Every year the Songwriter’s Association of Canada does a songwriting challenge. You have to write one song a week in response to a challenge issued by a pro. This week’s challenge was to write a song either using a 1 bar riff or only 2 chords. I went with two chords: Am and F. Here is my song:

The main hook idea came pretty quickly; but fleshing it out has taken a lot more work than I thought it would. At first I tried to find a theme for the hook line of being anything you want. I settled on trying to encourage someone (turns out it’s me!) to keep fighting for their dreams. It’s not easy but you have to do it. I had some trouble coming up with a melody so I just looped the song and sang different things over it until I found something I liked. I took some of the words that came out of the free styling and worked them into my verse and bridge lyrics. Finally I did some chopping and splicing to get another little melodic riff into the chorus to try and keep it from being too monotonous.