Songwriting

Using a combination of structured improvisation, analysis of existing song forms, imitative listening activities, and collaborative ensemble exercises, students will write, orchestrate, rehearse, record, and perform their own original music.

Students will listen to and analyze popular songs. Having discovered the structures and techniques underlying those songs, they will then compose their own songs using similar formulas. Rather than using a pen-to-paper technique as in most traditional academic music classes, the Creative Musicianship course will have students learn by creating music together, “in the air” – singing, playing, and improvising their initial ideas, and then refining, re-structuring, and editing these ideas into complete songs.

Students will unlock creative potential, learn valuable collaboration techniques, and simulate a professional songwriting environment as well as the tasks faced by an independent professional musician. Along the way they will develop valuable technical skills in melodic and harmonic analysis, ensemble rehearsal and performance, instrumental orchestration, and overall musical proficiency.

The final result of this course will be to record an original music video in a professional recording studio. Students will have the first record of their own.