Write one song per week, for every week throughout the summer—and then perform them in front of crowds of people.

The criteria for 19-year-old New York University student and village resident Katie Ortiz’s summer song project may seem simple enough to some. But for an artist that typically generates only three or four songs per year, the concept is quite challenging.

“Every year I will write maybe three or four songs, and while they’re all songs that I’m usually very proud of and I like, I really wanted to be able to push out more material. So the whole idea is kind of training myself to tap into my creativity at will rather than just waiting for it to hit me.”

While at school, Ortiz is constantly playing and performing her music. She sings once a month at the Bitter End, a popular Greenwich Village rock club, and often spontaneously takes her guitar to play for passarby in Washington Square. Still, she finds herself going through months of dry spells when it comes to writing music.

So, she came up with this summer project, which she hopes will teach her to take her writing less seriously and to be more flexible with her ideas.

“One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten about songwriting is, ‘Let yourself write a mediocre song.’ And by writing one song each week I feel like I’m letting myself do that.”

Generating a song per week allows Ortiz to commit to an idea earlier, since she feels less pressure to make a song perfect. Rather than dropping an idea early-on, she is more willing to just go with an idea and see where it takes her.

Ortiz, who graduated from Ridgewood High School in 2010, is studying ethnomusicology at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU. She has been writing music for as long as she can remember, since she learned how to talk.

Ortiz can play both the piano and the guitar, but generally performs with just her guitar. Now that she's halfway through her project, she has much more content to play when she’s out, songs with titles like “Paper Cut,” “Live Without,” “Knapsack,” “Soul Shifter” and “Youth Breeds.”

Often, Ortiz writes a song and doesn’t know what it’s about until she goes back to analyze the lyrics.

“All of my lyrics end up being from my stream of consciousness. They’re not really about concrete things, they’re more about ideas.”

Inspired by her sister graduating college and starting a career, “Knapsack” pays homage to Ortiz's childhood.

“[The song] is about not letting go of that feeing of being carefree and everything being exciting and being naïve, even though you’re growing up.”

Though the songs that have come from Ortiz’s summer project have simpler chord progressions and are not as original as the three or four songs she typically writes during the year, Ortiz is pleased with the results. 

“I’m pretty happy with them. I didn’t think I would be, after starting this. Even the songs I haven’t liked from the time I’ve written them have definitely grown on me.”

Ortiz will spend the rest of the summer performing songs from her summer project on open mic nights at Ridgewood Coffee Company, in addition to singing in the Central Business District on Friday nights as part of the Ridgewood Guild’s “Music in the Night” series and singing with her band “Normal Behavior,” a hard rock band.

Ortiz is enjoying her approach to music from an academic standpoint at NYU and plans to keep music in her future plans. 

“My whole life, [music] has always been a part of it. I took music lessons growing up in Ridgewood and it’s always been a part of me.”

Check out Ortiz’s summer song project on YouTube, and buy and/or download her music at www.katieortiz.bandcamp.com.