Hello hello,
Welcome to my blog. Here I’ll be documenting my thoughts, opinions, and experiences about my music and the industry at large. In this inaugural blog post I figured I’d share a bit more about myself and my songwriting journey.
Before the Before...
As I’ve mentioned on this site, I’ve been writing songs for fifteen years. I’m nearly 24 now, but I wrote my first song at the age of 8, I want to say in April of 2009, to be specific. I dedicated this song to my third-grade teacher, who was the first person to have a major impact on my love of learning. It wouldn’t be until years later that I would hear one of my favourite quotes, a musical theatre adage: “When you can’t speak anymore, you sing. When you can’t just sing, you dance.” I didn’t know at the time, but that was entirely the case for me.
See, I’ve always been a chatterbox. I have so, so many thoughts and I love to express them to anyone who will let me. I love to talk with people, I love to analyze things, I love to learn things and then share what I’ve learned with others. Not everyone has been kind about this trait of mine – sometimes I even get down on myself about it. But I can’t help myself – I love expressing my thoughts however people will hear them. That’s part of why I love writing songs – it’s a lot more palatable that way.
Another reason – a bigger reason – why I love songwriting is because with all those thoughts in my head, it’s often hard for me to sort through them all and organize them, to the point where often I don’t know what I’m thinking or how I’m feeling. Getting those thoughts out on paper – or in a word doc – has always been the best way for me to work through whatever I’m writing about in my own life. Songwriting is incredibly personal for me, and so often I’ll draw on my own experiences, or the things I’ve witnessed in life.
Humble Beginnings
A lot of my earliest songs weren’t great – but sometimes one will come back to me and it’ll get stuck in my head for a day or so. Songwriting was a fun hobby I had for a few years, and it even took a backseat to storytelling for a while once I discovered the online world of fanfiction in 2012. It wasn’t until 2014 that I really started taking songwriting seriously again, and over the span of three years I filled a 90-page notebook with all my ideas (and some loose-leaf paper. And some long-lost computer files). I was even able to attend a few songwriting workshops held by award-winning singer-songwriter Tia McGraff.
All Downhill From Here
2019 was when I really reached my turning point, though. I was consistently writing as often as I could, even though I’d finished high school and gone off to college for an introductory design course. Despite this, my mental health was declining at a rapid pace. I hadn’t gotten into the interior design program I was so dead set on, and I ended up dropping out of college. I got a job at a hardware store in my hometown, and I hated it... and I got the feeling they hated me. Maybe I was right, or maybe I was just a dramatic 18-year-old. Either way, I was unhappy, unwell, and unmedicated.
Long story short, I wound up in a psychiatric hospital. It was there that I rekindled my love for music – my lifeline. I remember it like it was yesterday: I’d been playing an original song on this beat-up acoustic guitar during my free-time, and a fellow patient I’d heard speak maybe once or twice before came out of his room and said, “I heard the most beautiful voice, and I had to see who it was.” That was what stirred that desire to get better in me – that desire to make music, and to share my thoughts with the world, just like I always had.
Things are Looking Up
As soon as I was out – and prescribed some medication for my depression, which I still deal with to this day – I got myself a job and worked towards healing emotionally. I found a desire for life again, and with some encouragement, in September of 2021 I started my first year at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario for Music Industry Arts.
Since then, I’ve finished that program, followed it up with the Audio Post-Production program which I graduated from this past April, and I’ll be going back to attend Music Industry Management and Artist Development in January 2025. In these years I’ve written over 100 songs (thanks to the fact that I’ve written two musicals – and am currently working on two more). I’ve also met some incredible people, made some amazing connections, and I’ve got a great foundation for my career in music. I’m grateful for my past for bringing me to where I am now, and I can’t wait to see where my songwriting journey will take me in the future.
Keep looking forward,
Roman Ellis
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