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!

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 he had met.
One songwriter he worked with would write notes of whatever they thought could go on in the song at the bottom of the page to have them there when they began writing the song. Andy has found this very useful and this is the method he is employing today. He goes on to say that the first thing they would agree on was the title.
He describes how he would look at the titles and see if there was something that he could relate to in order to take some ownership of the song and put something of himself into.
He discards some titles explaining why he is doing so as he wouldnít use those words himself. He isolates some titles that he thinks would sing well whilst also thinking about potential subjects for the song. There are some titles that he likes but he feels would take more than an hour to write and some that he would really like someone else to write.

Lyric suggestions come thick and fast from the audience...

He does a vote within the group and which coincides with his own choice. The title offered is Barry Shearman Brings the House Down.
Andy says the first thing to do is ask yourself whatís behind the title. He advises being the detective arriving at the scene of the title and asks for suggestions about what the title could be about. Blain notes down all the options on the screen and the background story chosen is that of a man who comes from a long line of entertainers but has ended up as a builder who is not very good at his new job.
Andy makes the point that because of the descriptive nature of the song he would have quite undemanding music. He references ëAll Along The Watchtowerí as a song that has very rich lyrics with an undemanding backdrop.
He likes the suggestion of having a chronological story and soon has the first four lines being about the entertainer’s background.
Andy says itís important to get as many points down as possible and something that feels like a good first draft without being overly critical.

He makes the point that it saves a lot of time if you write a song with a title that you feel you can say a lot about to begin with.
More suggestions are thrown out and Andy is careful to keep it in the same voice and make sure the references are not too obscure. He uses the storyline that theyíve decided on to keep things on track.
The question is asked around whether he is deliberately not playing the guitar. Andy says he prefers to get the lyrics right in the story, and as itís a story song he wants to concentrate on the lyrics primarily.
Once heís happy with the verse Andy plays it with the melody he has had in his head and more ideas come out which Blain notes down.
Ideas are coming thick and fast and one songwriter comes up with a killer line that finishes the song off.
Itís a great experience, really good fun and a real eye opener for everyone to a different approach to songwriting.

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.

Songwriting in the sunshine

Todayís tutor is Andy White. He opens the session with a discussion of how he writes (chords first in Andy’s case), after which he plays a song and gets everyone joining in. Itís great and a good insight into another approach.
A question is asked around some of the chords and Andy demonstrates the effects of chord changes on the listener’s mood.
The first song played is a beautiful gentle song. Andy makes some chord suggestions and suggests some restructuring – an instrumental verse and then to sing the chorus again. He says that because the song is so melodically beautifully and has such great lyrics it doesnít need any more levels of complexity.
In contrast the next song played has been put down over Garage Band beats and is played over the laptop. It has everyone tapping their feet. The words on it are spoken rather than sung. And itís very much a social commentary. It has great content and is really fresh. Andy makes some structural suggestions and the songwriters made plans to work on it with a view to performing it later.
The next song is performed on the piano and Andy works with the songwriter to arrange the song.
After lunch we return and a collaborative song is played. Andy makes some structural suggestions and the songwriters try them out with Andy playing along before we finish to either go to an optional lecture or to our writing task for the day.

John Gill, our guest tutor for the Wednesday

Guitarist and songwriter John Gill is here to talk to us about writing songs for children.† He talks about his history and his experience in teaching guitar and music technology and playing in a skiffle band, touring and working etc.

He starts with talking about the only people who can give critiques on a kids’ song is kids themselves.

The session includes some tips on introducing fun, rhyming and repetition at a basic level to keep children engaged. He also talks about the value of ‘nonsense words’ in songs to keep kids interested. He demonstrates this and has the audience laughing and engaged straight away.

Conversation then turns to other facets of childrenís songs such as characters, storylines and actions. The group then discusses how lyrics can be made to relate to actual experiences in the child’s world.
He talks about the use of chords to evoke different moods and talks of strong and obvious use of dynamics, and gets the group to sing some examples, which raises gales of laughter as the adult group try to behave like a class of 6-year-olds. He says that kids like to hear really obvious things about the character, i.e. Joeís sitting here, hello Joe, Heís got big ears, theyíre really big. John plays along and gets the audience to join in.

To demonstrate sound of words, humour, action, dynamics, use of non musical aspects etc, John then gets the audience to stand up and makes the point that with children you have to be continuously keeping their attention. He demonstrates with the ëscarecrowí song getting the audience on their feet and cueing the audience in with actions and singing. He has them jumping around and singing, an excellent demonstration and everyone looks like they are really enjoying it.

A following demonstration does the same thing with a story-based exercise, where members of the group write alternative endings for the ëSharon Smedleyí story (from Jilted John’s song ‘The Birthday Kiss‘). He then performs an anti bullying song that he was asked to write for a musician-in-residence project. In the delivery of it he uses dynamics and the unfolding of a story to get a point across [editor's note - John describes the song as being based on a real-world situation, involving one adult bullying another - demonstrating that there is sometimes an overlap between the issues that adults and children may relate to in a lyric].

We then get into more musical territory – John talks about skipping and demonstrates effective use of 6/8 or swing rhythms in accompaniments and melodies. John then demonstrates a song which uses imagery as he says kids listen more in pictures than adults. He demonstrates this with his song about someone running a marathon.
He then goes on to demonstrate how songs can be used to teach the core curriculum – using his song about the Coelacanth fish! Itís brilliant and I now know more about this species than ever before!

Itís been a great session and everyone leaves with huge smiles having jumped around and joined in with all the songs!

I got the music in me!

I’m getting lots of queries from current SWF songwriters who want to know how we project the lyrics for cover versions in our lectures. For those who missed it, here’s the link to the original blog entry where we discussed this in all its full technical detail.

Teaching songwriting with a Mac

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/neilmccormick/100002407/xenomania-how-to-write-a-hit-song/

House band rehearsal 2008

In 2009 we were delighted to welcome back two of our 2008 tutors. Iain Archer and Boo Hewerdine (best-known for their songwriting for Snow Patrol & Eddi Reader respectively) will both be with us all week, running songwriting workshops with our core team in Bath. We were also really pleased to welcome outstanding Irish singer-songwriter Andy White, who flew all the way from Australia to join the SWF tutor team.

The studio team includes house producer Davey Ray Moor working with our usual complement of studio engineers, session musicians and arrangers. All our visitors have access to our recording facilities, and will be able to perform their new songs with the house band.