SWF 2009 - Final Performance Night!

We’re very excited to announce that the University’s Master’s degree in Songwriting has a new home, in the form of a purpose-built songwriters’ studio at our Corsham Court campus. The next enrolment is for September 2010 and we’re taking applications (subject to interview and songwriting portfolio) from now.

To find out more about the course visit http://www.MASongwriting.com.

You might also want to check out Pat McIntyre’s blog – he’s a student on the course (2009-10).

Final Performance night - all the songs were written during SWF week.

On the last day of the the 2009 Festival, we all got together in the cafÈ to play back the last of the week’s songs. Many people had delayed their live performance until this final session, due either to completing a particular song toward the end of the week, or the time taken in developing chord sheets for the house band. So the band had to learn around 20 songs in a 3-hour rehearsal – challenging, certainly, but Jo and Barry were on the case with the chord sheets, so every chart was really easy to read. I think we just about pulled it off (and in a few cases, even had time to write and rehearse some vocal harmonies). Barry’s excellent A&R-ing put the rock/dance-friendly songs towards the end of the final band set, which led to predictable – but wonderful – table-dancing etc as the evening’s beer took its toll on the audience!

SWFers past and present will, no doubt, be tired of hearing me say this, but it’s nonetheless a wonderful thing; a song can be nothing more than a title at 10am, and appear on stage with a full band performance by 9pm the same day. This is testament to the way our songwriters embrace the SWF experience – throwing themselves into the writing process, and forcing themselves to complete a song. It’s this ‘momentum’ of writing, recording and performing that helps many of the SWF songwriters to break (what they perceive to be) writers’ block. Here’s an excerpt from an email I received this morning from one of the 2009 songwriters;

“I would like to thank you so much for the experience of a lifetime. I enjoyed it so much and despite much doubt did in fact write one song a day [...]. All the staff worked incredibly hard but I was astounded by your capacity to absorb the time pressures and stress. It did not show one bit and you were like the proverbial swan paddling on the water.”

Here’s a gallery of performance images from the final day. You can also find some of these images on our Facebook group.

SWF 2009 - Finale song - What's the Big Idea?

SWF's Joe and Richard 'trading licks' with the songwriters.

SWF studio producer Abner performs a song from his homeland of Ecuador, while Joe accompanies on, er, ukelele.

Sunday Times writer (and songwriter) David Sinclair with SWF tutor Richard Parfitt.

Final rehearsals with the house band - a lovely reggae tune called 'Where Do I Go', written two hours earlier!

The demo panel 2009 - Boo Hewerdine, Andy West, Iain Archer, Chris Difford, Joe Bennett

Our songwriters were invited to submit songs for group discussion for public critique (and many thanks to those who were brave enough to do this!). A recording of each song was played, with lyrics projected in the University Theatre. Our panel this year is Boo Hewerdine, Joe Bennett, Iain Archer, Andy West and Chris Difford.

The standard of songs was excellent, although some of the writers commented that they felt their writing has developed so much in the last few days that they could see flaws in their previous works. Best of all, the critiques were received in the spirit of the Festival – appreciating the quality of others’ work but accepting that the songs had room for development.

After the morning tea-break (in which a pleasing number of people were frantically finishing lyrics to complete the latest task) we got together two of our guest tutors, Boo Hewerdine and Chris Difford, to meet ‘Parkinson-style’ to discuss songwriting techniques and experiences. Chris famously uses the same method as Elton John & Bernie Taupin – of completing a lyric in its entirety then sending it to Glenn to add the melody and harmony. We discussed in the session whether this leads to a particular character of lyric, and it certainly seems so in Chris’ work – the songs are filled with imagery and storytelling, and perhaps most importantly always avoid clichÈs.

Meanwhile, the studio teams are working hard – we’d estimate that we’ll have around 70 recordings completed by the end of the week. In many cases, songs are completed at lunchtime, recorded in the afternoon and gigged the same evening with the house band. By day four of each year’s SWF, we generally find that songwriters are ‘in the zone’ and all are comfortably completing one song per day (well, perhaps not comfortably – but they’re completing the songs, anyway!).

Here are some quick pics from day 3, including the second evening performance session† – all the songs have been written since Monday.

Collaboration task complete!

The house band accompanies one of our songwriters.

Rocking out in the cafÈ...

Andy finalises a new song prior to a playback tutorial

One of the SWF producers (Neil Martin) finishes a songwriter's mix on Pro Tools.

Recording vocals in the studio

The first house band song, performed on the Tuesday in the cafÈ.

We’re two gigs in to the week now, and the house band members (Chris, Josh and me) are deep in rehearsal. The band system works like this; a songwriter completes their song (usually the same day), writes a chord sheet (or gets one of the tutors to write it), then brings this notation to our estimable ‘chord tsars’ Jo and Barry for checking. When the chart is complete, the songwriter brings it to the band in the main rehearsal room for a quick run-through. We then add ’secondary hooks’ (intros, additional riffs etc) and, where necessary, backing vocals. Instrumentation varies (I’m still trying to find a way to use my pink Flying V ukelele) but is usually guitars/bass/drums and sometimes keyboard. We usually only have 10-15 minutes to learn and run through each song, so it’s essential that the chord charts are correct – hence all the checking and tutor support earlier in the day.

Not all of our songwriters need to use the band – some play as acoustic-only (or even unaccompanied voice), and others perform to drum-loop backing tracks created earlier in the day with our Garageband/Logic Mac workstations. But whatever the arrangement, the quality of the writing has been excellent – affecting melodies, clear and singable lyrics, and in many cases some particularly strong choruses. We’ve had a good variety of genres – punk, reggae, pop, electro and rock, as well as plenty of folk/acoustic singer-songwriter performances.

The V is ready. But no-one has requested its services just yet.

The purpose of the band is to provide a level playing field so that all the new songs can have the same performance ‘frame’, regardless of the performing experience or instrumental skill of the writer. Previous SWF-ers, or regular visitors to this site and its forum, will know that we try to separate songwriting and performance. It’s a shame that, to many audiences, a poor song performed well can sound better than a great song performed badly, so we try to give each song its best chance to ’survive’ its first day of life!

In other news, we’ll be on the BBC today – radio this morning, and BBC West TV this evening. I imagine these news features will be online via iPlayer for a week or so from the date of the this blog entry.

I got the music in me!

I’m getting lots of queries from current SWF songwriters who want to know how we project the lyrics for cover versions in our lectures. For those who missed it, here’s the link to the original blog entry where we discussed this in all its full technical detail.

Teaching songwriting with a Mac

Richard works al fresco with one of our songwriters.

We started today with my own introductory lecture and some discussion of songs. Many common songwriters’ issues and challenges came up, including chord loops, melodic structure, form and the concept of Big Idea, or core meaning.

For many writers, this is the most difficult part of the process – nailing the single, simple idea at the heart of the song. And whenever it’s discussed, inevitably people scour the ‘pop canon’ to find examples of songs that don’t have (or don’t appear to have) a core meaning. Common examples include Whiter Shade of Pale, I Am The Walrus and various songs by Oasis, Keane or Coldplay. It’s too big a discussion to get into here (though it’s a fascinating debate for every songwriter) but suffice it to say that these songs often have something else outstanding about them of interest – a great melody, unusual lyric imagery, excellent ’singability’ or, in the case of the recording, interesting production and an outstanding vocal performance. Do these occasional examples mean that songwriters dare avoid nailing core meaning during the creative process? Aye, there’s the rub! A related issue – the difference between the song and the performance ñ has been discussed in a previous entry.

After our first meeting, people got into their tutor groups (with Andy West, Iain, Boo, Andy White, Lucy, Cecilia and Richard) to play existing material to each other and start their creative tasks. This year we’re insisting on our policy of ‘no back catalogue’ i.e. everyone plays songs that are written during Festival week – the event is about songwriting, not performance. The studios are already up and running, and some new songs are already burned to CD, though the tidal wave of recording will begin tomorrow when everyone’s completed the first task.

Our first gig of the new songs is Tuesday, so on the first night we all had a few beers in Chapel Arts Centre while we enjoyed two outstanding performances by Iain and Boo at our 2009 launch event at Chapel Arts Centre. Wonderful songs, wonderful company.

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To summarise the story for those who don’t, Coldplay’s ‘Viva La Vida’ bore melodic and harmonic similarities to an instrumental composition called If I Could Fly by Joe Satriani.

Musically, here’s a summary of the context of the case.

Coldplay’s song uses a 4-chord loop that goes

||: Db †| Eb † | Ab † | Fm † |

(IV – V – I – vi in the key of Ab major)

And the ‘Rule the World’ melody line starts on a C natural – the major third of the home key, creating an interesting major-7th sound to the first chord.

Satriani’s piece (the relevant passage can be heard here and starts at 0:50) uses a not dissimilar harmonic loop, and a melody that also starts on that major third (creating an interesting E minor 9th chord):

||: Em † †| A † † | Dmaj7 †| Bm † |

(ii – V – I – vi in the key of D major)

Put them both in the key of C and simplify the chords to make the maths easier, and you get two similar chord loops

Coldplay – ||: F † | G † †| C † †| Am †:||

Satriani – ||: Dm † | G † | C † †| Am †:||

So what, you say? You can’t copyright a chord loop, especially not one that’s been used thousands of times already? Well, the harmonic context is only part of the story. A very quick listen to the tune, starting on that ‘quirky’ major third note (E natural in this transposed version) reveals a marked similarity – an exact match for the first three notes, rhythmically, contextually and melodically.

Coldplay themselves eventually responded publicly on their website, denying it all as a coincidence. Satriani had apparently planned to serve the papers live during last night’s Grammys, but backed off from this for reasons unclear. Disappointingly, some of the more entertaining mashups that YouTube users created have now been taken down; the best ones used some digital pitch and tempo mapping to make the similarities clear. This one is rather well-done, albeit poor quality technically.

Coincidence or plagiarism? To answer this question we need to know – how likely is it that two songwriters could come up with this exact melodic/harmonic combination? Effectively this is a collision between the infinite monkeys theorem and our own knowledge, as songwriters, of what goes on creatively when one devises melodic material over chord loops (I’m willing to bet that this is how both pieces were written – sounds like loop-based writing to me).

I have my own view, but won’t reveal it just yet – I’m interested to see if there is a weight of opinion from songwriters. Over to you – please comment… now!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jan/28/music-perfect-pop-song-pulp

“A pop song does, however, follow certain rules. It is generally around three to four minutes, has a verse and a chorus, and uses a bed of chords to support a melody, with words that convey some sort of sentiment that an audience can relate to.”

Although the ‘magic’ element is certainly true – it’s a beautiful thing, as Jarvis acknowledges;

“The beauty of songwriting is that any human being can do it,” he says. “And they learned how to do it their way. One minute someone was sitting in the living room, having a cup of coffee. The next they picked up the guitar and wrote something from nothing. That’s a miraculous event. That’s what keeps me going”.

I suppose that’s the point of the songwriting teaching at SWF – the tutors only really guide people around the technique – starting by covering (or occasionally stretching!) the above-mentioned ‘rules’, and then helping the writer to tackle the bad habits – melodic rat-runs, rhyme traps, lack of imagery, over-abstraction, verboseness etc. But what is remarkable – and rather beautiful – is that however much guidance a writer gets from the tutor, the song is still authentically the writer’s own. It’s that personal quality that everyone brings to their songs, regardless of musical skill or songwriting experience.

Some of our writers have expressed to us a fear that if they work with a tutor – or collaborator – any editing or trimming will somehow kill the authenticity of the song, making it less ‘real’ or ‘true’ because the ideas have been trimmed, edited or adapted along the way. But this fear always seems to evaporate when the song is completed. It’s connected, I’m sure, with that natural protectiveness that all writers have of their first idea – the assumption that it must be the best one simply because it arrived first. Perhaps this is because when we hear a well-written song it gives us the impression, as listeners, that it ‘comes from the heart’ regardless of how many hours the writer spent painstakingly crafting every last syllable. That emotional immediacy (of great songs) is an intoxicating trap for us as songwriters, because it can lure us into feeling that we should apply it to the creative process. Or maybe we should?!!!

There’s a really simple maxim that Andy always says when he’s teaching the MA Songwriting – the more songs you write, the easier it gets…

Welcome to our new virtual home. We’d appreciate it if you’d let us know your thoughts on this site, particularly things like…

• Previous SWF-ers – does the site sum up the experience fairly/accurately?
• Songwriters who’ve never been to SWF – does the site answer all the questions you have as a potential visitor?
• Songwriters worldwide – if you’re not planning to visit the Festival, but want to stay part of the SWF online community, what’s working well here, and what would you like to see more of?

Please comment on this post to leave your replies. Looking forward to seeing some of you at SWF09!