Songwriting Workshops
Bring words and musical ideas into work you can put on paper, accompany and perform. The workshop moves between listening, analysis, writing and trying the results aloud.
For me the opposite of good isn’t bad… the opposite of good is bland.Patrick Michael Wickham · Workshop syllabus
Lyrics and conversion
Work on what a lyric says, what it repeats, and how its structure carries an idea. The curriculum includes lyric analysis, abstraction, form and structure, then conversion into melody and rhythm.
Writing is brought back into the room for review and revision. The aim is not simply to produce more words, but to make the words and musical setting work together.
Melody, rhythm, harmony and texture
The syllabus identifies these as the four primary ingredients of music. Work includes melodic motives, rhythm and meter, and how melodies relate to chords. Harmony is developed through triads, chord function, inversions and major and minor keys.
Texture is considered through analysis, with limited elements of orchestration and production. This is a songwriting workshop, not a software-training course: the focus remains the musical decisions and the song itself.
A workshop, not just a lecture
Sessions bring together questions, assignments and songs for review; new concepts and analysis; and applied writing with isolated, given or open variables. Listening and writing assignments continue the work between meetings.
Participants read, act, play and sing one another’s work as well as their own. Discussion is encouraged, with an emphasis on constructive observations rather than a simple verdict of liking or disliking a piece.
Finished songs
The most recent workshop materials move the writing toward full-song lead sheets, accompaniment tracks and performance. They include solo-instrument and multi-instrument arrangements, and singing a completed song to a track or with a band.
The underlying goal is practical: write a song that can be accompanied and sung, not a collection of exercises that never becomes a piece. Specific projects and participation requirements belong to the announced workshop.