August 9, 2024

Jason Mraz is one of my all-time favorite musicians.

I recently had the opportunity to see him in concert again at the Redrocks Amphitheatre here in Colorado.

He played with the Colorado Symphony, which was extra special.

And on the way there, Katie and I listened to a podcast interview with Jason Mraz.

I hadn’t ever really heard him talk much about his work as a songwriter, so it was a treat to listen to his conversation with actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

Jason shared that to this day he is still obsessed with the creative process.

He has a song group that he’s a part of and they have a deadline every Tuesday to share a new song, no matter what.

And he emphasized that it’s not a competition, it’s not even about them giving feedback to each other on the music.

It’s about the accountability that they get from the group and having to share a song every week.

If they miss a song — here’s the kicker — if they miss a week, they get kicked out of the group.

And he’s been a part of this group since 2006 (!).

And it’s enabled him, when he’s making a new album, to be able to look back at this catalog of songs that he’s written over the course of all of these many years, all of these hundreds of weeks, adding up hundreds of songs that he’s written.

So this made me think about how can I do something like that for myself? In my own creative practice?

And then of course I realize well in a lot of ways I’m holding this kind of space inside Ready to Record for fellow artists who are making art to also learn to make art videos and document their journey in this way.

And what’s especially exciting — even more so in just like the last month or two based on feedback from members right now, we decided to add in this element of a weekly video progress diary.

At its simplest, it’s a way for them to track their progress week to week and have a really practical way to practice talking to the camera each week too, so that when they do want to talk on camera in their art videos, they can feel more confident in doing that.

Anyway, this is just me nerd-ing out about another artist’s approach to uncovering what works for them in their own process in this way.

What’s more: In this interview, Jason Mraz attributes the songwriting group and this weekly practice of sharing a new song with the group to his success as a musician.

And I think there’s something to that in the structure and the accountability that many of us struggle with, myself included, in creating and finding a way to balance that having a structure but then having flexibility to have space for where our creativity takes us and what we want to say or experiment with.

→ I’d love to hear your thoughts on this if you want to reply. 😊

I’m still learning that my best days are those that, even if I don’t feel like it, that I get to make something because I feel so good when I do.

And this is a healthy reminder through the wisdom in Jason Mraz’s experience and getting to hear him talk about the benefit to having a simple structure for our work. So I’m excited to explore that more.

...

Have a great weekend, and thanks for being here.

Keep creating,
-Zach

P.S. The podcast I mention is "Dinner's On Me with Jesse Tyler Ferguson" episode with Jason Mraz. The whole episode is wonderful, but if you want to you can jump to about 35:00 minutes in when he starts talking about his songwriting process.