I went to a songwriters' workshop Tuesday evening (Dec 6) led by Jon Vezner and Don Henry (they perform together as the Don Juan's and have a great new
Halloween video on YouTube Called "Garden of the Dead"). Jon is married to Kathy Mattea and Jon & Don wrote "Where've You Been" a Grammy winning song from a few years back.
Anyway, I had to drive through blizzards to get there, but I made it to the workshop, so here's what extremely little I learned (I'm not good at taking notes, I guess).
Most of the time was spent on specific suggestions for songs by participants. Each of us had a chance to play and sing one of our songs.
What general advice I can find in my notes says:
1. Don't tell the title of your songs when you perform them. It sets up pre-conceived notions in the listeners' heads and may adversely affect how they hear the song.
2. Don't tell the story of your song before you perform it, especially if telling it takes longer than singing the song. If you feel like you have to TELL the whole story, then you (a) don't need to sing the song; they already know the story and/or (b) need to go back and do a better job of telling the story with the song.
3. Keep writing materials/phone/tablets/computers...handy so you can make notes every time you think of something that MIGHT work for a song, melody, or song title.
4. Set deadlines. For instance, decide you need a new song for Christmas and it must be done in time for your family Christmas party (or whatever). Or get the deadlines set for you externally, like assignments from a songwriting class or group or by volunteering to provide a new song for some upcoming event in your town or an organization you're part of.
5. Join or form a local songwriters' feedback group and get together weekly (or monthly if weekly is too often) to share your writing and give each other feedback.
6. Join a forum (like this one). Always a good idea, but especially if you're remote (like me) and just can't find people to get together with on any kind of regular basis.
7. Take advantage of tools like the
daily prompts website. This is for writers in general but works for songwriters too.
8. Listen to kids and glean song titles from things they say (you know, like, "kids say the darndest things").
9. Write lots of songs. Write all the time. Don't worry if lots of them are lousy. It takes a lot of writing to get a masterpiece.
That's what I can remember, based on my notes. A lot of it I've heard before, although never the "don't tell your title" thing.
The workshop was only three hours long, so time was pretty short. There were only 7 participants, so it was a nice intimate group. Couldn't have been too profitable, though. Apparently they did it because they were in the area anyway for an invitation-only home concert the next night, and Bruce (my son's father-in-law) asked if they wanted to do a workshop while they were there (everything took place at Bruce and Marsha's house). I went to the concert, too--all the participants were invited. That wasn't profitable, either, as it was a prize auctioned off as a fundraiser for an arts school.
Things they suggested to people about their songs included organizing the verses and choruses better. Like, one person had a song that kind of rambled around and they took parts of it and said, "You could make this verse 1 and this verse 2 and take that away from verse 3 and make it the chorus and the rest would make a good bridge..." stuff like that.
I got feedback on the Christmas song I'm adding to the Fabulous Forum Holiday video, but I don't think anything will change as a result. One of them said I should move the "Holiest of Stories" part closer to the beginning and the other one said I should leave it where it is.
I took two other songs as well, but shared them less formally and didn't get a any suggestions on them. Except that Don said he liked the second Christmas song better than the "Holiest of Stories" one.
Hmm. That's more than I thought I would remember.
