Ben Walker is a songwriter from Oxford. He achieved a small amount of fame in the last few months with his song ‘You’re No-one if you’re not on Twitter’ which he wrote for the 50/90 songwriting challenge.

I like Ben – his website looks lovely, his songs are infectious and fun, and he writes some interesting stuff on his blog, and he’s well worth checking out.

He agreed to do a post 50/90 interview for Songwright. Here’s the first half.

Tom: 50 songs….. how on earth did you manage that?

Ben: I have always been interested in creativity as a skill that you can learn and practise. I was aiming to spend the summer writing loads of songs, just being as prolific as possible. I came across the 50/90 Challenge online, and it offered both the challenge of writing 50 songs in 90 days and the support structure of constant feedback and encouragement from fellow songwriters. It turned out to be a really positive and fun community of creative people.

So the 50/90 Challenge got me going. I told loads of people that I was taking the challenge and wrote about it on my blog. Having people ask “How are the 50 songs going?” every time you see them is a big motivator.

I wrote 19 full songs, and I really like them all.They were all written and recorded quickly, so they capture a specific moment.

Then I wrote 12 songs that are 12 seconds each, made videos of them and uploaded them to 12seconds.tv as a 144-second album called “12×12″. That took about 4 hours and really boosted my numbers.

But I got to the last weekend before the 50/90 deadline and still had 19 to write.

I put a shout out on Twitter that I was going to video stream a live songwriting session, and set up my gear. In the end there were about 6 or 7 people watching for the full 2 hours, and I improvised 19 songs based on titles submitted through my website and suggestions from the audience. It was a blast, and was the highlight of the 50/90 for me.

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The second half of the interview will be online tomorrow.

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