Art & Artist - Human Creativity in the Age of AI

The Power of Music as Therapy: Goodshivers Discusses His Songwriting Process

• Kyle Ariel Knowles • Season 1 • Episode 2

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In this episode, host Kyle Ariel Knowles sits down with talented musician Eddie Irvin, known as Goodshivers. Eddie specializes in creating instrumental piano music for filmmakers and podcasters, crafting custom scores that evoke specific emotions and enhance storytelling.

One of the highlights of the conversation was when Eddie explained his unique approach to chord progressions and how he incorporates unconventional notes to add flavor to his music. He emphasized balancing familiar sounds with unexpected elements to create something fresh and engaging.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The Power of Improvisation: Eddie shared how he began his musical journey at five, learning classical piano but quickly gravitating towards improvisation and songwriting. He emphasized the importance of allowing creativity to flow freely, stating that improvisation was not just a skill but a necessary outlet for processing emotions during his formative years. This reminds us that creativity often thrives in environments where we feel free to explore and experiment without constraints.

The Challenge of Finishing Projects: One of the most relatable points Eddie made was about the struggle many musicians face: starting songs enthusiastically but finding it difficult to finish them. He likened it to having a closet full of half-finished ideas. This resonates with so many of us in various fields—it's easy to get excited about new projects, but discipline and commitment are essential to see them through to completion. Eddie's journey highlights the importance of setting aside time to refine and finish our creative endeavors.

Visual Branding Matters: In today's digital age, Eddie discussed the significance of visual identity in music. He mentioned his captain's hat as a way to stand out and create a recognizable brand. This is a crucial lesson for all creatives: having a unique visual presence in a crowded marketplace can help you connect with your audience and make a lasting impression. Whether through fashion, artwork, or other visual elements, curating a cohesive brand can elevate your work and visibility.


Join us as Eddie shares his journey into music, from his early classical training at age five to his evolution into a creative songwriter and improviser. He discusses the importance of improvisation, the challenges of finishing songs, and how he navigates the world of music creation.

Eddie also discusses the significance of visual branding for musicians and shares insights on how to stand out in a crowded space. He also reveals his favorite chord and the unique approach he takes to songwriting, emphasizing the balance between simplicity and creativity.

Whether you're a musician, a fan of piano music, or simply curious about the creative process, this episode is packed with inspiration and valuable insights.


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Kyle Ariel Knowles: Hello there, welcome to the Art and Artist Podcast. My name is Kyle Ariel Knowles, and today's guest is Eddie Irvin. Eddie is the artist Goodshivers, and he produces instrumental piano for filmmakers and podcasters. Eddie creates custom piano music, including scores for audio dramatizations and instrumental projects like Listen While Sleeping or Thinking. His work ranges from flowing pretty piano pieces designed to relax to tailored pieces for specific scenes or feelings and full-blown songs. Welcome to the show, Eddie. 

Goodshivers: Hey, glad to be here. Thanks so much. That was a nice intro. I like that. Where are you dialing in from? I'm in Nashville. That's so Nashville, Tennessee. Yeah. I grew up in Buffalo, New York, but it was too cold for us. And so we moved to Nashville, you know, not, not just for the weather, a lot of creativity here, but we love it here. Getting a little too hot now, but, uh, you know, it's better than the freezing cold in Buffalo.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: I found you via TikTok.

Goodshivers: For You Page.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: And I just love your feel-good songwriting, piano improvs, and I checked out your songs on Spotify and wanted to interview you. So my first question is, how did you get into music, piano, and songwriting?

Goodshivers: That's great. Well, we're going back to age five. I mean, my mom, we had a piano in the house and my mom would play and of course, you know, on her lap and excited and teach me how to do it. And can we play this? And so they got us in lessons pretty young. I just loved it. I, you know, we, we did kind of the classically trained method, you know, following the music and all that stuff. And I found that, um, I really, I really had songs inside of me, you know, as I would play somebody else's songs, I would say, well, Why don't we go this direction? Or can I change it and go this direction? And, you know, little did I know that that was, you know, that was kind of the beginning of the of the whole, you know, being creative with music thing that I just kind of seemed to be inside me. But yeah, you know, classically trained from from age five and ever since I'm thirty nine now. So got a lot of years there and have loved it, have loved it my whole life.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: And how long did you take lessons then for?

Goodshivers: Through high school, it got kind of once we got into high school, I really started kind of moving away from playing other people's songs and wanting to really do my own and kind of do more improvisation stuff and just writing songs. I started recording in high school as well. But I had a piano teacher that stuck with me most of that way and was really flexible to say, you know what? You don't want to do the same thing that other people are doing or you want to kind of get into learning improvisation or learning chords or whatever else. Let's do it. So he was game and a wonderful influence in my life. and just kind of guided me as I was then kind of reaching to play new songs and try to understand, you know, pop music. Keep in mind coming from class, you know, classically trained, classical music seems, you know, worlds apart from pop. But he was game and taught me how to navigate, you know, a chord, different chords, like the natural number system, you know, like one, four, six, five, all the same chords that are in every pop song, that kind of vibe.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: And so did you first learn to read music, just like play exactly what's on the sheet music? You got it. You learned the Nashville numbering system and started improvising and making your own songs then?

Goodshivers: Yeah. Yeah. And I would, I would very often be practicing and playing what was on the sheet music. And then at a certain point, I, you know, I'd still be following the music, but then I'd say, Oh no, I don't want to go that way. I want to go a different way. So I kind of heard, you know, Oh, I wish we could go this way instead, or, you know, that. And then I started basically starting with playing the song, but then kind of breaking away and then improvising in that same kind of vibe. So that was, that was fun.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: So do you feel like it was just you practicing the Nashville number system or did your teacher actually guide you as you were learning to improv?

Goodshivers: I mean, it's both and. I can't remember like specifically, you know, oh, it was exactly this or exactly that. It was just kind of an insatiable love for music and insatiable appetite for sitting down and creating. And really, I mean, really also an outlet. I mean, this is we're talking about, you know, high school, middle school, high school. And, you know, you know how it gets and there's a lot of there's a lot of energy and a lot of, you know. You're becoming an adult, but you're not an adult yet. You've got all these feelings. And for me, it was a way to get all of it out. To be able to sit down and play and improvise was a way of getting that energy out and being able to be creative at the same time. But really, I found that I needed it. I found that I gravitated towards it because I needed the music. I needed to make music. in order to get this energy out and help me process my feelings. Very personal and helpful in that regard, but then also just a love for hearing a song and hearing the way that they took it and going, Oh my God, I got to play that. I got to figure that out. I remember watching Free Willy in the movie theater. That'll date me. I think maybe that was 1993 or so. there's a Michael Jackson song at the very end of it, and I came home singing it, and then I sat down and I played it. I figured it out, you know, it's just a few chords, and that's where I kind of really started realizing, oh, I can hear music. I can hear, you know, how songs are put together, and I can reproduce the song without having the music. It kind of broke me into that other direction.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, it's amazing. I've had one piano teacher that teaches that way. More like, I guess, do you play any other instruments? Yeah, guitar. Guitar, okay. So a lot of times when you learn guitar, you don't have a teacher or if you do have a teacher, you know, it's just chords and it's not about playing every note exactly. I mean, if you have tablature, you know, on guitar, you can play every single note, whatever on the guitar, but a lot of it's just learning chords and then singing the melody on top of it. And I did have one teacher at one point that taught basically piano the way guitar teachers teach guitar when it was all about, you know, it was about chords and scales, and then creating your own songs instead of trying to learn, like you learned initially, the classical way of playing every note perfectly that's written on some sheet music.

Goodshivers: Yeah, yeah, 100%. I taught piano actually for a season and I found that when I was teaching these young kids, they're like, yeah, I mean, we got to learn our notes. It's going to help you to be able to navigate and understand that. But then at the same time, let's play. This is a toy. Let's play with the toy as opposed to do your chores, which sometimes feels like that with classical music. Oh, I got to get it exactly right. I mean, you're following somebody else's vision, you're following somebody else's intuition and vision and song, but to help people actually start loving and being able to make themselves, it's such a gift. It's such a gift to be able to make music.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Sounds like it was really good therapy for you growing up.

Goodshivers: Yeah, it really was. Yeah, 100%, 100%.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: You have a Twitch stream from three years ago. I don't know if you'll remember this, but it was improv and the title of just on YouTube is, I Can't Afford to Lose You When You're Running Away. And really the song was like, truth told, probably lost in a melody. I don't know if you recall this or not, but I just wondered if you ever finished it, because I can't find it on Spotify and it was such a good improv. I was like, thank you.

Goodshivers: That is so, you know what, that kind of thing, that whole idea I feel like is what I've been doing for the past so many years is I'll start something, I'll love it, it's fun, it's exciting, and then getting it to the finish line really is, it takes a lot of effort, right? It's very easy. I could sit down and write a song right now in a second. but not have it fully complete, not have the second verse, not have the this and that. And then I find to be able to hold onto it and take it all the way through the end, it's just really hard. It's hard to finish, but at the same time, I'm aiming to do that. I want to do that. But this is what happens. There's, and this happens to lots of other musicians too, is that they've got a whole closet full of these, these havesies, these half songs and these, you know, ideas that are like, oh, that's a cool one that, you know, my voice notes is just, you know, oh, that's a good one. That's a good one. When am I going to sit down and finish it? I remember a little bit. I know when I was doing that on Twitch, but I can't remember the song now, but I would say that if I could hear it, I'd be able to kind of jump right into it. So it's the idea where it's like, as soon as I can get the vibe again, I can kind of, you know, get it, get into that again. But yeah, I, you know, it takes a lot to actually finish the song and I mean. It happens to a lot of people, but I'm trying to get better at that. It's more of the discipline of it.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, it's really hard because I probably have, I don't know, 150 song starters. I have chord progressions and some melody in there. No words yet or no melody. Sometimes it's just, here's a great chord progression and a cool sound on a synthesizer or something. And I think it was Prince that would, once he had an idea, he would not stop until it was recorded, right? So he would call engineer like at one in the morning and they would be there till six and he would lay down all the trash and just finish it. So I'm trying to get better at that. I'm trying to go, okay, I'm focusing on this thing until it's complete. At least it's a, it's a finished demo. you know, start, middle, end.

Goodshivers: Well, and I feel like as you're talking, I'm thinking about the idea of this. There's two parts to it, right? The first part is the passion and the excitement of, oh, I found something new. Oh, this is fun. And then getting over that to, okay, now the discipline, record it right, do the work to get all the lyrics right and that whole thing. And that typically just takes me way longer. It's not necessarily arduous. It's not this super horrible thing. It just takes a long time, and you have to stay in this state of being excited about it, but then eating your vegetables in the midst of that. I think our stories are not unique by far. I think tons of musicians love the starting and have a very hard time finishing. But it's required. I mean, that's a perfect example with Prince. He's a finisher. He's not going to say, oh, I've got this idea. If Prince, with all of his ideas, could have still been Prince, but then we would have never known him. We would have never known him because he would have never put anything out. That's inspiring for sure.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, and I love when I watch your videos and your TikToks and things and your improv, because you're immediately singing melody on top. And I saw this clip of John Mayer, where he says, anytime you start coming up with a chord progression, if you're not immediately going to da, da, ba, ba, ba, da, and singing on top of it, you're wasting your time. So I find your videos very inspiring, because you don't have the words yet. You're, you know, it's not really scatting, but you know what I mean? You're just making up words or you're pulling some words in sometimes, but you're putting melody immediately on top. And I think that's what musicians who write songs, that's what they do.

Goodshivers: Yeah, it's the easiest way to start really, because then you get the shape right, and then you have to figure out, well, what words are actually going to fit into this mold. It's essentially you have the mold just right. And for the most part, you can play the entire song like that. You can play with all the… the verse and the chorus and then the verse again, bridge, all that whole thing. I approach songwriting now is always starting that way. I just start playing and it's a vibe. We'll do this at the end if you want to, but the idea is that it's always, it's a vibe first. It's a feeling, right? It's a few, what kind of feeling are we getting into? And then inside of that feeling, there's only so many notes. Um, and one typically with pop melodies, I mean, gosh, it's like, there's like three, there's like three different notes. I mean, hit me baby one more time. Okay. That's two notes. And we're just going back and forth between them. So it's not like we're doing, we're doing rocket science here, but to find the words. John Mayer is a perfect example of this, where he is so accessible. The words are unique and fresh, and yet it's so easy to understand. Even pop melodies are so simple. It's just a simple song. Oh, it's the same three chords. Okay, sure. But there's a reason why Coldplay is Coldplay and John Mayer is John Mayer is that they take those, they play within the bounds. I mean, John Mayer, I guess is, you know, he's doing fancy, super fancy stuff with guitar, but they play within the bounds, but they give it such a fresh new feeling. It's the same four chords. but it's just this extra layer on top of it, plus then the meaning of the song, which then hits you at the heart. That's just really difficult to do. It's like the iPhone with the one button. It's like, well, my kid could have thought of that, but to get to that simplicity took a lot of engineering and a lot of thought to be able to make it so simple.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: There's one other question I have about your music on Spotify. You have a Falling Asleep at the Grammys. I don't know if you remember. This is a 45-minute song. I don't know if it's an improv sesh or… Yeah. The question is, is it Grammys as in your grandma's or the Grammys as in George's?

Goodshivers: No, I thought about… Gosh, I'm trying to remember where that came from now. But yeah, I guess I'm thinking about this idea of like, you know, lulling people to sleep, you know, playing the pretty piano, playing these long pretty piano pieces, you know, thinking about where would they have a place? Or where would they be used? Or what would it be? And I just had this vision of You know, just kind of, you know, zoning out and listening to this and falling asleep at the Grammys. I'm trying to figure out where that exactly came from. But yeah, not my grandmothers, but the Grammys is what I was thinking of. Yeah. That's awesome.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: So my daughter begged me to ask you about your hat that you sometimes wear in your TikTok.

Goodshivers: Yeah.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Your captain's hat. Tell me the story behind this.

Goodshivers: You know what? I just don't even know what I'm doing at this point and just trying a bunch of stuff. The idea is that if you show up vanilla, if you show up looking like everybody else and doing like everybody else, then there's no way to recognize you. But as soon as you're doing anything different, it's like building a brand, right? The idea is that you do something different, and then you continue to do that and hold on to that so that people can recognize you. It's more about recognition. Because this is such an overwhelming world with so many different people and so many different people talking, I know there's one guy that I see on Instagram, he's always holding a yellow crowbar. And there's another guy who, he's a music business guy, he's always got a cigar. He's not smoking a cigar, he's just holding it. And it's that idea, like having the thing where then allows people to place you, oh, that's the guy with the uh. versus if there's nothing distinguishing or different about you even if people want to share you it's like oh it's a guy he was wearing a shirt like okay i have nothing i have no way of recognizing it so i think i'm in a season right now i'm just playing and you know i really i've had vision now of like of throwing paint on my face and then having paint on my fingers and playing the piano and getting paint all over the piano. I haven't quite crossed that bridge yet, but doing things like that, that's more the marketing angle and realizing too that the musicians that break through, their art extends way into the visual. They are curating their music. The music has to be good. But then they curate this whole vibe and this vision, and that's something that I've never been good at. I've never really been super fashionable, but you know, anybody can learn anything. And so I'm just trying to push into this new world and just try stuff and see how it goes. But yeah, sometimes I like wearing the hat sometimes. It's kind of hard with the headphones, so sometimes I just wear the glasses.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, I love the glasses too. That's part of it, right?

Goodshivers: It's fun, yeah.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, this reminds me of Chapel Rhone, and I love that for her, she goes by Chapel Rhone.

Goodshivers: So visual, so visual.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: And Chapel Rhone is a project. the whole thing. It's not just the music. But I think a lot of musicians think that all the music should speak for itself. But in today's day, it's kind of hard to break through without that whole persona.

Goodshivers: When you think of John Mayer, he's not Chapel Rowan by a long shot, but he's also got his own vibe. He's got his own thing. Certainly, there's people that are Josh Groban. He just puts nice clothes on and sings because his voice is so distinctive. I'm at the point now where I realize I love playing and I love doing this whole thing, but I haven't really I haven't really extended my art into the visual sphere. And I know I've got it in me, but I just haven't really taken the time. Because when I sit down to make music, I'm not thinking, oh, how should I look? What should I wear? I'm thinking, what's the song going to be? My mind is 100% here. But again, to get seen, to be able to stand out, you've got to be able to have that duality of the vocal, the song, with the visual part to really break through, I think.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: OK, last question for you.

Goodshivers: What's your favorite chord? You know what, there's a, it's maybe not a chord, but more of a shape. The idea is like, if you play something very, very simplistic like this, it's very blocky. It's very, the shape of it is like, Oh, I don't know how to say this. Just very, very cut and dry. Very like, like play school toy. Cookie cutter. That's cookie cutter. Yeah, exactly. It's like, if you're gonna, if you're gonna like teach somebody a new chord, it's like, here's the chord, right? But you can flip a chord over. Like you can play a chord like, like this. And you can take the bottom and put it on the top. And you can take the bottom and put it on the top. So we basically have three versions of the same chord. We've got the original, then we kind of flip it over and then we kind of flip it over one more time. And then of course, if you flip it over one more time, you'd get right back to the beginning. It's just higher up the octave. So I typically like playing the kind of the second variation. So not the original block one, but where we go, we go up just one, but then I also put a second on it. Okay, so a second, if we're talking to music, one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five, right? So a second. is just, is the two. One, two. Now it doesn't fit. It doesn't work. It's this. In the C of this. So it's kind of fighting. But what happens is when you throw it on the top, it gives it a little bit of something. This is boring. And this is with something else. It's very slight, but it's kind of like putting salt and pepper and spices on your food. Like, yeah, you can eat it, just put it in the microwave and you're done. Or you could say, hmm, I want a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And so what happens is you mix the notes that work with the notes that don't work. You have to make sure you have more notes that work than the notes that don't work or else you're gonna flip flop the thing and be all confusing. But the idea is if you add a little bit of spice or a little bit of some notes that don't fit, now it gives it a little bit of a flavor. So that right there, I could have played the same thing. But instead of doing that, I'm flipping over the chord, I'm adding a little bit of spice, and it just has a nice feel. Even that, you can hear it fighting, it's fighting with itself. The chord is actually this. But I'm playing lots of notes that don't work. I could play simple. And we can even go back and forth between let's just play the notes that work, and then let's go to some notes that don't work, and then just kind of go back and forth. You can make a whole song just like that. And then flip to a different chord progression, or a different chord.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: So basically this is the way that I write songs is that we just start with

Goodshivers: How's that verb sound? Does that sound better? So what we do is we find some chords to play with. Again, with pop songs, we've got basically four chords. Essentially, it's just 1, 4, 5, 6. And if you want to think about 1, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, that's basically the bass note. So when I say 1, 4, 5, 6, we're just basically moving the bass note around. But this is basically just 6-4. And then within 6, we play 6, and then we play a variation of 6. So we kind of wobble in there. And then we kind of go on to 4, and we kind of wobble there. All right, so here we go. Down to 4.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: So now we have to do something else.

Goodshivers: We've stayed there for a while, we gotta do something different. So now this either goes right to a chorus or whatever else, but we can't go back to the sixth, because now it's gonna be too boring. You're gonna hold on to it for too long. So where can we go, right? So we're here. we're here. We can go to the one. just go back to that original sound. So basically, the way that I start songs, if I have no idea what I'm doing, and also if I have no inspiration, is just mathematical. It's what key, and then it's what time signature. So give me a letter from A to G, and feel free to say sharp or flat or just nothing. I will say D. D, great, easy. And then are we going in 3-4, 4-4, or 6-8? Let's do 4-4. 4-4, so 1, and then fast or slow? Let's do medium. Medium. Okay.

Goodshivers: 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Goodshivers: Go somewhere else now.

Goodshivers: And then now we can either go back down to a gentle energy or we can explode. So it's all this kind of energy management too of like, well, where do you, you know, are you, is this the time where everything just goes crazy? Or is this the time where you kind of pull back and you kind of tease a little bit? And at the beginning of a song, you know, I could have, I could have actually made a case to go either direction. We could either go and just kind of just, and then just kind of just calm down again. You know, or… And then we're basically back home, and then we'll basically take whatever we did, and we'll copy-paste that, and then we'll bring that forward, and then do different, you know, kind of the same sort of melody, but then we change the words, and then after we get that, and so that's the verse, and that's the chorus, and then the verse and the chorus, and now bridge has to be totally different, maybe not totally different chords, but just a totally different vibe. So sometimes what you want to do is you want to take a song that you've written that's a completely different song, and then just sneak that in, and that'll be the bridge. And then we just go back to the verse and the chorus. So this is the way that I write, you know, I sit down, sometimes I wake up with a song or I've got a melody and I'm singing it, I'm trying to kind of peck around and figure out where is that or what is that, but I'm always thinking in the shape of the Nashville number system and basically one, four, five, and six, these are the only chords you ever need. One, two, two minor really. three minor, four, five, and six. And really all these songs, all these amazing songs can be played just with one, four, five, and six. The Free Willy song, I played this in C, but I was like, eight, you know, it's one. To a five, back down to a one. So I mean, Michael Jackson, I mean, top hit is just, we're playing a one chord and then we're playing a five chord and that's it. And of course, then you've got the whole, you know, you've got his whole vision and everything he's doing and his beautiful voice and the lyrics and everything. Pop music is so simple and yet there's so much you can do with it. So I love it that I'm constrained to a box, essentially. I have to stay inside the box, but then I've got to be creative inside the box. And that's really where I have the most fun.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: That's awesome. Thank you so much, Eddie. I really thank you for being generous with your time today. So happy to meet you. I wish you so much success in bringing joy to others through your music. And I will link to how people can find you on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube. And so thank you for being on the show today. Really appreciate it.

Goodshivers: Thank you so much for asking.


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