Songwriting Festival 2012 now booking – 12-17 August 2012

We’re delighted to announce that the UK Songwriting Festival 2012 will run from August 12th (evening) to August 17th 2012. This year the Festival is presented in partnership with our Scottish friends at Burnsong.org and is part-funded by Creative Scotland. The venue will be Shennanton House in Dumfrieshire. Our choice of venue is deliberately rural – so for a whole week you’ll have nothing do do except write, rehearse, record and perform songs. Bookings are now open and prices are heavily discounted but places are extremely limited. The Songwriting Festival 2012 is generally recommended for fairly experienced songwriters who have written a large number of songs (50 or more) and have performed their own material live, but we do provide support for less experienced writers.

Tutors include:

• Boo Hewerdine
• Iain Archer
• Joe Bennett
• Jez Ashurst
• Andy White

SWF 2011 – and Masters Degree in Songwriting

We’ll be resting the Songwriting Festival in 2011 due to major building work on the University campus, but will return in 2012.

If you’re interested in studying Songwriting at Bath Spa University, our Masters Degree in Songwriting is now taking bookings. It includes a Distance Learning option, with two intensive weeks (in September and February) at our Songwriters’ Centre at Corsham, plus online study.

• About the Songwriters’ Centre
• About the Masters Degree in Songwriting
• About the Distance Learning Songwriting course

Songwriting Festival 2010 – a word of thanks

Dear songwriters,

Thanks to all (staff, volunteers, tutors, guest tutors, musicians, and songwriters) who contributed to the UK Songwriting Festival 2010. An amazing week and some top-notch writing. For those people I didn’t get to thank face to face during our busy final concert – you know who you are, and you know how essential your contribution was.

See the video below for a few comments from our songwriting community. Keep an eye on this site for updates about our next festival and other events.

All the best to our ever-growing International community, and thanks again for a wonderful festival and some inspiring & moving songs.

Joe

Demo panel and songwriter chat

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Boo Hewerdine on songwriting

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Eddi Reader – special guest 2010

We were delighted to welcome Eddi as our 2010 special guest tutor.

Read more

Parisian piggy banks rejoice?

[Heidi writes]

I’ve been a songwriter and a teacher of songwriting for some time, but I still find it thrilling to witness the writing process of my fellow songwriters. At SWF you can hear songs being “born” at all times of the day (and night!). These songs are then performed a few hours later in the open mic nights – many of them backed by the excellent house band. There’s something about being given such a tight deadline that really drives everyone to pull the rabbit out of the hat – and whether the songs have been written by total beginners or experienced writers, they have all sounded just wonderful.

I wanted to understand more about the background of the songs and what it feels like to write in such a hotbed of creativity, so I caught up with a few of the songwriters yesterday.

I found Graham on the steps of one of the beautiful buildings overlooking the lake, guitar at his side and writing in a notebook. Graham told me he felt he was coming to songwriting “a little late” though it was something he’d always wanted to do. He said that just being here and helped “clear a creative blockage” and the song ideas were really flowing. He’d also been encouraged by the supportive atmosphere of the open mic evening gigs.  I asked him what he was writing and he dreamily replied that the view of the lake as seen through the trees was making him think of Paris. Not wanting to disturb his creative flow, I bid him farewell and left him writing a romantic song about strolling along the Left Bank in the springtime.

Later in the day I spoke to Paul and Jules, an experienced songwriting duo from Dubai. Their song ‘Rejoice’, a life-affirming gospel-influenced anthem had earned them a heartfelt standing ovation when they performed it for the first time on Tuesday night. Seated in the SWF café, they seemed much more down to earth than the god-and-goddess personas I had witnessed on stage. (Thankfully – I don’t think I’d have had the courage to speak to them otherwise!) Jules told me, “We were looking to write something that reflected the creative energy we found here. It was all about newness and freshness. The idea was that there is nothing else but now – and we really should rejoice.” Paul continued, “We came here because we had been performing a lot of cover songs and wanted to write more originals. We had the title first, and we wanted to write a song with a simple title and a positive message. We wanted it to be uplifting, but not a cliche.” Talking to them I could see that this was a song that came from a very sincere place, perhaps this is why it communicated so strongly.

I also managed to catch up Norwegian songwriter Sibeth in the SWF café. The blogging team had captured her in full victory pose after completing her first ever song on Monday.  Amazingly, here she was on Wednesday – writing a second song,  accompanied by tutor Jez Ashurst!  Big Piggy Bank is an excellent pop song and she was kind enough to let me film her performing it. I didn’t have to ask how she felt about having now doubled her output – her  expression says it all. I am very thrilled for her.

Heidi

Playing your songs with the house band

Tutors and students talk about playing new songs with the house band.

“Our father, wi ‘chart in ‘eaven…”

Today we began by looking at writing efficient chord charts. This is a mundane but essential part of the SWF because the band needs to be able to understand the structure of each new song quickly in order to create the best arrangement we can for each songwriter. (I explained a bit of the background to the house band system last year in the blog). We then moved into a brief discussion of one of my personal favourite songwriting styles, the AABA jazz standard, and played/discussed a few examples, followed by a detailed lecture from Davey about imagery, tension and metaphor in a lyric. The house band started rehearsing at about 3pm, which gives us time to learn the 15 or so new songs we needed to play in the evening session.

This year we have more songwriters than ever before, and a pleasing variety of nationalities, instruments and influences (USA, Germany, Norway, Spain and UK). Tonight’s live session included performances on viola and Loopstation, Autoharp,  saxophone, 12-string guitar, as well as the standard guitar/bass/drums/keyboards provided by the house band and the songwriters themselves. Personally I always try to find an excuse to use my E-Bow and one of our (surprisingly numerous) Norwegian songwriters gave me that opportunity with a Bjork-influenced extended atonal intro. Tonight we heard and played a huge spectrum of styles/genres, including Motown, rock, country, folk, jazz and gospel. And every song we played tonight was written by one of our songwriters in the last 24 hours.

That’s a very beautiful thing.

SWF2010 – day two report

[Mark writes...]

Hi to all you SWF2010 blog watchers. So we come to the end of the (very busy but fun packed) second day. It’s great to see so many people so easily mixing from so many and varied social spheres, continents, musical genres and ages and life experiences/perspectives. It is truly astonishing to believe that the majority of the attendees were complete strangers less than 48 hours ago.

The morning lectures were truly inspirational, from how to construct correct and reliable chord sheets (very useful for the house band rehearsals), to analysing and reflecting upon what inspires us to write a song. Whether that be the introduction of jeopardy or metaphor or (the songwriter’s true friend) the use of imagery into the narrative arc of the lyric.

Tonight is the second ‘open mic’ session; the standard of the songs on the initial Monday nights session was truly impressive. So who knows how much further the quality bar will be raised in tonight’s session.

During the course of the week we will be posting clips of sessions, so you too can be equally impressed by the standard of this year’s attendees.

Mark

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