In 2007, I went out to California to attend the west coast version of SummerSongs for the first time, which regular SongwritingScene.com readers know is the songwriting retreat/camp I’ve attended many times since the summer of ’03.
It was an amazing experience meeting the California contingent of SummerSongs (which took place that year in a magical location near Santa Barbara called Zaca Lake), including a terrific teacher named Severin Browne — who has a famous last name (yes, a sibling!) — who, along with boasting some really fabulous songs that I was fortunate to hear that week at Zaca Lake, is also a compassionate, heart-full instructor with plenty of songwriting tricks up his sleeve.
I asked him for a few tips this week and here’s what he had to say:
1. A great songwriting exercise, courtesy of another fine songwriting teacher, Cosy Sheridan:
“She gave us all cards numbered 1 thru 8 which we shuffled and laid out to find the beginning notes to a melody. I’ve used this approach many times using 8-sided dice too. The numbers correspond with the 8 notes of the major scale (1 and 8 being the same note an octave apart). I left that class and wrote a song that I still play today. Many songs use this kind of melody as a motif, a 3 or 4 note series of notes that get repeated with different chords or in a different range, and give the listener an easy way to remember your melody in order to sing along easier.”
2. How to jog your mind into thinking of stories and situations to write about:
“I’ll go somewhere with my writing pad and watch people interact. I sometimes imagine what these people are like and what they are going through, which has yielded stories to write about. I also eavesdrop, which got me the title to one of my songs: ‘Do you think I’ll go to Heaven?’”
3. Choose a favorite song of someone else’s and ‘re-write’ it:
“That is, take the lyric and write the main idea down in your own words. Then write it again using your own words. As you write more of the ideas in the song in your own words, try to take it in a different direction using some of your own life experiences in the mix. Using page after page in your notebook, write it again and again changing and adding more of yourself as you re-write it each time. Soon you will have a completely original song that was taken from someone else’s idea. But if you don’t use their words, chords or melody, it’s not a problem. I believe that we all begin sometimes by using ideas that have been done before. In fact that is a great way to learn the craft of songwriting.”
4. Write, write write — and re-write some more:
“The main thing you want to do is write! And remember to re-write. Each time you re-write a lyric to another page in your notebook, it has the possibility of being The ONE! So fill up those notebooks, number and date them, keep them handy and organized, and most of all, write.”
