WHAT TO EXPECT: OUR APPROACH TO SONGWRITING LESSONS
Arranging | Blues | Classical | Foreign | Jazz | Pop |
Songwriters create new songs by combining melody, lyrics, rhythm, and harmony. Many music lovers and musicians explore this area of self-expression, either on its own or to deepen their expression when playing their primary instrument. While there are no hard-and-fast rules to song writing, an MTN teacher can help a student acquire some fundamental skills and concepts that will help them become the sort of songwriter they want to be.
Example Lesson Progression
A good song starts with a good idea, whether it is a catchy melody, or a powerful phrase, a story or a larger theme like love or loss. Songwriting lessons, then, first focus on the development of ideas. If the student is already a musician, these might be musical ideas, but it doesn't require any previous musical experience to start coming up with ideas for lyrics. An MTN teacher will start with questions and directed writing activities that help the student come up with ideas of things to write about. Writing in a journal every day and listening to a lot of music is also very helpful for this part of the process. Once an idea or theme has been selected, the student might free-write a description or story about that theme, which than then be crafted into a lyric. The teacher will help the student adjust their text for flow, clarity, creativity, and focus. Form and rhyme scheme are important tools for a songwriter, and activities like listening to favorite songs and writing down the rhyme scheme and form of the lyrics, or starting with a given rhyme scheme and constructing a lyric to fit it, will help the student learn how various forms work select the best one for their lyrics.
Once the lyrics have taken shape, it's time to work on crafting the music. Students will become familiar with the concepts of key and mode, the basic scales of different styles, chords, and chord progressions. These concepts form the foundation of melody writing and song structure. Just as lyrics have a poetic form, songs have a musical form, or song structure. Common examples include 32-bar form or AABA form, where the verse forms the "A" section and the main melody, with a "bridge" or "B" section between the second and last verses; verse-chorus form, where verses alternate with a repeated chorus; and the twelve-bar blues, where the same music is used for both verse and chorus, but the lyrics differ. The teacher will help the student become familiar with the various song structures and select the best one for their lyrics. Once the song structure is determined, the focus turns to melody writing. This part of song writing is often the most personal-no two people are likely to come up with the same melodies using the same method. Some songwriters start with a melody and add chords that fit it, and some go the other way around. A teacher will help the student find which approach suits them best and craft effective melodies to fit their lyrics.
The "hook" is an essential part of songwriting. The hook is the part of the song that catches the listener's attention and makes them remember it. A hook can be a powerful turn of phrase, a memorable bit of melody, an unusual chord progression, or even a particular song structure. Sometimes it is the first part of a song to take shape; other times it becomes clear in the middle or even near the end of the writing process. Whatever it is and whenever it takes shape, the hook should be the highlight of the song. A teacher can help the student adjust the components of the song to complement and emphasize the hook.
Get Started!
Learning to write songs may seem like a challenge, and it is, but all it takes to get started is a love of music and the desire to write. Becoming a songwriter takes patience and practice, but it is well worth it. Learning how songs are written will deepen your understanding and appreciation of the music that's already out there, and is a wonderful avenue for self-expression and discovery.
The Hidden Value of Private Lessons
Staff Writer - March 19th, 2010 10:55 AM PDT
It's easy to think that the benefits of private lessons stop with the subject itself. After all, can having extra-curricular classes really affect your life that much beyond the specific subject you're learning?
The short answer? Yes. The slightly longer answer? Absolutely. There are benefits to having extra, private lessons that you may not even have considered. Here are just a few to think about.
Private lessons can broaden your interests.
There's a whole world of experience out there, and sometimes it's difficult to know where to start. One of the advantages of having a private tutor -- especially one for a subject you might previously have avoided paying any more attention to than absolutely necessary -- is that they're usually pretty knowledgeable about the wide variety of topics that subject contains. If one thing doesn't interest you (say, Civil War history), that's no reason to write off history as a whole. Your tutor might be able to help point you in the direction of new topics that might keep you interested for longer, or books that will become firm favorites. Additionally, it's also possible that reading in one subject will spark your interest in another; after all, despite what school lesson timetables might claim, no subject exists as an island on its own.
Private lessons can give your life structure.
Having set times every week where you know you have to be at a certain place is a great way of diving your time into manageable chunks. Tutor time, music practice time, orchestra, tennis classes, school, after-school job, homework, chores, time to see your friends... delineating all of these into separate categories can help you to stay focused on the task at hand, enriching your experiences both when it's time to work and when it's time to play. It sounds kind of strange, but a lot of people tend to miss losing the additional structure that private lessons can bring when it comes time for them to stop.
Private lessons can change your attitude to work.
It's relatively easy to fake your way through not having read the book if you're in a classroom environment: you just keep your head down and your hand lowered, try not to draw attention to yourself for an hour and hope that one of the other twenty or so students will be picked on instead. If you've ever tried doing that with a one-on-one tutor, you'll soon find that it doesn't work. If you want to get the most out of your extra classes, you absolutely need to keep up with the assigned work. The strange thing is, this pressure to actually do what's required of you rather than procrastinating tends to bleed into other aspects of your life as well. All of a sudden, just sitting down and doing your assigned reading (or practicing your scales, or even getting your paper round done) suddenly don't seem like such a big deal.
Private lessons can build confidence.
Kids who are struggling with a subject or a difficult concept often feel stupid. Why do I need tutoring?, they might find themselves thinking. Why do my classmates just understand this, while I need extra help? What's wrong with me? As such, the idea of being tutored is often seen as a sign of failure, but it doesn't have to be the case. A good tutor will encourage his or her pupil, letting them know that they can, in fact, pass the course in question and that any problems they're having can be fixed. This boost to their confidence can be a great help to someone who previously might have been tempted to just give up, and will hopefully last them far beyond the duration of their classes.
It's as a result of all these factors that people keep turning to private lessons, rather than online courses or other 'teach yourself' methods of education. It really is very difficult to overstate the benefits that can come from building a solid person-to-person relationship with someone who is best able to guide you through the often tricky maze of academia, as well as instilling values and beliefs that will shape your life for years afterwards.
Audience(s): • All Private LessonsSONGWRITING TEACHING JOBS
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