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The Crazybrave Songwriter Podcast
The Crazybrave Songwriter Podcast celebrates exceptional songwriting at its best. Songwriters share - from the ground up - their personal songwriting stories, important advice on maintaining a balanced mental outlook and some real DIY marketing strategies to keep the music moving. This podcast is curated by Lisa M. Arreguin as songs are chosen for their song integrity, storyline and superior craftsmanship. Episodes are published once or twice a month.
The Crazybrave Songwriter Podcast
Vision Boards for Artists | Artist: Nick Nery | Song: "Loving You"
Welcome to my 2nd season of The Crazybrave Songwriter Podcast where I’m going to have a chance to stretch out and talk about meaningful concerns for all musical artists.
I LOVE the creative energy of my guest NICK NERY. He is fun, dedicated to his music and delivers an eclectic style of music that is always evolving. Nick’s music is a mixture of old school R&B, slick Rap phrasing and a blend of sexy bumps that entice the audience to pull in and listen. His voice is smooth, vibrant and present over every track.
I am highlighting Nick’s song “Loving You” (Listen on Spotify). It's a silky R&B flavored tune that I can vibe too by putting on repeat while I work or dance around the kitchen. Perfection!
In this episode, I'll be talking with NICK NERY about the beauty of using Vision Boards to imagine where your dreams might take you. I'll tell my own story about how I was able to get a book deal by using my vision board to help make it happen. Stay tuned to the end of the show to hear tips on how to use a vision board as a creative person.
Visit Barnes and Noble to purchase Lisa's book "THE CRAZYBRAVE SONGWRITER"
OR purchase a SIGNED COPY of Lisa's book from Lisa's website.
The focus for this season is "wellness for creatives " If you are a musician, singer, songwriter, painter or creative person, then I’ll be loading up this season with information on how to deal with our runaway brains, how to work with our ever changing moods and offer some coping strategies to deal with it all. We’ll get a chance to hear from musical artists who speak about these things as they create new music.
If some of you DON’T already know, I earned my Master’s degree in psychology, was a vocal and songwriting coach for over 20 years and have written a book about songwriting called "The Crazybrave Songwriter".
So, Let’s move together this season and see what we can learn about ourselves.
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https://www.livingcrazybrave.com/book
https://loveandlaughtermusicgroup.com
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Host: Lisa M Arreguin @ LivingCrazybrave.com
Recorded @ LoveandLaughterMusicGroup.com
Podcast Music: Joey Arreguin
Music bong: Andrew Kim
Engineering & Sound Design: Michael Jennings
You are listening to the Crazy Brave Songwriter Podcast. This is a podcast about the magic of making music one song at a time. My name is Lisa m I'm happy to be your host for today. Welcome to my second season of the Crazy Brave Songwriter Podcast, where I'm going to have a chance to stretch out and talk about super important and meaningful concerns for all artists. The focus for the season is wellness for creatives. If you are a musician, singer, songwriter, painter, or dancer, then I'll be loading up the season with information on how to deal with our runaway brains, how to work with our ever-changing moods, and offer some coping strategies to deal with it all. And we'll get a chance to hear from musical artists who speak about these things as they create new music too. If some of you don't already know, before I begin my career as a songwriter and business owner, I earned my master's degree in psychology. I was always interested in the creative brain and why I think the way I do. So let's move forward together this season and see what we can learn about ourselves. In this episode, I am having a down home conversation about the importance of vision boards and about how they work. I get a chance to tell the story of one vision board experience I had personally that was seriously life-changing. Stay until the end of the show to hear five points you should consider when making your own creative vision board. I love, love, love the creative energy of my guest, Nick Neri. He is fun, dedicated to his music, and delivers a galactic style of music that is always evolving. Nick's music is a mixture of old school r and b, slick rap, freezing, and a blend of sexy bumps that entice the audience to pull in and listen. His voice is smooth, vibrant, and present over every track. I am highlighting Nick's song Loving You, A silk r and b flavored tune that I can vibe to by putting on repeat while I work or dance around the kitchen. Perfection.
Speaker 2:Check. One, two, check one, two. Testing, testing.
Speaker 1:We're not recording, by the way, are we?
Speaker 3:When did this tea get in here?<laugh>.
Speaker 1:It just materialized from the future world.
Speaker 3:Wow. Wow. Well said.
Speaker 1:Cheers.
Speaker 3:Mu gra Cheers.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. What's a, what's happening for you right now in your music world?
Speaker 3:Painting?
Speaker 1:Do you do oil or are you into acrylics?
Speaker 3:I hate oils because I bought a 36 color variety set. I used 10 because they take more than days to dry.
Speaker 1:Oh, six months to cure it. Person
Speaker 3:That doesn't, that turnaround doesn't work for me because my founding is within digital and graphic. So it's kind of a wonder that I've never had one of those Google tablets.
Speaker 1:Is your painting and music the same thing in your head? Are they different? Two different things. Do they relate?
Speaker 3:Yeah. They, they relate because they feel the same.<laugh>, they feel the same. It's the same sensation. Like in my brain, they have the same energy output. The mediums have different paces and beats overall in, in feel of it is, is the same output. But all you gotta do is think out of those templates. And then you're practicing your own style of art every single time. Like mm-hmm.<affirmative> without ever wasting paper, without ever wasting paint. But there is something about a 58 by 72 piece that you did the way you're looking at it and like, wow. I'm not gonna lie. I, throughout the gimmicks, throughout the strategies, I've been focusing on personal relationships, uh, reconnecting with old friends. Samuel, he just called me one day after he heard Loving You, takes me out for dinner at this salsa restaurant in North Hollywood on Vine, and is just like, Hey, what's up? What are your plans for music? How, Nick, you're such an interesting case. You, you sound, you have the voice of a siren and I just really wanted to help you, but you pushed me away. So that was four to six years. That's four years ago. And that's the music world that I'm coming out of. And then have been growing, cultivating my own ideas of what music means to me for the past three years. So now I'm at a place where I feel like I've drawn boundaries and built the foundation. And after this, it's just like I have every second of the day to be unique and create a different possibility for myself while maintaining a mind map and a movie reel about what I have. So that's been like a, a mood board. And then I remember somebody in a chat room on Clubhouse was like, okay, so what, how are you gonna get to to that? And so now I'm like, okay, now I had, I've had a visual that I've fleshed out from super simple. And then now I'm just thinking when I see this visual of the network of cha decisions and changes that I have to realize that goal.
Speaker 1:Tell me what's on your mood board.
Speaker 3:It's ranges from six months out to the, I think it only ranges out to 10 years. Some of the thoughts, because one of, one of the screenshots is I, I photoshopped everything. So like photoshopped my, um, iOS screen for my banking and I just made it like$104 billion. And then I was like, okay. And then I want to make, uh, this amount of streaming royalties, I want this amount of real estate. Um, and it goes down to I want to be on sleeping on gems. I want to be on daily fines. I want to, and then I have my songs Photoshop with the streaming numbers that I wish to have like on, on there. And this is all backed by like meditations of a weekly set emails, uh, every Monday at 8:00 AM So what is my mu music life gonna look like in five years? What is is gonna look like in three years, two years, one years, what? Two weeks and one day? And how am I keeping myself accountable to those goals? So it has a bank statement. It has the Spotify playlist, it has my face over Amy Whitehouse at Glassen, buried facing the crowd, but mainly just the crowd and the mic. Right? Cuz I don't wanna live anybody else's dream. Me over Frank Ocean at the MTV Music Awards when he did it the first time. Uh, me with like a crazy Photoshop jacked body cuz that's of specifically of the goal that I want. Um, and like me with a wife,
Speaker 1:Vision boards are fascinating because they work,
Speaker 3:What was it? Detail?
Speaker 1:I wanted to write a book. Yeah. And so I went to my favorite publisher, hay House Publishing. And they were having a contest, but you had to fly to New York, you had to sit in their, in their room. And then you had to submit a book proposal mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And so I put on my vision board that I'm going to win first prize at the Hay House contest cuz it's all expenses paid to get your book made.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:So I got my pennies together, flew to New York, sat in a room of maybe three, 400 people. You could only apply if you were in that room. So as I was writing the book, I kept looking at first place winner, first place winner. And when it came down to it,<laugh>, when it came down, I'm missing some important elements of the store. But when it came down to it, right, right. And I got the book proposal out. Yes. That it was important. They called me on the day that they were announcing and they said, congratulations, you are our sweepstakes winner. And then she put me on hold and then she went, oh, I'm so sorry. She goes, I, she was so apologetic. She said, you're actually our first place winner. In my head, I wanted the sweepstakes one, but I think on a daily I was going, I need to win that first place prize. I need to win that first place prize. So on my board was place, but in my head I always thought I should have put sweepstakes on there, but I wasn't paying attention close. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And she was even confused. The lady who called me
Speaker 3:Goes down to the specifics.
Speaker 1:Down to the specifics. Your vision board will work for you if you're always in it. But I won. I won first place. Yes.<laugh>. Which was great. I mean, I wasn't complaining about anything. I cried. Yeah. Because to get, to get to that, I had to jump lots of hoops that were uncomfortable to get there. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. But I did. And um, I was like, this really works. It really, it really works. The power of your vision board is awesome. Thank you. Um, just, um, be specific as you can. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, you know, I've heard some amazing stories about people cutting pictures of a house they want and then 10 years later they don't even realize that's the exact house they bought.
Speaker 3:I love That's the one. Don't you love
Speaker 1:That? That's
Speaker 3:The one that gets me. That
Speaker 1:Gets me.
Speaker 3:That's the house.
Speaker 1:The house thing.<laugh> the house thing. House thing. I'm like that too. Do you have any thoughts about where songs come from?
Speaker 3:No, because they come from God<laugh>.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:Or my mind<laugh> because the worst songs I've made, I tried to make about something very specific. Like there was a very specific transaction I was trying to process. Cuz you can make a good song out. Like with inspiration. I'm not saying you can't do that, but it's only through inspiration.
Speaker 1:This is a bigger question about how do you know what's good and what's not good that you're, that you're, that you're putting out? Or do you, do you even look at it like that?
Speaker 3:Does the painting ever need to be done? Does the song ever need to be done? You can keep and you know, you see music and see how many times somebody can re-release something, but really, like, until you're dead or croaked you don't, it never has to be done. You're the artist. So plainly you can say it like that.
Speaker 1:Let's say you can't, you can't be a creative when it's in you. What happens to you? What happens to a person?
Speaker 3:What happens to a person is mental implosion. They're just never happy. They never see the sun cuz the sun is your expression. That's what I try to achieve with my music.
Speaker 1:So here's a question. I heard another quote, um, by Rochelle Farrell. She said, people don't understand that as an artist, you take all your trash and all your, your joy and all your happiness and then you think about all everybody else's trash and all their stuff and you pile it all together and you put it in a song and you have to make sense out of it.<laugh>. And I go, that's pretty good. I always think music is broken down into lyric, melody, rhythm and harmony. That's the four pillars I think of it. So you gotta have a song that has melody, has to have lyric, has to have rhythm, has to have harmony, harmony just being chords and layers, you know? Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, what comes to you first
Speaker 3:Beat comes first. Cuz if you get real good, like artificial intelligence with the, with search query, and I'm like, okay, I want bouncy, wavy r and b, like specifically and soul. And then so bouncy, wavy, soul, r and b, somewhere 16 drops along, there's a perfect beat. Have that. But, but that's what I was doing, uh, when I started making music because I, I can't make beats. So the beat, but the beat has to come first. So I know that from being in the studio with the producer when the right beat comes on. Okay, keep that one on. Loving You. The song, uh, in question is about a girl that I went to. Uh, the fashion institute with that song is about the hallways in the fiddle Orange County building. This is like a really small campus, 500 square feet and just always w looking forward to running into her before class.
Speaker 1:What do you, um, advise for artists in this new world? Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, um, of music? What's your advice for them?
Speaker 3:My advice for artists is strategy. Use your resources around you and don't impose on anyone. You should be all right if you do that. I don't know if you're gonna be a big musician, but you're gonna be whatever you put your mind to.
Speaker 1:And now for your listening pleasure. Nick Neri singing Loving You
Speaker 4:Was a piece of your time In the hallway in the back of my mind. See you days when cry. Know you gotta push away, but for now we'll be alright. The flowers you to your for hours. Come to me. Why you work so fast? Why you love so hard? Why you saying me? These are the, I just love somebody by of you. Alright, thank you. Why am I obsess with you so high? Pass me by. It's wonder, when will you come? I'm home. The flowers wait and lead you to your van for hours. Come and talk to me. Why you work so fast? Why you love so hard? Why you saying me for leave me covered. These are the questions that you I love for do I just love my I Ever Wanted was a piece of your time. See you in the hallway in the back of my eyes. See you on my off days when my ceilings to cry. No, you gotta push away. But for now we'll be all.
Speaker 1:If you accept the invitation to bravely go where few men have been before, it's time to create a vision board for yourself. Here are five focus tips that will keep you on track. First, make sure you clearly concisely, definitely and distinctly know what you want for yourself. I know that's a lot of lee words, but really put some thought about what you specifically want for yourself. And here's the key. You must be excited about it. Really super duper, extra triple excited about the thing that you want. Where do you feel the excitement in your body, your head, your eyes, your gut. Hone in on where you feel it and register this feeling for future use. This excitement pushes a cosmic ripple out into the pool of what is possible and helps to keep the ball rolling. This is not woowoo stuff. It is really an energy that can move mountains and scientifically plausible as quantum physics catches up with what many of us already know to be true. Second, if you have multiple excitements that you want to have come true, narrow them down to no more than one for now. Why? Because the universe, God and the angels like an uncomplicated vision. If you are mixed up, have a half cooked up version full of doubt, feel confused or unclear, the universe won't know how to best help bring your dream to the forefront. Confused minds beget confusion. Clear minds makes for more clarity. Third, the most powerful of all the things I did to see my vision happen is that I was not attached to the outcome. So how can I be excited and unattached at the same time? Well, here's the trick. I won the book deal because I was clear that if it didn't happen, then life would be 100% okay for me. I would still have a good life still, right? Still do my thing. So remain excited about the thing that you want, but remember, if you don't get the thing that you asked for, that's okay too. I call this my love position. I'm going to repeat myself here a little bit. But this neutral position is a powerful one because it says that although I want this thing in my life, I am once again a hundred percent okay if it doesn't happen. This tells the universe that despite what's happening around me, I can still do things to love myself. I can still breathe and I am fine as I am. That I am valuable, as I am perfect, as I am wonderful as I am. That my life is a good one and that I'm proud of what I've done up to this point in my life. The love position, do both of these at the same time and it packs a powerful universal punch. Fourth, now make your vision board. It can look any way you want on your computer like Nick does on a corkboard like I did. Or by using the traditional magazine cutout pasted on a big gigantic board doesn't matter. Remember to keep it simple, straightforward, concise, and clear. Fifth, it's not enough to make your vision board and put it away in the closet. Keep your vision board somewhere where you can look at it every day. I like mine on the wall in my office. So when I walk in or sit at my desk, I can just for a moment, remember my dream of excitement and flash a reminder to myself that it's all gonna be okay. This is Lisa again and I wanna take this moment to applaud the team at Love and laughter music group.com, A safe and knowledgeable spot for musicians who wish to learn more about writing songs and recording great music. This episode is a product of living Crazy brave.com, another hub where musicians can cultivate new awareness about what it takes to honor the sacred art of making honest music. Let me leave you with this. Darkness can only be counterbalanced by the light becoming brighter in all of us. Music creates light, so keep it going.
