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 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.

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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!

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).

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!

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.

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…