We're catching up with posts! Forgive us ... its been a busy few months!
Photo Caption: The WriteOn! Class of 2020-21 with Russ Broom.
November started with a Saturday morning Write On! class where we learned about what makes up a song. From the verse, chorus, bridge, pre-chorus, intro's, outro's, refrains etc. We listened to a range of musical examples and analyzed the song forms and different patters, different ways of writing and even writing to a drum beat. Have you checked out the song DRUNK by Elle King & Miranda Lambert or how about Ingrid Andress's Lady Like that and comparing with something like Tangled Up In Blues by Bob Dylan - ALL VERY DIFFERENT song forms.
We split off into groups and took the words "sun", "cage" and "green" for a 20 minute group co-write challenge and the group came back with some beginnings of songs and song ideas. A great exercise - check out this example on TikTok of this challenge.
Russ Broome was our guest speaker for this class and shared so many stories. Russ reminded us all of something very important we PLAY music - it should be something we enjoy and love. As well as discussing the importance of being authentic and some out of the box ideas as well as some other tricks and tips on rekindling old songs and a songwriting "Daily Work Out".
The following week we had the opportunity to attend the Calgary Folk Club again for a night of music from BC, a truly authentically west coast evening with Mark Perry from Smithers BC and Shari Ulrich who lives on Vancouver Island. These are examples of great storytellers - check out some of their songs if you can!
Check back later for our second blog for November! November was a jampacked month of classes and Folk Club shows.