The TSOTP Songwriting Course is a 5 week course for people that want to try their hand at songwriting or develop their song writing skills further. We can offer this course to a small group of people, either in person, or online using Zoom (for those that live far away). This course is lead by Mark Jackson, Jane Jelbart and assisted by John Wallace. We also hire in a studio musician, Sam Lemann from Melbourne, to give us some tips on how the pros write music in the studio! So if you have a hankering for putting pen to paper, or recording a riff or creating a song please give this course a go.
All levels of players and or writers are welcome.
We will teach or facilitate songwriting using four elements.
- Melody – What is a nice melody? What is a lick/riff? How do you fit a lyric over/with a riff? Is a riff necessarily the melody of the lyric?
- Context – What are the rules of the chord progressions that go with these melodies, and therefore what potential harmonies. Contexts are about genres of music
- Lyrics/poetry – we look at creative writing devices, variation in language, and processes for coming up with lyrics.
- Arrangement – What instrumentation and grooves can you apply to your song. Who/what is your audience? What is the musical context / accompaniment that gives your song life?
The Course will offered over 5 weeks in 90 minutes sessions where each week we will:
- Play and analyse a song within a selected genre
- Examine more closely that genre, its history and forms
- Talk with song-writers about their songs and processes
- Examine riff/melody in an iconic song
- Look at the lyrics of a selected song
- Focus on one song-writing technique and use breakout groups to practice and explore that
- create an original piece of songwriting to be shared on facebook
We have yet to finalise the time and date of this course as it is based on having enough demand. If you are interested in this course, please express your interest now! Perhaps we can get this course happening in March /April 2021 if we have enough people.