Senior finds calling in world of songwriting

Senior Peter Hsieh

When senior Peter Hsieh was a sophomore in Jerry Sheehy’s world history class, little did he know that a project about Liberalism would shape his future interests and pursuits.

Rather than create a poster or video in order to persuade others to join the liberal movement for the project, Hsieh chose to write a song. After receiving positive feedback from classmates, Hsieh began writing music in his free time as a means of personal expression.

Hsieh said that the first full song that he wrote was called “Liberalism’s the Name,” a parody of “Remember the Name” by Fort Minor for a group project in Sheehy’s World History class. He found it to be a lot of fun, so he started writing songs for class projects, including English, chemistry, APUSH and calculus.

Sheehy has used the song made by Hsieh and his group members as an example to classes for the past two years.

“Peter is a great, very talented student. This year and the year before I played it as an example for my students. [His] group was the first to attempt a music video along with their song,” Sheehy said.

Hsieh enjoys writing songs because he feels that the lyrics come naturally to him. Reading poems or singing songs in public has enabled Hsieh to become a more confident public speaker.

“As far as writing songs for classes, I do it because it’s something cool that I have a knack for and people tend to enjoy hearing them. I think it’s also helped me [become a] more comfortable public speaker, although I still always get pretty nervous,” Hsieh said.

Hsieh tends to use existing songs as his inspiration when writing his own works and tries to challenge his writing ability by using a more difficult template to work with.

“When I write, I often use existing songs for templates or starting points to help organize the structure of the song and give me a general vibe to work with,” Hsieh said. “A lot of times I’ll borrow concepts or rhyme schemes from songs by Lupe Fiasco, my favorite rapper.”

Once Hsieh is satisfied with a song, he publishes them on the Internet using free websites.

“I’ve submitted a few songs on teenink.com and posted some on Tumblr because those websites are free and easy. I share the ones that I’m most proud of and that I think are worth reading,” Hsieh said.

In addition to posting his writing online, Hsieh joined the Slam Poetry Club.

“Meeting other people with similar interests has been been interesting, especially since writing had never been a social activity for me,” Hsieh said.

Through the Slam Poetry Club, Hsieh has the chance to share his writing with a people outside of has classes, group of friends and family.

“We’ve done a couple of open mic nights and will be competing in the National Poetry Slam later in the year, so I’m excited about that,” Hsieh said.

The National Poetry Slam is a week-long tournament held each summer in a different city around the United States. Slam poetry teams hailing from the United States, Canada and France participate in the competition. This will be an enriching and exciting experience for Peter and his fellow Slam Poetry Club members.

Other than making plans to participate in the National Poetry Slam, Hsieh doesn’t feel compelled to submit his writing into contests.

“I haven’t entered any contests because I’m not really motivated to pursue that type of recognition and dedicate more time to writing when I have a lot of other stuff going on,” Hsieh said, “maybe second semester senior year.”