Cody Simpson - Welcome to Paradise - My Journey

Entertaining with Dad, age eight.

My first pretend guitar.

My early efforts at finger picking.

PITCH PERFECT

Swimming and music were my whole world. If I wasn’t in the pool training, I was sitting on my bed practising the guitar and writing songs. Swimming was serious for me, whereas music was more fun, with less pressure. I enjoyed swimming because it was competitive, while music was more of a passion. I was doing it because I liked it.

My parents signed me up for private guitar lessons at a nearby guitar shop. During one of my first lessons, the teacher had me turn around while he played and asked me if I could pick out the notes by ear. He would play a single note – a G, say, or a B or a C – and I was able to pick it out accurately. He was pretty shocked. After the lesson, he took my parents aside for a private chat, and he told them that it was quite rare for someone my age to be able to identify notes like that. That’s when they first realised that I had a natural feel for the guitar and an ear for music. Meanwhile, I was sitting outside the lesson room thinking, ‘What did I do wrong?!’

I started taking lessons on and off over the next few years, sometimes stopping for a while because of swimming commitments. When I wasn’t in lessons, I was still playing non-stop. Even if I didn’t know the chords or what I was doing, I just kept at it. My dad would take out his guitar and we’d sit together plucking out notes to a song until I could play along with him. Alli sings a bit but doesn’t play any instruments, and Tom appears to be interested in music now, but he’s still young, so we’ll see what he gets into. Right now, he is just having fun travelling and being a kid.

When I took lessons, I went weekly, but I still didn’t practise regularly. It was more of a fun hobby and my focus was on swimming. I would teach myself a lot by ear, and I went online to look up chords and fingerings and figured it out from there. My lessons started out focused a lot on music theory, genres, and composers, and notation, but I didn’t always like it. I wanted to play my favourite songs by Keith Urban and Johnny Cash, and I didn’t always care about the theories and correct techniques. So my parents spoke to the guitar teacher, and he agreed to let me bring in my favourite songs and structure the lessons around them. This way of learning kept me interested in playing and made it much more fun.

I wrote my first song when I was eight years old, and it was called ‘Further Away From Me’. Well, actually, I wrote my first song when I was six, and it was about putting diapers on a chicken, but I would prefer not to be remembered for that one. ‘Further Away From Me’ was a bit better than that. It was about the feeling of drifting away from a girl, and not being able to keep the relationship going. It was a mature song for my age! I played it for my parents when it was finished and they thought it was good, but a little too mature. They wondered about where I was getting my inspiration. But the truth is, I have been into girls for as long as I can remember!

When I start doing something and see that I’m good at it, I want to keep going. I started writing more songs and playing them for my family, who encouraged me. That’s when I started to develop the confidence to play in front of different people, including our family and friends when we all got together.

The process of writing a song developed naturally as I was learning the guitar. I spent a lot of time teaching myself when I was in between lessons. Making up melodies and adding words felt like a natural next step. I would start with some chords that I learned in lessons, and from there I would go online and look up how to play other chords and notes. Once I had the chords I thought I needed, I would just start singing tunes to it. Writing the lyrics was always the last thing I did. I still use pretty much the same process. I really enjoy just playing guitar and humming a great melody. Now, once I have that down, I record it on my phone, and then start working on the lyrics.

Songwriting has become an important way for me to express myself. As I’ve got older, and experienced some exciting and confusing situations with girls, I’ve found it a powerful outlet for me to work through my feelings. When I think I have a good story, I’ll write a song to it. And sometimes the opposite happens – I’m just playing on the guitar, and I’m coming up with a cool chord progression, and then the song develops from there.

My songs can be very personal and, being a bit shy, I only played my original songs for my family and grandparents. I didn’t even play them for friends. My family encouraged me 100 per cent and as time went on I started getting the confidence to play in front of different people. Eventually I worked up the courage to play some of my own songs when we were all gathered outside at one of our barbecues.

It felt good to be a part of that creative, musical circle of adults. A good family friend, Brett Penwarn, is a terrific guitarist and singer. He was also our family doctor. Alli and I are close to his kids, too – Jasmin and Brayden. He always came over for jam sessions, and I looked up to him quite a bit. I always thought he was an amazing musician and, when I was really young, I would sit next to him with my little guitar and watch him play. I stared at his fingers and tried to learn from him. I would call Brett one of my mentors in life.

Soon after I started lessons, I was able to come in and pick up some of the same songs and riffs that Brett was playing. It felt amazing to really be a part of those moments! Of course, everyone around me was so impressed that I could pick it up so fast, so naturally that felt pretty great. And now, when I go home for a visit, we still have those jam sessions and sometimes I take the lead. Of all my musical experiences, playing really well around the barbecue can still be among the most fulfilling.

By the age of eight, I had outgrown my first guitar and needed a bigger and more professional one. I went to this guitar shop in town with my dad, and we were just browsing. I picked up a guitar I liked and started strumming on it to get a feel. Dad encouraged me to really play it and sing something with it. I had the Johnny Cash song ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ in my head, so I started playing and singing. The employees and guitar teachers from the store – and some other shoppers – stopped and started to listen, eventually gathering closer. I just kept playing as they grouped around me, and when I finished, everyone applauded.

That was really my first performance in front of an audience that wasn’t my family. And it felt pretty great! One of the guitar teachers there specialised in country music, and he approached me afterwards and asked if I wanted to have lessons with him. So I did.

His name was Cash Backman, and he used to be a country artist in Australia. He’d even had a number one song. I worked with him for a while and it was really cool to learn from someone who had reached that level. He was teaching me a lot of country songs, which my dad liked a lot.

During that time I also began to listen to more mainstream pop music, like Justin Timberlake and Chris Brown. I always wanted to learn how to play songs by these guys on the guitar, but I was cautious about telling Cash that I wanted to change my style musically – for good reason, as it turned out, because when I eventually did, he wasn’t that supportive.