My Experience with Song Chasers — Full Circle Music

In 2021, around the time I was finishing some of the first Studio.com courses I had taken, I joined Song Chasers, an online songwriting and music community created by Full Circle Music in Nashville, Tennessee.

Song Chasers was founded and led by Seth Mosley, a Grammy-winning songwriter and music producer who also serves as the CEO of Full Circle Music. Full Circle Music is a Nashville-based music studio and online music academy that provides songwriting and production education, live events, resources, and a community for musicians. (Full Circle Music)

The idea behind Song Chasers was particularly appealing to me because it wasn’t just another online course. It was a community where songwriters, producers, artists, and other musicians could actually meet one another, collaborate, share songs, receive feedback, and learn from people working in the professional music industry. Full Circle Music describes it as a private musical community designed to help musicians connect, collaborate, and learn together.

Co-writing and Weekly Zoom Sessions

I was a member of Song Chasers for approximately three years.

During that time, I did a lot of remote co-writing with other members, primarily through Zoom. We would get together with other songwriters and work on songs together, sometimes starting with an idea, lyric, melody, chord progression, or production concept and building the song from there.

There were also weekly Zoom calls and training sessions covering different aspects of songwriting, music production, and the music business. Song Chasers offered opportunities for both songwriting feedback and production critiques, along with training from Seth Mosley and other music professionals.

Over the roughly three years I was involved, I estimate that I wrote around 50 songs with other Song Chasers members.

Most of those songs were never released. Some were never completely finished. But that wasn’t necessarily the point for me.

The experience of actually sitting down and writing songs with other people was extremely valuable.

I had spent a lot of time writing and producing on my own, so Song Chasers gave me an opportunity to get outside of my normal workflow and experience what it was like to collaborate with other songwriters on a regular basis.

Meeting People Online

One of the things I remember most about Song Chasers was how quickly people I initially knew only through Zoom started to feel like real friends and creative colleagues.

We might meet online several times before eventually meeting in person. After spending years seeing the same people on Zoom calls, it was a strange and very cool experience to finally meet some of them face-to-face.

That became especially meaningful when I traveled to Nashville in 2023 for a Full Circle Music/Song Chasers music conference.

Nashville — 2023

In May 2023, I traveled to Nashville to attend the music conference associated with Song Chasers.

While I was there, I participated in songwriting workshops, writing sessions, and other activities with members of the community. One of the coolest parts was meeting people in person whom I had already known from Zoom for several years.

The conference also included a group songwriting experience where the organizers put us together into songwriting teams. It was another opportunity to experience collaborative songwriting in person rather than through a computer screen.

I also did some songwriting outside of the organized conference activities.

One writing session took place in my hotel room, while another happened at an Airbnb belonging to one of the other Song Chasers members. Those sessions stand out to me because they were less structured and more like what you might experience when musicians simply get together and start writing.

I also took approximately a week to explore Nashville beyond the conference. I spent time sightseeing, walking around the city, and checking out Nashville’s music culture.

For me, the trip was as much about experiencing Nashville and finally meeting people from the online community as it was about the actual conference.

Song Feedback and Synthesizer V

One of the more interesting experiences I had through Song Chasers involved getting feedback on one of my songs from a Grammy-winning music producer.

For the vocal track on the song, I had used Synthesizer V, a software-based vocal synthesis program.

When I presented the song for feedback, I intentionally did not mention that the vocal was generated with Synthesizer V.

I wasn’t trying to deceive anyone. I simply didn’t want the technology itself to influence the way the song was evaluated. I wanted the feedback to be about the song and the production, rather than having the conversation immediately become about the fact that the vocal was synthetic.

The producer listened to the song and gave his feedback without mentioning anything unusual about the vocal. He didn’t appear to notice that it was generated with Synthesizer V.

Afterward, I told him that I had used Synthesizer V for the vocal.

That experience was interesting to me because it reinforced something I was already learning through music production: sometimes the most useful feedback comes when people evaluate what they are actually hearing rather than being influenced by how something was made.

Two Videos for Full Circle Music

During my time as a Song Chasers member, I also created two videos for the Full Circle Music YouTube channel.

This was another part of the experience that went beyond simply writing songs. Song Chasers exposed me to different sides of the music business, including content creation, music production, songwriting, networking, and the business surrounding music.

What I Took Away From Song Chasers

Looking back, Song Chasers was much more than a songwriting course for me.

It was a place to:

• Co-write with other songwriters remotely
• Get feedback on songwriting and production
• Participate in songwriting challenges and exercises
• Learn about music production
• Learn about the music business
• Attend live training sessions with industry professionals
• Meet other musicians and songwriters
• Build relationships with people outside my immediate musical circle
• Practice writing songs consistently
• Experience collaborative songwriting in person
• Explore Nashville and its songwriting community

The Full Circle Music philosophy emphasizes that musicians shouldn’t have to navigate the industry completely alone. Song Chasers was built around that idea of community, collaboration, education, and professional mentorship. (Full Circle Music)

For me, the biggest value wasn’t necessarily whether any particular song became a hit or even whether the songs were eventually released.

Most weren’t.

The value was in the experience of writing them.

I estimate that I wrote around 50 songs with other members during my approximately three years in the community. Some were finished, some remained unfinished, and none ultimately became released recordings. But every one of those sessions gave me experience working with another songwriter, communicating musical ideas, compromising when necessary, and trying to turn an idea into an actual song.

That experience is difficult to reproduce when you spend most of your time writing alone.

Mentorship and Music Production Feedback

Another important part of my Song Chasers experience was getting feedback not only on songwriting, but also on music production.

Two of the people who provided feedback were X O’Connor, a GRAMMY and Dove Award-winning producer with Full Circle Music, and Seth Mosley, the GRAMMY-winning songwriter, producer, and founder of Full Circle Music.

Both X and Seth participated in the Song Chasers community and provided feedback on members’ music. Their feedback covered both the songwriting itself and the production—the arrangement, sounds, performances, mixes, and the overall way a song was being presented.

That distinction was important to me because I was interested in both sides of the process. I wasn’t simply trying to write better lyrics and melodies; I was also continually learning how to turn those songs into finished productions.

Having experienced producers listen to my work and offer their perspective gave me another set of ears that I wouldn’t normally have access to as an independent songwriter and producer working primarily on my own.

Some of the feedback sessions were particularly useful because they forced me to step outside my own perspective. When you’ve been working on a song for hours—or sometimes days—it’s easy to become too close to it. Having someone with professional experience listen to it and immediately identify what was working, what wasn’t, or what could be improved was extremely valuable.

The Song Chasers community therefore became a place where I could develop both my songwriting and production skills simultaneously.

That combination was one of the things I appreciated most about the program. A song could be discussed as a piece of songwriting one moment and then examined as a production the next.

Song Chasers Alongside Other Music Education

During this same general period, I continued looking for other ways to expand my music-production education.

I also joined Puremix and spent approximately a year studying its music-production courses.

At another point, I joined Mastering.com to learn more about mastering, mixing, and music production. Eventually, the cost of maintaining multiple memberships became too expensive for me to justify keeping all of them simultaneously.

I ultimately ended my Song Chasers membership and stayed with the Mastering.com Members Club for approximately another year before eventually moving into its Reverse Engineer Program.

Looking back, this period was part of a larger stretch of my musical education where I was actively seeking out different teachers, courses, communities, and hands-on experiences.

Song Chasers was an important part of that period because it wasn’t just about watching another course.

I was actually writing songs with other people.

The experience was particularly meaningful because, although I had been writing and making music with other people since my early bands and had continued collaborating with friends and other musicians over the years, Song Chasers was the most consistent basis on which I had written songs with other people to that point.

And after years of primarily working alone, that was probably the most valuable part of the experience.