Master’s degree in Songwriting
Hi all, 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... [Read More...]
SWF 2010 – now booking!
SWF 2009 - Final Performance Night! We’re now taking bookings for SWF10. The secure e-store is now live, so you can guarantee your place on the course. We’re taking up to 50 songwriters this year, but bookings will be on a first-come-first-served basis. Note – the SWF Studio option has only 12 places. If you want to discuss your booking give us a call on Booking info link Secure e-store Read More →
Booking opening soon
Booking for the 2010 festival (Aug 16-20 2010) will open in the next few days. We’ll post an announcement here as soon as e-booking is online. Read More →
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 Sunday Times article —————– UK Songwriting Festival at Bath Spa University 40 students at songwriting boot camp with talks from Chris Difford of Squeeze... [Read More...]
Protected: SWF09 – studio tracks (SWF songwriters only)
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Final performance
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 café 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... [Read More...]
Chris Difford – special guest SWF2009
Chris and Boo answered questions from the audience about the craft of lyric-writing (UK Songwriting Festival 2009). On the Thursday of this year’s Festival we got Chris Difford and Boo Hewerdine together for a Q&A about the craft of songwriting, particularly relating to lyrics. Here’s an audio file of their answers to the audience’s questions. If anyone wants to volunteer to transcribe this and send us a text file, we’d... [Read More...]
Fi’s blog – Andy West – Live Songwriting
Andy West Andy is introduced by Joe as the bravest man at SWF as he is about to write a song live with no preparation at all in front of a crowd of songwriters. He hands round pieces of paper and asks everyone to write down prospective song titles. The purpose of this demonstration is to share one method of songwriting with the group. Drawing from his experiences in Nashville he explains how he formulated a method drawing from what worked for others... [Read More...]
Demo panel
Day 4 – and the first demo panel. 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... [Read More...]
House band sessions
The first house band song, performed on the Tuesday in the café. 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,... [Read More...]