Six Invaluable Life Skills Songwriting & Music Production Teaches You

Music is integral to who I am, it's what I love to do, and it's the gift that keeps on giving. My songwriting and music production has always been about the love of music and it always will be.

How I Got These Invaluable Skills

I'm blessed to have grown up in a musical family. Both my parents adore music. They introduced me to the joy of vinyl and have supported my musical journey from the start. When I was eight years old, they signed me up for piano lessons and recitals. I started learning with a group, then progressed into classical training with solo lessons. I was enraptured by the endless sounds I could make, the combinations that seemed to magically express what I was feeling, and helped connect me to others.

I picked up the guitar when I was sixteen years old because my best friend at the time encouraged me. Her and I were really into punk rock, and naturally started writing songs together. She would let me borrow her dazzling electric guitar with a pearl white pick guard, until my parents bought me an almost identical guitar to hers for Christmas that same year. To this day I have that guitar and I can't get enough of guitars!

Since then, I've always been I striving for continuous learning and improvement. In the dark winter of 2017, I became part of a women’s songwriting circle that shaped me into the songwriter I am now by teaching me core composition, arrangement, and lyrical techniques, as well as exposing me to honest feedback from professionals. By the summer, I performed my original songs on the main stage of an internationally renowned music festival!

My music production journey started earlier. In 2012, I joined my community radio station as a volunteer helping out with music reviews, on-air, and in-house production. All throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies, I couldn’t wait to lose myself in the mountains of CDs and vinyl in our cozy office, or focus for hours on mixing in the production studio. It became my happy place and the best way I knew how to give back to my community.

I further honed my songwriting and music production skills by participating in community workshops. I’d go to my favourite cafe downtown, or check the notice board in music and record stores, to see what was going on. Industry professionals held free or pay-what-you-can talks, workshops, and interactive events. I was inspired because they emphasized that I didn’t need fancy, expensive equipment to write and record my own music, and that these were skills that I could learn simply through passion, hard work, and curiosity.

While I was learning this whole time on analog equipment, I also learned all about DAWs and digital music production online. I found the original YouTube music production and education channels such as Recording Revolution and Produce Like A Pro, then dove headfirst into the ocean of various other resources and people just as enthusiastic as I was about making music within humble means.

Thankfully, there continues to be a wealth of incredible professionals, teachers, and communities who generously share their knowledge on YouTube. Nowadays, some of my favourite channels are:

All this improvement of my craft over the years culminated in my confident decision to not only make a full album, but to actually release it on December 19, 2025.

I made my debut synthpop album Afterlove to help me process and make peace in the wake of a devastating breakup with my soulmate. Afterlove is about heartbreak and healing, saturated by nostalgia with a dark and melancholic undertow. It features catchy guitar riffs, lush synth pads, strong drums, pulsing bass, and eccentric vocals all wrapped up in velvety production.

I’m proud that it’s an entirely DIY album. Pre-production, lyric writing, and graphic design took from early August to mid September 2025. Recording happened in my bedroom studio from September 29 to November 10, 2025.

After 84 recording hours and 14 mixing hours across 42 days of passion, I’ve definitely learned and shared a lot!

As I continue making music, I felt it was important to share these six invaluable life skills that I’ve gained because of songwriting and music production, and especially to highlight that they're skills you can absolutely learn too:

The Six Lifelong Skills

1 - Project Management

In general, project management is all about planning, organizing, and executing an idea from beginning to end. It encompasses the skills of time management, resource management, organization, and execution.

The music you make is a project, whether that's a single song, an EP, or a whole album.

To make this happen, you're planning the days you want to spend practicing, recording, mixing, mastering, designing, and finishing (maybe even releasing).

Then you're organizing your time into tasks to make sure everything you've planned gets done: recording guitar, writing lyrics, adding other instruments, and so on. If you've set a deadline for yourself (which I highly recommend you do), you're making sure your time is structured in order to meet that deadline.

Throughout this process, you're managing resources: your DAW, your available instruments, your own well being, as well as other people who might be working with you, your money if you're spending any, even the very space you're recording in.

Executing your project means finishing it! You've done all the hard work and now you can choose whether to share it, but you should totally celebrate what you've accomplished.

Songwriting and music production teaches you project management because you're repeatedly seeing a concept through to completion, and hopefully release.

2 - Communication

Writing a song is all about communicating a core idea and emotion.

For example, my songs Euphoria and Only Shadows are both tied by Afterlove's overarching theme and emotion of heartbreak. But their ideas are distinct.

Euphoria is about missing the out-of-this-world feeling from being with the woman you gave your heart and soul to, knowing now that kind of rush will never happen again and you're condemned to spend the rest of your life without her.

Only Shadows expresses the struggle of trying to move on, even if part of you is still chasing the spark of a once passionate flame. Doing your best to figure out tomorrow despite being left alone with only shadows for company.

If you think about it, all your favourite songs are focused on a single emotionally charged idea that you relate to and connect with strongly.

Music captures a moment in time. As songwriters, we spend a lot of time and energy meticulously distilling our complex ideas and feelings–through lyrics and music–into powerful messages for you to hear.

3 - Emotional Intelligence

As musicians, we think and feel more deeply than most people. We identify, process, and express our emotions every time we write a song.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to do exactly this: to recognize, understand, manage, and communicate our own emotions. It involves a high degree of self awareness. In life, this helps build healthier and stronger relationships, handle stress better, and actually get things done.

When it comes to songwriting and music production, we're figuring out the best chord progression to make you feel a certain way; the most fitting effect or plugin that translates a potent feeling into audio; the perfect lyric to convey vivid imagery and capture what's going on inside our hearts.

Along these lines, most songwriters tend to write from their own perspective and lived experiences.

As a complement to this, the songwriting circle I was part of showed me another incredible way: the empathic songwriting method.

Empathic songwriting is about being able to put yourself in another person's shoes and situation, deeply understand and communicate their thoughts and feelings, and invite the listener into that story. Writing from a perspective other than your own, including as another “character” even, is the core of this method. It can be a much more intimate, memorable, and immediate way of songwriting that really gets you in tune with emotions.

Sometimes, the best way to get a point across really is exclusively through music!

4 - Strategic Thinking

How you approach songwriting and music production can unlock new ways to approach everything else in life, too.

When we're working in our DAW, trying out different musical ideas, and (re)writing lyrics, we're applying strategic thinking. This is the process of analyzing a situation, anticipating challenges, thinking ahead to results and opportunities, and figuring out what actions need to happen in the long run to cross the finish line.

I've talked to songwriters who only write songs in the moments they feel the strongest emotions. Others record and release exactly one take. Some write according to a schedule, prioritizing discipline. And some even prefer the raw authenticity of demos to refined mixes.

There are various strategies, as unique as the songwriter, and they all work best when they're tailored to that songwriter's specific intent.

The next time you write a song, don't be afraid to try a different strategy. You'll be surprised how it unlocks a new level of creativity and excitement!

5 - Collaboration

Throughout my creative process, I prefer to do absolutely everything myself, from songwriting to visualizers. Part of this is because I struggle with asking for help, although I've gotten better reaching out to peers for feedback, tips, insights into their own inspiring process, and just fun discussion.

A large part of my DIY preference also comes from being accustomed to the speed and intensity of my own creative workflow. I trust myself. I'm always well rehearsed, show up on time, know my strengths and weaknesses, and can act on inspiration as soon as it strikes. I'm comfortable and confident as a solo songwriter, and I love producing my own music. Bringing my creative vision to life on my own terms is immensely fulfilling.

Others find fulfillment in networking and collaborating on their music. I admire their ability to find who does what best, work together towards a shared creative vision, and support one another through to release. With the ease of file sharing, whether directly through email and storage, or collaborating in real time on the same platform, collaboration is easier than ever around the world.

Collaboration can also be simply offering constructive feedback, encouragement, advice, gear and plugins, new techniques, and sharing enthusiasm. There's always good music to look forward to!

The skill of working together with others in songwriting and music production will make you better at getting along with people from all walks of life.

6 - Risk Taking

It is brave to put yourself out there, to create and just see what happens. It's a measure of strength to be vulnerable and emotional through music. It’s okay if not every song is perfect, or even necessarily good or liked. These risks are part and parcel of making music.

This is why we sometimes don't realize that as songwriters and music producers, we're way more open to going for new ideas, testing out combinations that haven't been done before, and boldly adapting to new inspirations and methods. Tying this back to the strategic thinking skill, the approach we take to making music is informed by our willingness to experiment.

Sure, we can get comfortable (maybe stubborn, too) about doing things a certain way. But it's in those moments when mistakes happen, when we think we've tried everything we possibly can, when we're ready to shut down a session and walk away, that something is sparked that ignites a whole new direction for the song.

Risk taking, and the innovation that comes with it, is an invaluable life skill because it means we'll never be stuck in our comfort zone. Songwriting and music production teaches us to not back down from challenges, but rather to find creative solutions–and being okay whether they work out or not.

What can these skills do for you?

I hope I've gotten across that songwriters and music producers are highly skilled people. Moreover, we also have skills that apply to many different life situations. Through dedication, we improve over time and inevitably help others along the way.

Of course, you’ll pick up more than just these six life skills as you continue to write and produce songs! The point is that without even realizing it, you're steadily gaining confidence and expertise as you do what you love. These more I make music, the more I want to keep making music. As Masquerade, I'm finding deep joy, fulfillment, and healing which only motivates me further.

The best thing about these skills is that they will surely empower you to make more music!

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Masquerade's Songwriting and Music Production Diary

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