Tutors include:

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

Bath Spa University Songwriters' Centre

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

Two brothers, songwriting side by side

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

Thoughts from this year’s SWF2010 Songwriting demo panel, with our very special guest Eddi Reader.

SWF tutor Boo Hewerdine shares some of his thoughts on songwriting processes, and provides a few of his personal Dos and Don’ts. Interview by Rachel from the MA Songwriting group.

Eddi joined our songwriters’ panel, listened to new work written during the week, and performed a special one-off show for us here in Bath. Here’s her recent single ‘Dragonflies’.

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.

The song has been completed

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

House band session

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.

Two brothers, songwriting side by side

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.