Student Songwriters Four students share their process and experiences in the unique art form of songwriting. WORDS by ADA GREEN ART by DIONNE PETERSON PHOTOS by DARE FITZPATRICK and ADA GREEN
Dionne Peterson ‘25: Q: What are your favorite genres to listen to and write? A: I like listening to songs that have a big message. I feel like those songs stick with me more. I like lyrics that actually make sense and aren’t just a bunch of words. I like listening to deeper songs, that have a little more meaning than just love and repetitive lyrics. Q: What is the hardest part about writing a song? How do you overcome it? A: Putting the lyrics and the chords together. I’ll know how I want it to sound, but then putting how I want it to sound onto chords is hard, because you have to match the chords and the vibe you’re going for. It’s hard because they’re two separate things and you have to put them together. My way to overcome that is tweaking, tweaking, tweaking, experimenting, trying again and again and again until it sounds right.
Noah Olorin ‘24: Q: What is the hardest part about writing music? A: For me personally, it’s just sitting down and doing it. I’ll be like, ‘Oh yeah! I want to write a song!’ and then I’ll go do something else. I have all these ideas in my head and I’ll write some of them down sometimes, which pushes me towards the process where eventually I just have to sit down and do it. Once I’m in it, most of the time it usually feels pretty in flow. The one other thing that does get in the way when I am writing music in general is my own assessment of its worth. ‘Oh, I don’t really like this’ or ‘this isn’t very good’ and that’ll convince me to stop writing whatever I’m writing. I really have to convince myself, ‘Okay, no, just get through, even if you don’t like it now you can just keep working with the idea.’ So, really not worrying too much about how I view its value in the moment and just having the process be enjoyable in of itself is something I’m working on. Q: What is your favorite part about writing music? A: As a form as self-expression, music is so multifaceted. When you hear it all come together, the different parts, it’s like this emotional, uproaring orchestra that just gives you that little buzz that other things have in different ways, but that music has in a very specific way. This massive emotional dynamic range in this method that isn’t normally how we communicate. It’s this way to communicate emotions that I think can connect to a different part of your brain than just speech or visual art, which all have their own beautiful capacities, but it’s just another way to really make people feel something.
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