On songwriting and killing your darlings

I have written music for as long as I can remember. Within my first year of piano lessons, my teacher Mrs Topper was encouraging me to compose my own pieces and setting it as weekly homework. Those early compositions were beyond simple, but it didn't matter. I was routinely creating something that wasn't there before. It was like a magic trick. Over time, Mrs Topper pushed me to perform my own music at her annual concerts, instead of pieces that I had learned. Again, they were not showy or complex, but they were mine. I felt enormously proud that people were listening to something that I had come up with. Something that I had written to express an idea or a feeling. It has stayed with me since the age of about eight, and is nothing more or less than a compulsion at this point. It once struck me that not everybody who learns an instrument feels that urge to write. I remember chatting to lots of my high school peers who learned one instrument or another, and those who wrote their own…

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