writing practice

I think playlists are how I practice writing music.  I don't really have a lot of formal training, besides a few lessons in high school, and a few years of lessons in elementary school.  And being in bands.  But besides that, how else does one practice writing songs?  How do you know a good song from a bad song?  Well, I make a playlist and lable it, "good songs" and that pretty much ends that discussion.

The best thing about playlists is that unlike an actual song, you can pretty much go anywhere with them.  You don't have to stick with the same instruments or vocals.  Genres can be wildly different, or exactly the same.  Yeah, usually things make sense when you have a theme, or something that ties everything together.  But, "listen to this again" is still a theme.  And even if you don't even listen to it again, there was still a point where you listened to the song closely enough to give it a thumbs up.  Yeah, I enjoyed that.

Sometimes you can get fancy with playlists you've listened to a bunch of times.  But, that's not really a blog discussion.  I know some people have trouble with what they should or shouldn't say.  It's like, I have a blog, I'll just say anything I want.  But I've been trying to write this imagining that someone will read it eventually.  They might not, but at least it prevents me from doing things like talking about playlists too much.