SWF in the Sunday Times
Sunday Times journalist David joined us for the week
We had a lovely write-up in the Sunday Times this week from journalist (and songwriter) David Sinclair, who attended the 2009 Festival.
Here’s the link; the text is also pasted below (c) Sunday Times 2009
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UK Songwriting Festival at Bath Spa University
40 students at songwriting boot camp with talks from Chris Difford of Squeeze and ex-Snow Patrol’s Iain Archer as tutor
David Sinclair
Everybody has a song in their heart, or their bottom drawer, or wherever they are kept. This may explain the extraordinary cross section of people attending the sixth annual UK Songwriting Festival at Bath Spa University last month.
The 40 students included Edwin, who has put up a new song every week on his MySpace site for the past 35 weeks; Diane, who had promised herself she was going to have written and recorded a song before she reached 60; the waif-like Laura, who looked like a character from Skins and sang her Belle and Sebastian-influenced songs in a beautiful, ululating warble; Andy, an ageing punk-metal lunatic; and Sara, a superlative jazz singer with an album recently released. The tutors were the singer-songwriters Boo Hewerdine, Andy White and Iain Archer (ex-Snow Patrol) together with staff from the universityís School of Music & Performing Arts, including Lucy Ray, Andy West and Richard Parfitt (the former frontman of 60ft Dolls). Chris Difford of Squeeze showed up to give an entertaining public interview and to headline a superlative live show featuring performances by most of the tutors.
The notion that songwriting is a skill that can be knocked into shape ≠ó like singing, dancing or playing an instrument ó may strike some people as odd. A popular myth has grown up around the process, in which the songwriter is cast as a person hanging around waiting for inspiration to strike. Perhaps a melody will drift into mind in the middle of the night, or a fragment of lyric will arrive as the songwriter contemplates the world from the top of a No 49 bus.
Occasionally that is what happens, but successful songwriting is generally undertaken in a far more methodical manner. The staff songwriters who worked in the Brill Building in New York and those who supplied the Motown hit-making machine in Detroit showed up in the morning for work. They sat with their instruments and lyric books to hand, and by the end of each day they had written a song, possibly several. And that was how it was going to be at this event, as Joe Bennett, head of the music school and organiser of the festival, made abundantly clear in his introductory lecture. We were all going to write one song each and every day. These would be tried out first in group tutorials in the morning, then worked on in the afternoon and, if good enough, performed in the evening with the help of a professional house band in front of an audience of our songwriting peers. The presentation of ìback catalogueî (songs written prior to the festival) was forbidden.
While all this was going on, there would also be lectures to attend and, for the 12 students who had taken the studio option, demos to record. As we scurried backwards and forwards from rehearsal room to lecture theatre to recording studio to performance hall, struggling all the while to come up with the next new song, it soon became apparent that this was not going to be some kind of pampered retreat. What we had signed up for was songwriting boot camp.
Bennett was the sergeant major. A man of many hats ≠ó literally and metaphorically ó he is a much-published songwriter, author, academic and multi-instrumentalist with a grasp of popular music theory and practice that is mind- boggling. He drummed home the seven basic elements of good songwriting: economy, imagery, prosody (the appropriate marriage of words and music), universality, originality, repetition and, yes, repetition. He warned us of the pitfalls: clichÈ, rhyme traps, static melodies, misused chord loops, excess verbosity and lack of repetition. Above all, he emphasised the importance of locating a single, specific, clearly identified subject that your song should be about: ìAsk yourself, ëWhatís the Big Idea?íî
The first tutorial was a nervous, slightly awkward affair. In my group were Laura, Anna, Mairead and Flavio. We had vastly different musical styles, experiences and tastes, and yet within minutes of introducing ourselves we were all performing our own and critiquing each otherís songs. The novelty of the situation, not to mention the stress of presenting your work in such an intimate forum, prompted an immediate sense of empathy, and as the week went on a group camaraderie evolved.
While we learnt about the techniques of songwriting, a separate, deeper battle was being waged against the Demon of Doubt. The group, and indeed the whole community, closed ranks in an effective show of solidarity against this familiar foe. The mood was upbeat and supportive, the comments and feedback constructive. If a song was good, then well done. If it could be improved, then how? Cynicism was banished. As well as getting our hands on the necessary tools, we were given the time and permission to be successful songwriters.
The results were startling. As various hurdles were overcome and a rhythm of activity established, the standard of songwriting and presentation improved, in some cases virtually beyond recognition. Confidence soared and somehow, miraculously, new songs kept on coming. I found myself regularly waking up at 6am, with the late-morning deadline on my mind, reaching for my pen and lyric book. It turns out that songwriting, rather like journalism, is more to do with application and creative problem-solving than divine inspiration.
Among the exercises we were given to trigger our imagination was to come up with a list of promising song titles. This, it turns out, is a widely recognised way of prompting a new song, a method that was demonstrated to spectacular effect by the tutor Andy West in a ìliveî public songwriting session in the main lecture hall. Beginning with a title suggested by one of the students ≠ó Barry Shearman Brings the House Down ≠ó West set about composing a song from scratch about a man who daydreams of being a star while working as a cowboy labourer. Ninety minutes after summing up his Big Idea (Barry Shearman: great entertainer, lousy builder), West was singing a sprightly, country-tinged lament: ìDescended from a line of entertainers/Music hall, burlesque and vaudeville/Born in a trunk before the world changed/Back when there were concert halls to fill…î
On the last night, just about every≠body on the course had a song ready to sing with or without the band, and the festival ended with a celebratory and emotional show. Several people told me that it had been the best week of their lives. Earlier in the afternoon I had taken a tune and chord sequence into my tutorial group for which I had no title, let alone a lyric. I played it and started brainstorming with the tutor, Andy White. We ended up around midnight, closing that final show with a rousing performance of our new creation. Iíll play it for you sometime. Itís called Looking for the Big Idea.
