime example of “Brown Eyed Girl”, the opening guitar riff is instantly recognisable to all and can even be sung along with or mimed by the air-guitarists out there. Then the vocals provide several sing-along hooks throughout the short and sweet party hit.

Nobody really knows exactly what makes a musical hook, but we know it when we hear it, and I still maintain that like with lyrical hooks and even the themes of a song, simplicity is key and only through keeping it simple and elegant can we open up the appeal of a song to a more universal audience. There will always be a place for impressive, virtuosic or even intellectual musicianship and composition in art music and pop music alike, but if a song does not have at least one passage of simple and elegant hookery it has little chance of attaining hit status. The hook is the touchstone of a song through which the audience is reminded of the fundamental themes and the feeling the writer intends to convey, which is why the chorus is often repeated 2 to 6 times in an average pop song.

Take some time to consider the hooks of your favourite pop songs. How quickly can you recognise them when the song comes on the radio? How easily can you sing along with the vocals or the instrumental hook? Think about your own songs. How can your themes be clarified and made more universal? How can your hooks be stronger and simpler?

In our next lesson we’ll take a look at the remaining two elements of successful songs – the structure and the production – and we’ll explore why a solid and audience-friendly structure is the make-or-break of a song and why production is the icing on the cake that can really get your song noticed.

Until then happy writing, be well, be inspired and be empowered to stay active in pursuit of your BIG PICTURE! I hope your first 30-day challenge is going well and you have your second list already lined up to push you closer to success in your 12-month goal!

Love and much respect to you,

James Higgins

Director and founder of J.Fox Soul

The first few lessons have been quite fundamental and some of you may have been wondering when the heck I’m planning to get to some MUSIC specific mentoring here in the Online Classroom. Breathe easy friends, because that time has already come. Before I get into the first of these practical lessons I want to remind you all of the importance of starting this course at the beginning if you want to get the most out of it. Each lesson from here on will be completely stand-alone, but the first four lessons set you up with tools (and a few terms) that will help you fit everything else taught here, and indeed everything you learn elsewhere, into your BIG PICTURE, thus enabling you to take some really valuable actions towards achieving your dreams.

Many if not most of you will consider yourselves to be songwriters. To those of you who don’t fit that label, I suggest you read this lesson anyway for the simple reason that knowledge is power, and even if you do not intend to ever enter the world of writing original songs, understanding the process and perhaps the motivation of those who do live in that world will empower you and probably help you build a better network!

The reason I start with the subject of songwriting is the same reason I started this whole course with goal-setting. You have to start with the fundamentals! I created J.Fox Soul to be a community of all kinds of modern musicians, but the truth is that my experience, expertise and interest lies in modern music and no other kind. Sure, I studied the classics through High School and University and I even teach a fair bit of western classical music theory in my day-to-day mentoring work, but at my core I am a songwriter, and to whittle me down even more I write POP SONGS.

Many of you would have heard my songs already through my solo act The Quick Brown and my band Soul Continuum (formerly Nude Continuum). I’ve collaborated with a lot of artists in different genres too, so you might have heard my work and not even know that I was involved! Perhaps at first listen you might not think that my songs could or should be described as pop, but allow me to explain why I label my work so:

Pop simply means POPULAR, which means that it fits the conventions and “norms” set out by no one rulebook, but the consensus of popularity (best measured by sales – what the people choose to spend their hard-earned pay on for entertainment). This concept of popular music is so measurable and traceable back to its origins that the informed few who live at the cutting edge of the industry possess a formula to produce to hit after hit after hit. There’s a reason why people are able to mash-up every top 40 hit of a calendar year into one eerily natural sounding YouTube meme – they all share the same structural form, they are all based on the same type of scale, and many of them (and I mean MANY of them) follow the same basic chord progression.

So if we were to break down and map out the formula of Lady Gaga’s latest five hits, along with the last five produced by RedOne and Timberland, we still would not have a hit in our hands. This is because hit-making is about 30% songwriting, and 70% marketing. Behind every major label artist is a marketing machine, and the star power alone of someone like Gaga is a self-propelling force of sheer selling power.

Whether your goal as a songwriter is to make the next number one Billboard hit and make a squillion dollars, or simply to express yourself, it is important to realise that the reason songwriting is fundamental to the music industry is that, to put it simply, without songs there would be no music industry at all. Singers come and go, we know this. Bands are big today, then tomorrow’s breakfast. There are very few artists who know serious longevity in their careers, however a truly classic song carries timeless appeal and will move, inspire and delight people for decades if not centuries after it is written (case in point Mozart, Beethoven, Bach). With today’s highly structured and monetized music industry, this means songwriters can enjoy passive income for the rest of their lives if they write a hit.

The B-52s weren’t on the scene for that long, but I’m sure from the undying popularity of their song “Loveshack” they would all still be quite financially comfortable in their retirement (probably somewhere near a lovely surf beach).

There are also plenty of songwriters who only ever wrote one song, but it managed to get in the hands of the right artist, publishing company or film producer that put it in a huge spotlight such that, again, the songwriter was able to retire. Songs have a wonderful way of being the most exploitable commodity in the music industry. A recording can only ever be used as permitted by the owner of the masters, but a song can be covered by countless other artists, used in movie soundtracks, jukeboxes, DJ remixes and mashups, gym class routine music, and all of these mediums are quite likely to generate ongoing income for the composer of the song.

So regardless of whether or not you have the great Gaga-style marketing machine behind you, it is a truly worthy goal to become the best songwriter you can be and create a body of work that is impressive and has potential for “timeless appeal”. Songs like “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison, “Living on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi and “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang are prime examples of songs that people never get tired of hearing. Each of them is about ordinary every day life. The first is about growing up and reminiscing about childhood love, the second is about the daily struggle of life as a hard-working young couple, the third is about, for want of a more detailed analysis, celebrating. Everyone can relate to all of these things. Thematically they are already winners. That is then supported by strong hooks, audience-friendly structures, and radio-friendly production.

We’re going to look at these four aspects of a song to get a sense of how to create a winner. Keep in mind that what I am teaching here is not how to express yourself, that is something only you know how to do. If you are looking to create great art that is free of all boundaries and commercial consideration, then good for you! I hope you still find some wisdom in this lesson, but I want you to understand that in the spirit of J.Fox Soul being a community of musicians who support and appreciate each other, I am committed to teaching others to create music as a source of connection, so “pop” music is the perfect form in which to express yourself AND connect with the maximum possible audience. With that in mind, let’s again break down the elements of a successful pop song:

Universal Themes
Strong Hooks
Audience-Friendly Structures
Radio-Friendly Production

We’ll leave it there for now, as I want you to take some time to consider the following:

What are your five favourite pop songs of all time? What is it about them that appeals to you? If you were to briefly analyse them, what could you describe about their themes, hooks, structures and production that make them important and enjoyable for you?

In our next lesson we will start to explore the concepts of Themes and Hooks in greater depth, and provide you with some tools and concepts to shape your song ideas into catchy and appealing potential hits.

Until next time, love and much respect to you!

James Higgins

Director and founder of J.Fox Soul

Alright, so in the first three lessons I wrote a lot about the setting of goals, and mark my words when I say that getting that process right is where most people fail and then later wonder why their actions don’t yield the kind of the results they had hoped. Goals are the foundations on which we stand and the compass we follow when we inevitably (and frequently) get lost in the jungle of the music industry (or whatever field you are aiming to excel in).

At this point I’m going to assume that you’ve read the earlier lessons about BIG PICTURE THINKING, CHALLENGING YOURSELF TO SUCCEED, and CLARIFYING YOUR GOALS. If you haven’t, just click on those titles to go back and read them. It’s fundamental stuff and you’ll be grateful that you did!

So now that you’ve dreamt up and written out (or drawn) your BIG PICTURE, you’ve worked out what this next 12 months is going to be about and how that relates and leads to your ultimate dreams, AND you’ve created a list of a few challenges to undertake over the next 30 days… now what?

Now is the time for action, this first month is going to be a real test for you. It’s so easy to set challenges, write them down, and then just totally bomb out and not even attempt them. This month is going to be the month that you have to ask yourself on a daily basis: “How much do I really want this?”. If your answer is anything less than “More than anything I have ever wanted in my whole life”, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

I mean, seriously, if you have honestly sat down and visualised your BIG PICTURE then you already have an enormous advantage over most of the human race – you know exactly what you want. If you tried to come up with that picture of perfection and nothing came to you, then you should probably spend some more time on that first lesson. And if you’re really stuck, I’d like you to send me an email (use the CONTACT form at the bottom of this page) and tell me what’s going on or where you’re getting stuck, I’d be happy to coach you through the process.

Most of you will have that big picture in your mind, and many of you would have had it there long before I told you to create it. It’s important that you can remind yourself about the details and the feelings associated with this big picture as often as it takes to stay motivated. Keep your written story close by, or make photocopies of the drawing you made and keep them on the fridge, the bathroom wall, the office cubicle. Anytime you feel a sense of doubt, exhaustion, hopelessness, or just forgetfulness, immerse yourself in that vision one more time. If it really is your dream life you see, then as soon as you’re back there in your mind, you will undoubtedly feel waves of inspiration, motivation, passion and self-belief.

THAT IS THE MOMENT TO ACT. Over time you’ll learn ways to put yourself back in that headspace at will, but for now it is important to seize the moment and take an action while you’re thinking about it and feeling motivated.

To give an example, one of my challenges for this month was daily meditation. Sitting still, eyes closed and taking controlled, steady breaths whilst letting my mind wander freely without fixating on any one thing. This is indeed a challenge for me, as it would be for anyone who is not an experienced meditator. So challenging was the notion of sitting down and NOT DOING ANYTHING for a little while, that I totally skipped it for the first four days of the month. Each night I’d crawl into bed thinking “oh damn, I forgot to meditate today!”, fully knowing that I was lying to myself. I didn’t forget at all, I simply put it off. In fact, over each of those 4 days there were at least five times that the meditation challenge entered my thoughts and rather than seizing the moment and moving away from the computer, or studio console, or wherever I was working, I just said to myself “Oh yeah, definitely do that later”.

A little secret about life: LATER NEVER COMES.

Today it turned around for me. I hadn’t yet left for the studio to start my mentoring sessions for the day, and the weather was just beautiful. I was looking at a desk in the shed that I was considering taking to my studio when I suddenly remembered my choice to spend 10 minutes a day in meditation. Instantly I dropped everything and said to my wife and mother-in-law “I need to meditate” and, as if possessed, I walked directly over to a wooden bench in the sunshine under a huge gum tree, sat down with my eyes closed and took a deep… long… calming breath. Ten minutes later I was in a state of placid bliss. When I opened my eyes I was overwhelmed by the colour that burst forth into my skull, and although I had not fixated on too many single thoughts whilst silently sitting, the first thing that happened when I came back up was all of my ideas, visions, possibilities that normally run through my brain like demons from Pandora’s box, all came into sharp focus. I knew exactly what I wanted out of the day ahead and with more grace and peace than I normally carry, I went about my day and had a fantastic one.

In 4 days of putting off my meditation for fear of losing flow in my work, I deprived myself of a state of so much focus and clarity that I would have achieved more in 1 of those days than I did in all of them put together.

My point here is not to shove meditation down your throat as the answer to everything, it was just MY answer in that moment and, especially after the instant gratification of my act of INTEGRITY today, I know with absolute confidence that I will meditate again tomorrow, and every day left in this month. That is one of my five challenges and I feel like it is well in hand, but only because on the 5th day I decided to take immediate action when I was motivated instead of waiting for that “perfect” time.

NOW IS THE PERFECT TIME.

Perhaps reading this has brought to mind the areas where you are currently not taking action towards your own 30-day challenge. To be kind, I will stop writing now so that you can drop everything and take an action that sets you back on the path towards your dreams coming true. By the time you get back, the next lesson might be up.

Go on, right now. Go!

Love and much respect

James Higgins

Director and founder of J.Fox Soul

A few people got in touch with me after the last lesson saying that their brains were ticking on overload with this new information but that they needed help creating a link between their big picture (lifelong goals, if you will) and their more immediate plans of what they want to achieve this month.

If you think of the whole process as reverse engineering then it makes more sense. You want to reinvent the iPad, so you buy an already completed iPad and take it apart (don’t try this at home if you want continued warranty protection from Apple!). You study the components that make up the completed iPad and you learn how they fit together. Then, you strip the whole thing down to individual parts, and rather than trying to build the WHOLE iPad in one go, you start systematically recreating each component so that eventually you have remade every single part. Then, because you could see at the beginning how they fit together, you just click all the parts back in and voila, you have a new and hopefully improved iPad.

That simple? You can bet you’re ass it is not. The likely reality is what you will end up with is an object that looks like an iPad, but in fact does not work at all. Why? There are two reasons for this. Firstly, you were copying someone else’s design, and this is a recipe for disaster. The original designers of the iPad spent their whole lives learning how this technology works and how to design, construct and improve upon their own earlier designs. For you to come in, a rookie, and try to improve upon something with so many years in the making is arrogant at best, and at worst totally illegal. The second reason is you left out a number of absolutely pivotal components when you put the iPad back together, and these are the SKILLS. As humans we are very good at recognising patterns and mimicking others, but that kind of monkey-see monkey-do approach is quite transparent and rarely delivers the goods when it comes to manifesting your real dreams.

So what’s a better approach? Firstly, make sure your big picture is your own. Don’t just copy another persons dream because you think living their life would be fun. Really think about what true happiness looks like to you. Think about who is around you, what things you have in the fantasy, what things you are doing. The more truthful you are to your heart’s desires the clearer your big picture will be, then you can start to break it down.

In breaking it down to smaller pictures (your 12 month goals and your 30 day challenges) make certain that your stepping stones are actually relevant to your big picture. Let’s go back to the Da Vinci mural example again, the Last Supper:

In this diagram we have the big picture at the top – the ultimate goal, in this case to be able to create gigantic beautiful murals in cathedrals like Da Vinci’s own painting. A good goal that will take a long time, if not a lifetime to master. So to have a fighting chance of ever getting there, we need some more immediate goals that are relevant to the ultimate goal.

In this case, our first 12-month goal is to learn to paint faces with depth and character. In murals like this, faces are essential and must be created with skill and confidence, so it is definitely a relevant goal to master that small part of the collection of skills required to make this whole big picture. 12 months is also a good timeframe because much can be done in a year, lessons can be taken, and literally thousands of practise faces can be drawn or paint in pursuit of that ultimate goal.

In the even more immediate (knuckling down even more, so to speak) the 30-day goal (or CHALLENGE as I prefer to put it) is to paint 500 hands to get the details right. Practise makes perfect, so painting 500 hands in a month is a worthy goal that will build skills required to complete the 12 month goal and thus step towards the big picture. It is all relevant, and involves some serious hurdles that with some focus will be surmountable!

Let’s look at an example more relevant to the music industry:

The big picture here is spending your days hanging out in a private studio, writing hit songs (presumably for a decent living to justify doing nothing else and still eating!). A great lifelong career goal that has more than a few what-if’s between now and then. This is one that many strive for and few actually achieve, perhaps because there is a lack of clarity in the goal-setting, or a lack of follow-through in the small picture challenges. Whatever the case for others, if this is your goal you can most certainly achieve it if you set the right goals and back them up with serious hard work.

In this case the 12-month goal is to have a single playing on international radio. This is perfect and totally relevant to the big picture. Without songs on international radio, there will never be any hit songs and so no private studio or career as a songwriter can possibly follow.

An example of an irrelevant 12 month goal to this particular big picture would be “Have a date with Kim Kardashian”. Okay, maybe that would be nice, and maybe she would even have good connections in Hollywood that could help your career along, but that’s too many maybes for this plan to work, and your love life doesn’t really have anything to do with your life as a career songwriter (unless you’re looking for a muse). The goal set in the image above is exactly what we need, because without radio play, the big picture is literally impossible and will never be reached.

So, breaking it down to an even more immediate goal, in the next 30 days you want to write and arrange 5 songs that have hit potential. Totally achievable in the time frame set, but also challenging. What exactly is hit potential? Well, nobody really knows the exact formula of a hit, but chances are if you show 50 people the songs you write and most of them think they’re great, then you’re onto something good. Whether or not any of these 5 songs makes it to actual hit status doesn’t really matter, its about discipline, practise and development of skills necessary to reach that big picture one day. The songwriter who lives in that fantasy and already has all of that success behind him is a way better songwriter than you are today, but without today’s efforts and steps, he will never exist.

I hope that clarifies the process of goal-setting somewhat for you and gives you some ideas about how to connect today’s ideas and goals with the decreasingly distant dream of success that exists in your big picture.

More tools coming your way soon, so stay tuned to the Online Classroom, and don’t forget to leave a comment below with your thoughts on today’s lesson!

Love and much respect

James Higgins

Director and founder of J.Fox Soul

It’s a well known fact in any field that without goals it is very difficult to get anywhere. If you don’t know what you are striving for you can find yourself running at full speed in randomly changing directions and not liking or even recognising what you find, or even worse, not moving forward at all.

Earlier this month I sent a lengthy email to my cousin Seamus in Melbourne detailing a business proposition for a new joint venture. Seamus and I have been in closer touch in the last year than ever before in our lives, largely thanks to the two of us being the most nerdy and social-media-connected fellows in our extended family. Seamus and I have never lived in the same city really, at least not since I was quite little. Seamus is ten years my senior and has been a musician his whole life like me. In fact, as you might have read on my Quick Brown Fox webpage, it was his band RECKONING in the early 90s that exposed me to my first rock concert and inspired me to be a musician.

I had only just started playing trumpet, but didn’t really know why I wanted to play music other than the fact that it would make me look cool and get me all the chicks (a very big concern for an 8 year old). When I went to Seamus’ show with Reckoning in the city of Adelaide, I saw him perform like some kind of writhing, possessed guru of indie rock in his tight leather pants and symmetrical pigtails, with pyrotechnic explosions from above the stage and the smashing of an acoustic guitar at the end of the show in a semi-sexual teenage Townsend-esque display of chaos and anarchy. At the ripe age of eight, watching from the safety of the private balcony upstairs with my parents, this naturally had an impact and I later wrote a letter to Seamus to tell him so and that, like him, I intended to be a “music man”. My goal was set, albeit a simple one.

Seamus and his band soon moved to the big smoke of Melbourne, which started his own journey of hardship and discovery that would eventually lead us to this partnership. I moved with my parents a couple of years later to Northern NSW which placed me in the bustling metropolis of Murwillumbah (population 6000 at that time). I was also near the thriving scene of Byron Bay, the growing commercial jungle of the Gold Coast, and the ever-cultural Brisbane music scene. All three of these regions offered me exposure to a lot of great music and opportunities growing up, and today, after some global travel and considering my options, I am still proud to call the region home.

So a decade and a half later, Seamus and I finally rekindle our familial connection with a long thread of mutually supportive and ass-kicking emails. We’ve been encouraging each other to do better as musicians, exchanging notes on ways to market our original music, and also ways to turn our passions into higher levels of income without totally “selling out”. Seamus and I have had vastly different lives in many ways, and our music is very different to one another. We’ve both travelled, and had long term relationships come and go, and we’ve both had a multitude of seemingly perfect opportunities to “make it big” come and go. Where we both find ourselves today is in the very real world. Seamus has just had his second child with his life partner. I am married with my first child on the way. We both work creatively full time, which is very rewarding in many ways, but sometimes presents a bit of fear and frustration in the realm of bringing the bacon. And never more important has the bacon been.

So after spending some time researching and learning about new internet marketing tricks and techniques that Seamus had put me onto, and testing them in the field, it occurred to me that because of our vastly different journeys towards the same ultimate goal, Seamus and I together share a wealth of incredible knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. Beyond that, there is a wealth of knowledge on understanding the creative, technical and dare I say spiritual processes involved in writing, recording, packaging and promoting original songs. We both approach the task in different ways that yield unique and increasingly predictable results – I don’t mean the songs are predictable (though perhaps they are more so these days, to their credit), but the ways in which we embark on the creative journey are more pattern-based and thus create predictably AWESOME results. I put all of this and more down in an email to Seamus asking him to embark on a new and possibly time consuming journey to creating a forum in which to share this wealth of knowledge, and furthermore bring other creatives of all disciplines to the fold to add to the sharing. Stay tuned to hear more about this exciting project as it develops.

The 30 Day Challenge

So as part of creating this new venture, Seamus and I find ourselves needing to collect information and document our processes in order to compile them into some sort of linear flow that can be studied later. This is where we came up with the idea of the 30-day challenge. Like in any area you’re trying to make changes or grow in (fitness, weight-loss, work productivity, what have you) there’s nothing like a 30-day challenge to give you a little perspective. It’s an amount of time that’s challenging and can feel like its dragging on and on if you’re working on something that your mind wants to resist. It’s also an amount of time in which real change is achievable and you can soon reflect on how far you’ve come.

A 30-day day challenge needs to be part of a bigger plan though. It would be too easy to create a series of 30 day challenges that don’t add up to the ultimate goal you have (the big picture), so being really clear on what you really want is vital.

To give an example, cousin Seamus has already started documenting his 30-day challenge journey over at his blog Mewzo.com. His ONE YEAR goal is to become a professional musician within 12 months – a very noble goal indeed and (in my very experienced and professional opinion) absolutely achievable by anyone with a little bit of talent and lot of drive. Seamus defines this “professional” status as making a $50,000 wage each year from music or music-related activities (ie. Selling shirts at gigs, playing originals, playing covers). This is not his BIG PICTURE, this is his one year goal. He has not shared his big picture on his blog but I know he has one and, like mine, it is much grander and far-stretching than a basic wage from singing.

What is your 12 month goal?

The first challenge for you as the aspiring musician is to make a similar goal for the next 12 months, this is your first small picture to lead, eventually, to your big picture. Make it simple and really clear. Seamus’ is a great example because it has really well defined parameters – he’s even put a price tag on it so that he will know the exact moment he makes that last dollar and crosses the line. So what is your goal for the next twelve months? Here’s a few ideas of possible goals to get you started (these are not mine, just some random ideas that might spark some of your own):

To complete my first album and start selling it.

To make as much money from music in a year as I am from my day-job.

To have at least one original gig each month.

To start performing covers gigs each week to phase out my day-job.

My own personal goal for the next twelve months is going to be this:

Double my take-home pay from my business and sell 500 CDs.

If any of those goals resonate with you, write them down, or even better come up with one of your own. Make sure you only come up with one goal for the year though – you don’t want to confuse yourself with too many. No doubt your big picture (as discussed in the last lesson) is bigger than just an album or just an amount of income, so break it down into something actually achievable in the next year, and come up with a way to word your 12 month goal so that it encompasses everything you want to achieve in that time. Keep in mind that this one year goal is not your whole big picture – it is just a section of it and several years of these will create your big picture in its entirety. Seamus’s 12 month goal is well worded to encompass a range of activities in pursuit of his big picture. He just talks about wanting to make X dollars by X date from music related activities, so within the pursuit of that goal he is quite free to do loads of different things. This is where the 30-day challenges come into play (the really small pictures).

The next 30 days of striving.

Now that you have your goal for the next year you need to create a timeline of 12 monthly challenges, each that builds towards and supports the ultimate goal for the year. For the monthly challenges you want them to be as simple and specific as possible and have a few of them – about 5 is great, then you know you are working on multiple areas of your “big picture”.

Seamus’ goals for his first month relate to regular rehearsal, preparing a media kit, getting a booking agent, securing at least one paid gig and cutting alcohol out of his diet for the month to improve his health. These are all great and very practical goals, and all are also very achievable in the midst of working full time and raising two kids. It is really important to keep perspective on what you really can achieve in your current situation.

If Seamus were to go full steam ahead for his goal of becoming a professional musician and start by quitting his day-job and going on the dole, this would be a mistake and not conducive to the kind of success he wants. The entire point of the 30-day challenge is to incrementally step towards your goal, not jump in the deep end before you’ve learned to swim.

If your 12 month goal was to complete an album, then perhaps this month the goal would be to collect information on the expenses and write up a full budget. Perhaps you already know the costs or you have your own recording facilities, so you could spend this month writing a detailed schedule of what needs to be recorded, in what order, and when. A solid plan is the best tool a muso can possibly have, but only if it is then supported by some solid action.

You’ll notice the last of Seamus’ goals was about alcohol intake, and some of you might be wondering what this has to do with becoming a professional musician. What happened to sex, drugs and rock’n’roll? Well, it is a myth. There are always uber-famous musicians making fools of themselves with their partying and the truth is they can only sustain such a wild lifestyle because their “brand” (or their legend if you will) is bigger than they are. They are simply riding on the coattails of the stories that precede them and as we have seen time and time again, every party has to end at some point (and sometimes a premature death is the end). Seamus’ goal to not drink any booze for a month is a perfect example of working self-improvement into his plan.

It’s very important to strive to be the best human you can be, and we all know it. Being the best muso is one thing, being the best business person is another, but if the relationships in your life are not thriving then there will always be conflict, regret, and frustration holding you back. Looking at areas to improve your health, behaviour, relationships and lifestyle is always a great goal and will always help you immensely in your quest to make your “big picture” real.

When creating your 30 day challenges, try to have one personal development goal in there that you know will clear your mind or your body and assist you in knuckling down and doing the work to reach your goal.

This was my 12 month goal as a professional musician:

Double my take-home pay from my business and sell 500 CDs.

So, this is what my first 30 day challenge is going to look like, with a few detailed parameters thrown in:

1. Sell 10 CDs
• This can be any of the CDs that I have produced at J.Fox Soul (check out the “PRODUCTS” page of our online store to see what these are).
• Although I write CDs, this can also be MP3 sales as long as they are whole albums, not individually sold songs.
• I need to sell an average of 40 a month for 12 months to reach my goal of 500, but since I currently sell an average of one a month a realistic “ramp-up” is wise.
2. Plan and book shows for a Quick Brown Fox spring tour of SE Queensland.
• I have a show in September supporting Australian Idol winner Stan Walker, and this could be a big opportunity for exposure of my “brand”, so a string of public gigs after that show would be a really good idea to gain momentum and sell some CDs.
3. Finish updating covers repertoire to 160 songs.
• One of my major income streams is performing every week at weddings and corporate events, so investing time into keeping my repertoire fresh is a good way to support the current “growth phase” that this aspect of my business is in.
• Recently I compiled a folder of every cover song that I know and it added up to 160 different songs. There are a few gaps in the folder where I need to print lyrics and/or chords in order to be ready to perform any song at any gig.
4. Tidy, organise and systemise the office area at Foxden Studios.
• Currently my creative area (the control room) at my studio is where I do most of the work and it is really tidy and functional, however the area designated for running an organised and efficient business is a complete shambles. Tidying and systemising this part of the office will not only create a better work flow in my business, but it will be a symbolic cleansing and creating of space for growth and prosperity based on the basic principle that where there is no space nothing can be created.
5. Daily practise of meditation.
• Although it may sound a bit “hippy” to some of you, meditation is something I know my life is missing currently. I am always active in my mind and always seeking, creating, working, or if not doing those things, watching movies or having intense conversations. In my rest time I simply don’t take enough time each day to be still and let my thoughts float on by while I calmly and regularly breathe. As of today and for this entire month I am going to practise sitting still and quiet in mediation for at least ten minutes, with the hope that after 30 consecutive days a habit will have formed. This is my “personal development” challenge for the month.

Hopefully from the above you can see how my 5 goals for the month are conducive to and supportive of the ultimate 12 month goal and each is a realistic (albeit tiny) stepping stone towards the “big picture” (if you’ve forgotten what my big picture is, click here to read about it from the last lesson). By now each of you should have some idea of your goals for the year and month, so make sure you write them down and where possible share them with someone – a partner, spouse, band-mate, producer, anyone who can help hold you accountable to those goals. If you keep them secret it is too easy to also keep secret that you are failing or forgetting. You should all but tattoo these to your forehead so you don’t forget that this is what your month ahead is truly about.

If you’re a member of the site you can leave a comment below, feel free to share what your goals are with the group!

Until the next free lesson, good luck and feel free to email me if you need any more detailed advice about getting started.

Love and much respect

James Higgins

Director and founder of J.Fox Soul

The first lesson I want to offer you here at J.Fox Soul’s online classroom is a simple one. It’s about making the distinction between the “small picture” and the “big picture”. Both pictures are really quite important in building a career in the arts, however it is very easy to get trapped in focussing on one and not balancing the two to support each other.

So what exactly do I mean by the BIG PICTURE?

The big picture is your career from a birds-eye perspective, in the future. It’s the holy grail of your life. Take a moment to close your eyes and visualise what you look like as the realisation of all your dreams. Perhaps you’re in a leer jet with a cocktail. Perhaps you’re backstage hanging out with Bono and U2. Maybe you’re on-stage singing for 3000 or even 30,000 adoring fans. Or maybe you’re just home alone in your decked-out private studio writing songs and not worrying about bills or where your next meal is coming from.

Everyone’s picture will be different and that’s simply because everyone has a unique dream of success. Maybe you’ve never thought about this much before, but let me assure you that if you’re reading this blog you are interested in succeeding as a musician, so now is the time to create your vision of success. In designing your big picture think about the details of it. Who is in the picture with you? Who is absent? What is everyone wearing? What are you doing? What are you thinking about? Where are you and what does the room look like? Don’t get hung up on how realistic it is, or how you got there, that’s SMALL PICTURE thinking. Just zap yourself forward in time to your perfect and fully realised future of success and paint a picture.

If you have artistic skills it’s not even a bad idea to draw or paint this future. Or, grab some music magazines and start making a collage artwork. Or just write down the scene. Once you can see your big picture in your mind it’s important to externalise the image so that as you work towards this dream you don’t lose sight of what you’re working for. It is inevitable that there are going to be little failures and knock-backs that bring you down to the cold hard earth, and that is when you are likely to forget your big picture, so put it down on paper now, share it with someone you love, and then put it away somewhere safe where you can get it out and spend some time thinking about it again when you need to.

In my commitment to you as a mentor it is important that I share my own journey as openly as possible so that you get some sense of how it works in practise. Everything I teach is from experience, some of it based on my past, some of it based on current experimentation. This big picture method is a new weapon in my arsenal of mass creation, so I will share my big picture with you (in words) so we can work towards our respective big pictures together.

There’s a party on at my place, we’re having a bonfire. My father-in-law has lit it up and is keeping an eye on the giant beast roasting over hot coals. My siblings-in-law are chatting away with my sister and my parents are there too, laughing and talking with my wife and mother-in-law. The whole family is gathered for the warmth of a winter bonfire and a fresh roast dinner. Members of my extended family are there including cousin Seamus and his wife and kids. Some of my long-time mentoring clients are there too, the ones I consider good friends after all these years. My three children are running around with their cousins laughing and enjoying the crisp winter air and warmth of the growing flames. I arrive home in my almost brand-new Toyota Hiace van after finally finishing up for the day in the office. I had been detained on the phone speaking with my accountant who called to inform me that I owed a bit of extra tax to the government because my income had just shot through the roof with the release of my latest album. It doesn’t bother me, I like being a tax paying citizen, so I arrange a transfer of the funds needed.

I arrive at the bonfire to be greeted by everyone and I go straight to my kids and give them all big cuddles and kisses. Then I start spreading the news around. My latest album has just sold it’s 100,000th copy and has officially gone Gold! Everyone is overjoyed to hear this. Seamus gives me a congratulatory hug and comments that this will be a great bit of news to share on our seminar tour next month. Seamus is in the area because we are going over the final details of our upcoming tour of high schools, universities and music colleges where we will be discussing the success of our new co-written book on careers in creativity and our very successful business together in music career coaching and mentoring.

The party is a bit of a farewell as the next morning my wife, kids and I are getting on a plane to Paris where I will start my brief summer tour of mainland Europe for the year. I’m playing 8 shows in 2 weeks to a total audience of 80,000 people, then we’re planning to spend 2 weeks catching up with friends and family while we stay in our holiday home in the South of France. I’m feeling energised by the news of my album’s success and by the fresh smell of burning wood, and as I look at all my loved ones around me I feel an overwhelming sense of peace as I know that money is no longer a struggle for me and that everyone I love is looked after. I can’t wait to enjoy the warmth of a European Summer and I’m even more excited about coming home again before hitting the road with Seamus to spread inspiration to more aspiring musicians.

As we start to enjoy our delicious winter meal I suddenly have an idea for a new charity organisation I want to invest in, so I decide to call my Director of Charity in the morning to discuss the possibility of helping more people in the world with this latest windfall of mine.

My life and all my relationships are harmonious and full of joy and I know that anything I dream is possible because I have proved it by getting this far.

So that’s my big picture. It may seem a little far-fetched to some of the more pessimistic out there, but if you read it carefully you’ll notice there is nothing beyond my reach in there. The things I have achieved in my dream are only bigger versions of the things that I am already achieving. I probably spent as much time writing about what achieving those goals FEELS like as what they look like, and for all my material desires of fame and fortune, the entire the scene takes place outdoors in nature with friends and family. For me, these relationships are fundamental and maintaining joy and harmony in my personal life is at the core of this big picture. The rest is the icing on a very sweet cake.

Breaking down the Small Pictures.

So now that you have your big picture clearly in your mind, and as clearly as possible recorded on paper, you need to start creating your small pictures. Let’s think about Leonardo Da Vinci’s mural painting of the Last Supper for a moment. This is a big artwork with lots of characters, lots of objects, lots of immense detail, geometry and symbol. It is not simply a picture of a loaf of bread like the name suggests, it is an entire world on a wall. Within this big picture we could make a list of hundreds if not thousands of small components that make up the whole, each contributing inextricably to the beauty of the whole image. Each of these objects, whether parts of characters’ bodies, or pieces of food, grails of wine, or background textures, has had a unique journey of design and creation that led it to be part of the picture.

In your own big picture that you have now designed there are similar components, some visible, some intangible and simply part of the story. These are your small pictures that each need to be carefully crafted before the big picture is possible. For instance if you were in your private recording studio, then we immediately have the small pictures of lots of pieces of audio equipment, a building in which to house them, and a constructed studio environment that holds them all together. Each of these things must be manifested before the big picture is complete and this is the part that takes time and work.

Over the next few lessons I will start to provide you with some tools that will help you identify and clarify every small picture item that needs to be manifested as well as create a structure of steps towards getting them! Before you proceed, make sure that you have completed your big picture ON PAPER and put it away somewhere safe. I guarantee that as you start to work towards it you will quickly lose perspective so having that record is essential to staying on track.

Stay tuned for the next lesson where we break the first of our SMALL PICTURE goals down into a manageable timeline.

Love and much respect

James Higgins

Director and founder of J.Fox Soul

Greetings one and all and welcome to the first lesson in the J.Fox Soul online classroom. This part of the Blog is just one of the free services we offer online and will hopefully become something you follow and work with in your career development. If you want to know more about what we do at J.Fox Soul and who we are, please go over to the ABOUT US page and have a little read.

In a nutshell we are a collective of professional musicians based in the gorgeous South-East Queensland region in Australia. We perform, write, record and promote music to sustain our lifestyles. More than just creating and exploiting new music however, at J.Fox Soul we are most interested in supporting the development of the next generation of professional musician, and so we started our renowned mentoring program in 2010. In this program we work one-on-one with singers, songwriters, instrumentalists, producers, and bands to help them clarify their goals, develop their plans and take the steps necessary to transform their dreams of making a career in music to a reality.

Because we are only in one physical location on the globe currently, we have found there are some limitations on whom we can offer our services to, and this will not do! We want to make available the unique tools and processes we teach to the world, and so we begin the online classroom!

Before we get into the groundwork of this first lesson, first we want to invite you to become a member of the site (scroll to the bottom to see the registration form you’ll need). When you sign up you’ll have instant access to our backstage area where there will be exclusive content not available to non-members. This will include free downloads of music, additional lessons that won’t be posted here on the free blog, a special members forum for openly discussing your respective journeys, and much more to come. You’ll also go on our educational newsletter mailing list and will start receiving regular tips, tricks and valuable tools straight to your email. We are dedicated to helping you make your musical dreams a reality by providing information and inspiration. When supported by your own hard work and passion, you will find the lessons here at J.Fox Soul invaluable to your success.

Stay tuned and tomorrow you’ll see the first lesson appear here on the blog, ready for you to sink your hungry teeth into!

Love and much respect

James Higgins

Director and founder of J.Fox Soul

Hi there, and welcome to the new J.Fox Soul website.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you’ll read about all the wonderful services we offer here, from Mentoring to Production to Entertainment. We pride ourselves on the professional quality of our work as well as our flexibility and how approachable we are, so don’t hesitate to send us an email, give us a call or leave a comment below to find out more about how you can get involved.

Let the journey of musical expression begin in our new facility, Foxden Studio in Burleigh Heads (Gold Coast, Queensland). Check out some pics of the new space!

Click here to view photos of Foxden Studio