Songwriting For Guitar Podcast
Jul 17, 2026 · 30 min · 6 segments
Four things quietly killing your songwriting and you've probably got at least one. Matty Finn and I break down the patterns we see over and over: no direction, knowledge over application…
Mike MeiersHost
Matty FinnGuest
You don't ask yourself what you're trying to do with the song, why you want the song, where the song's supposed to go.
So part of what I do with my students is I'll sit in on co-writes with them and just watch and observe and see.
And this is something I think that happens a lot in co-writes for folks who are new.
And so I've sat in on co-writes where they just sit down and they just start individually kind of like meandering and writing their own little things without even talking about what they're doing first.
The danger in that is until someone asks that, you could be meandering, going down the wrong way for so long.
And there's this window where momentum can be killed and it ends up just being...
But there was never a discussion and there was never a plan on where to go with it.
you know, like, what you're even going for production-wise? Do you know what you're going for theme-wise? It's just...
The amount of times I see folks just hop into songwriting and not know where it's going, which can be a beautiful thing, but you need direction.
So when we get to something like no direction, what caused a person or a songwriter to get into that spot where that just happened? There has to be some reasons.
Or are they nervous? Are they self-conscious? What causes someone to just accept no direction as a solution? Unknowingly, I should say.
They want someone like you or me to look at them and say, this is what you should be doing.
And when you write songs, not having a direction means you're allowing other people to dictate your career and your choices.
When if you would just take a moment to be like, wait, why do I love songwriting? You'd find so much more space to find direction.
And it's interesting too, this is only the first one, but there, it is, there's probably multiple reasons why someone gets there.
Because even if you have capability, but you don't have direction, you don't have a reason of why you want to songwrite and a clarity on the intended target of where you want to go.
That's where you get someone that you always look at and you go like, ah, they've got so much potential.
I wonder why nothing ever happened with so-and-so or why didn't Jimmy do anything like with his songs? He could have been so good.
The horse's name is Spooky, right? And Spooky, I kept looking at him and being like, oh, come on, come on.
But then she said, put your eyes on where you want to go and start heading that direction first.
he'll follow you and i think this is a great example of like what it's like in this business this industry this craft this create creative world is the more that i look and i'm like okay okay
where where do you want to go where do you want it's like clinging to like some sort of outcome yeah wanting the horse to like me or like wanting somebody to make a choice for me But when you make a decision of like, okay, I'm going to be an artist or I'm going to focus on my bass playing or I'm going to focus on my guitar work.
When you make a decision of the direction you want to head, okay, like I want to write this kind of song.
yeah it's so cool i mean and it really does make sense but yeah this this no direction thing i think is a huge one
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You don't ask yourself what you're trying to do with the song, why you want the song, where the song's supposed to go.
So part of what I do with my students is I'll sit in on co-writes with them and just watch and observe and see.
And this is something I think that happens a lot in co-writes for folks who are new.
And so I've sat in on co-writes where they just sit down and they just start individually kind of like meandering and writing their own little things without even talking about what they're doing first.
The danger in that is until someone asks that, you could be meandering, going down the wrong way for so long.
And there's this window where momentum can be killed and it ends up just being...
But there was never a discussion and there was never a plan on where to go with it.
you know, like, what you're even going for production-wise? Do you know what you're going for theme-wise? It's just...
The amount of times I see folks just hop into songwriting and not know where it's going, which can be a beautiful thing, but you need direction.
So when we get to something like no direction, what caused a person or a songwriter to get into that spot where that just happened? There has to be some reasons.
Or are they nervous? Are they self-conscious? What causes someone to just accept no direction as a solution? Unknowingly, I should say.
They want someone like you or me to look at them and say, this is what you should be doing.
And when you write songs, not having a direction means you're allowing other people to dictate your career and your choices.
When if you would just take a moment to be like, wait, why do I love songwriting? You'd find so much more space to find direction.
And it's interesting too, this is only the first one, but there, it is, there's probably multiple reasons why someone gets there.
Because even if you have capability, but you don't have direction, you don't have a reason of why you want to songwrite and a clarity on the intended target of where you want to go.
That's where you get someone that you always look at and you go like, ah, they've got so much potential.
I wonder why nothing ever happened with so-and-so or why didn't Jimmy do anything like with his songs? He could have been so good.
The horse's name is Spooky, right? And Spooky, I kept looking at him and being like, oh, come on, come on.
But then she said, put your eyes on where you want to go and start heading that direction first.
he'll follow you and i think this is a great example of like what it's like in this business this industry this craft this create creative world is the more that i look and i'm like okay okay
where where do you want to go where do you want it's like clinging to like some sort of outcome yeah wanting the horse to like me or like wanting somebody to make a choice for me But when you make a decision of like, okay, I'm going to be an artist or I'm going to focus on my bass playing or I'm going to focus on my guitar work.
When you make a decision of the direction you want to head, okay, like I want to write this kind of song.
yeah it's so cool i mean and it really does make sense but yeah this this no direction thing i think is a huge one
