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!

Midge is patron of the Burnsong organisation, and will be working as a mentor on the Burnsong project (along with SWF’s own Joe Bennett) in November 2009. You can read more about this (and hear some of the songs) in Joe’s Burnsong 2007 blog.

Burnsong have announced entries for their 2009 songwriting competition, which closes on 21st August (the last day of SWF 2009, coincidentally).

Every year at the Songwriting Festival, Bath Spa songwriting tutor and ex-Nashville songwriter Andy West writes a complete song in front of the SWF audience, and explains his processes and problem-solving techniques throughout. The lyric, as it evolves, is transcribed and projected at the back of the theatre, and the song is then performed at the end of the hour.

When Andy writes he divides the process into two parts – creative and editorial. For the creative part, he often uses dummy lyrics or even cliches, returning to improve the early draft later when he’s in the editing phase.

The main purpose of the lecture is to break up the songwriting process into a series of clear choices; it also demonstrates one of the SWF core principles – that writer’s block doesn’t exist!

Studio Session

And what tends to happen is that the audience (which, remember, consists entirely of songwriters who are completely immersed in the process all week) comment variously on the guitar arrangement, vocal interpretation or genre – i.e. everything except the song. Often the tutors find themselves dragging the discussion back to the song itself ñ harmony, melody and lyric.
This demonstrates an important principle – that listeners do not differentiate between the picture and the frame. An obvious example would be the meaninglessness of a Coldplay or Keane lyric. But although these particular types of lyric make little sense without a lot of inference from the listener, individual couplets work well enough in isolation. Most importantly, the phrases ’sing well’ – lots of open vowels and great scansion. So although we have no idea why Noel Gallagher tells us ‘Sally Can Wait’ (and no information about who Sally is) in Oasis’ Don’t Look Back in Anger, it feels really good to sing these big vowels – especially over the melody to Manfred Mann’s Pretty Flamingo (which is lifted pretty much verbatim in the chorus). Incidentally, the obvious and deliberate reference to Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ in the piano intro to the Oasis track is an arrangement artefact, not a songwriting one. So in a publishing dispute with Oasis where Manfred Mann or Lennon’s lawyers were looking at Don’t Look Back in Anger, I’d be backing the Manfreds every time – because of the nine or so melody notes that are common to both choruses.

SWF 08

These artists’ songs do make life difficult for teachers (and students) of the craft of songwriting, because their status as successful hits seems (SEEMS!) to justify and legitimise sloppy lyric writing. Which, I suppose, is another reason why we were so delighted to have Richard Thompson as our guest – every single one of his songs has a ‘heart’, or clear core meaning. When RT uses poetic language or imagery, it serves to support the meaning rather than cloud it – so it’s possible for a songwriter to have their cake and eat it – imagery, clarity of meaning and singability.†

Open Mic 1

It always seems a shame to me if a technically poor singer or guitarist writes a great song but the audience can’t see the picture for the frame. Which is why the studio sessions and House Band performances are such an integral part of SWF. We try to give the song its very best opportunity to ’survive’, ensuring that the songwriter’s skill (crafting form, melody, harmony and lyric) is not eclipsed by any technical shortcomings in the performance.

Cold Kisses (Thompson)

Here I am in your room going through your stuff

Said you’d be gone five minutes, that’s time enough

Here in your drawer there’s lacy things

Old credit cards and beads and bangles and rings

Well I think I’ve found what I’m looking for

Hidden away at the back of the drawer

Here’s the life that you led before

Old photographs of the life you led

Arm in arm with Mr X Y and Z

Old boyfriends big and small

Got to see how I measure up to them all

There is a place we all must start, love

Who were you holding in that fond embrace

I’ve found a door into your heart, love

And do you still feel the warmth of cold kisses

Here I am behind enemy lines

Looking for secrets, looking for signs

Old boyfriends big and small

Got to see how I measure up to them all

This one’s handsome, not too bright

This one’s clever with his hands alright

Tougher than me if it came to a fight

And this one’s a poet, a bit of a wet

Bit of a gypsy, a bit of a threat

I wonder if she’s got over him yet

Old passions frozen in the second

Who were you holding in that fond embrace

Hearts have a past that must be reckoned

And do you still feel the warmth of cold kisses

Time to put the past away

That’s your footstep in the street I’d say

Tie the ribbon back around it

Everything just the way I found it

And I can hear you turn the key

And my head’s buried when you see me

In a Margaret Miller mystery

And do you still feel the warmth of cold kisses

Do you still feel the warmth of cold kisses

In the 2008 Festival we were joined by songwriting legend Richard Thompson, who performed a set specially for the festival visitors, participated in workshop/playback sessions and discussed his songwriting techniques with SWF director Joe Bennett.†Here’s an excerpt of the solo acoustic set he performed, featuring the song ‘Cold Kisses’.

Reproduced by permission.

†

I occasionally get asked, by Festival songwriters, undergraduate studentsand songwriting teachers what software and hardware I use to project lyrics and play back songs for analysis during songwriting lectures. Sometimes the question actually hijacks lectures and diverts us from discussing the actual song, so I’m going to write this blog post about it, so next time someone asks, I can just send them this link and get on with talking about songwriting!
This is unapologetically nerdy and exhaustive, because the people who ask about this sort of thing often want lots of technical detail.
The hardware
During lectures I have my Mac laptop with me – it’s a standard Mac Powerbook running OSX and iTunes. This is connected to a VGA projector (see photo) and a mini-jack audio cable connects the Mac to whatever sound system we’re using (in the photo example we used a small mixing desk on the table, routed into the theatre PA system in the ceiling).
The library
My iTunes library is around 6000 MP3s that I’ve collected over the years from various sources. The computer is always live on the ‘net, so if someone in the lecture class wants to discuss a song I don’t have, I just spend the £0.79 then and there and buy it online.
Because I’m sometimes running a PowerPoint or web browser simultaneously, I like to be able to play and pause iTunes remotely in the background. Sometimes I use the Apple remote for this, but most of the time I prefer to use a background application called Synergy, which is a simple iTunes controller that provides play, pause, next track functions etc, using function keys.
Lyrics and MP3s – the background
We all know that despite many years of attempts by rights owners to prevent fans publishing song lyrics online, it’s possible to locate the lyrics to almost any song on the ‘net. But using a web browser to do this live in a lecture is inelegant, and distracts the class from the song. So I combine two techniques – MP3 lyric metatags and lyric widgets.

In 2005 I discovered Mac OSX lyrics widgets. These are small applications that run in the background using Apple’s OSX Dashboard (i.e. they work with any Mac). There are several, but they all do essentially the same thing – display lyrics attractively on screen from the iTunes lyric data. But that’s not all. If they don’t find any lyric data, they automatically search the ‘net for the lyric, and then extract the text from the lyrics sites they interrogate, and paste it into the MP3 for you. All this happens live, in the background, meaning I can download a song (legally, of course) and then have the lyric embedded in it within less than 10 seconds.

I use several widgets, running concurrently, because they all search slightly different lyric sites. I’ve found that if one widget doesn’t find the lyric, another one will, and then the first one will simply pull the data from the MP3 itself (which will have been embedded automatically by whichever widget found the lyric online first). My current ones are;

Sing That iTune, Fire, Harmonic and the defunct but easy-to-find PearLyrics.

Icing on the cake – hot corners
Mac users will know that OSX supports hot corners. So I set up the Mac so that every time I move the mouse pointer to the top left of the screen, it launches Dashboard. Having previously set things up so that the lyrics widgets are always running, this means, in a lecture, all I have to do is play an MP3, sweep the mouse to the top left of the screen, and the lyrics appear!
But there’s more…

Jewelcase

Sometimes, we have an iTunes playlist running while we’re setting up a lecture – a list of recent hits, or songs in a particular form, theme or genre. So to make this a bit more visual, I also occasionally use Jewelcase, a shareware plugin for iTunes that displays not only the lyric metatag, but also the JPG of the album cover metatag – and puts the whole thing in a beautifully rendered spinning CD jewel case. Projected 20ft high in a lecture, it is a thing to behold!

And a tiny bit more…

Introductory task ñ ìMy Name Isî ï Write ten titles. If you have time, choose the most inspiring one and develop it into a chorus. If you have (more) time, complete the song. ††

SKILL DEVELOPMENT ñ beating writersí block

Task 1 ñ ìDo It Againî ï Write a chorus-based song where the title appears at least twice in the chorus.

SKILL DEVELOPMENT ñ making your songs memorable.

Task 2 ñ ìThereís a Placeî ï Write a song with a place name as the title.

SKILL DEVELOPMENT ñ breaking out of lyric clichÈ/ developing emotional truth.

Task 3 ñ ìAll Together Nowî ï Work with another one or two members of your tutor group and write a collaborative song.

SKILL DEVELOPMENT ñ collaborative negotiation/pitching ideas/creative space

Task 4 ñ ìScream If You Wanna Go Fasterî ï Write a song at a tempo faster than 120 beats per minute (use a drum loop, metronome or wristwatch ñ 120BPM = 2 beats/sec).

SKILL DEVELOPMENT ï avoiding mid-tempo blandness

Task 5 ñ ìMiss Ghostî ï Write a song using a ëghost songí. Choose an existing hit and rewrite its lyric and melody, but keep the syllable count and scansion the same.

SKILL DEVELOPMENT ñ creative starting points/avoiding doggerel scansion

Task 6 ñ ìWords are all I haveî ï Complete a lyric in its entirety and then add music later. Try describing your songís ëBig Ideaí in ten words or fewer before you start.

SKILL DEVELOPMENT ñ developing a strong central idea

Task 7 ñ ìYou and Iî ï Write a song that features ìIî and ìYouî characters. ††

SKILL DEVELOPMENT ñ avoiding diaristic clichÈ

Task 8 ñ ìPicture bookî ï Choose a selection of Google images and include them in your song lyric. ††

SKILL DEVELOPMENT ñ using imagery.

Task 9 ñ ìAll by myselfî ï Write a song without using a musical instrument.†

SKILL DEVELOPMENT ñ developing melodic shape

Task 10 ñ ìMy Name Isî ï Write a song with a characterís name as the title. ††

SKILL DEVELOPMENT ñ avoiding diaristic clichÈ/ developing narrative

Task 11 ñ ìTake it to the bridgeî ï Write a 32-bar song in AABA form. ††

SKILL DEVELOPMENT ñ controlling form/using hooks