Songwriting Festival 2010 – a word of thanks
Dear songwriters, 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... [Read More...]
“Our father, wi ‘chart in ‘eaven…”
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... [Read More...]
SWF2010 – day two report
[Mark writes...] Another great day at the songwriting 'office' 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... [Read More...]
Problem child?
[Heidi writes] A bit of a revelatory morning for me at SWF… Taking my seat in the University Theatre to the strains of Girls Aloud (SWF truly embraces a broad range of genres). The topics for today included deconstructing hits. While this sounded interesting – I had no idea it was about to sort out a particular songwriting problem that has been plaguing me for months. Joe's Lecture on Songwriting Structure Part of the talk centered on AABA... [Read More...]
Day One 2010
Airing a new song near the Castle end of the University campus Today’s introductory blog is a collective effort from Rachel, Mark, Heidi and Matt – the SWF volunteers. It’s our job to keep up a running commentary on all the exciting things that are already happening – and to generally help out wherever we can. From today we’ll be walking about campus, armed with cameras, laptops and vast quantities of sheer brazen noisiness. The three... [Read More...]
Words are like cockroaches…
It’s day one of the Festival and we’re all about to meet in the University Theatre. One of the things that usually comes up in the first lecture is the broad field of ‘creativity’ as it relates to songwriting. We’ll be discussing this, but in a happy coincidence (surely an omen for a successful Festival!) I notice this morning that Charlie Brooker’s column in today’s Guardian deals with the ‘blank sheet... [Read More...]
If you’re ready…?
SWF 2010 begins tomorrow! We’re all getting very excited – we’ll have 50+ songwriters, a 4-piece house band, 10-strong studio team, a big support team and (if my calculations are correct) over 250 songs yet to be written. This year we’re using two sites – our main Newton Park campus (right) and our exciting new nightclub venue Burdall’s Yard, where we’ll be having our launch event on Sunday 15th August and... [Read More...]
SWF 2010 – now sold out!
With 54 participants, this year’s Festival will be one of our biggest yet. We very much look forward to seeing everyone on the 15th August. If you would like to attend next year’s Festival, please do join our email list and I’ll let you know as soon as booking opens in January. Thanks – Lindsay Read More →
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 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... [Read More...]
Fi’s blog – Andy West ñ 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...]
