CLASSES in 2025
STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES FOR SONGWRITERS Elian Carbone
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Discover lyric writing tools & strategies to sharpen your skills as an effective storyteller. Identify scenes, build backstory, raise the stakes, develop structure, find your arc, magnify the emotion, create spotlights, and understand prosody (how lyric and music composition inform one another). We'll analyze existing works and use them as scaffolding for our writing.
SONGWRITING JUMPSTART! Marie Eaton
In this session, we will explore the tools and craft of songwriting through a series of fun (and maybe a little risky) exercises that will lead toward songs. We'll discuss techniques, strategies and blocks, the roles and interrelationships of melody, rhythm, lyric and song forms. Previous songwriting experience is not necessary, but participants should come with a willingness to take some risks.
STRETCHING OUR SONGWRITING VOICE Geof Morgan
In this class, we will listen to and discuss several ways songs use lyric, structure, and music differently to tell their story. Picking a format we don’t normally use, we’ll all write from common prompt(s). We will share our beginnings and close with how to approach finishing and polishing our drafts.
SONG WORKSHOP Geof, Karee, Elian, and Marie
Songs selected from participants' submissions will be workshopped in this session. Songs will be selected based on the variety they present (genre, melodic or harmonic themes, lyric forms or choices, etc,) so we can cover as much ground as possible for everyone's benefit. Being present for, and listening to a song being workshopped, even when it is not your own song, is a rich learning opportunity. Please read the submission information on the registration page.