Joe Bennett

Day 1

Nine of the eleven songwriters are now here – our final two, Nuala and Ziggy, arrive later today. For the first full day we started with a discussion of last night’s task, which was simply for everyone to write ten titles and then discuss with the group how they might be developed further into lyric ideas and eventually complete songs.

This was followed by a lecture in which we discussed some of the techniques, challenges and pitfalls of the songwriter’s creative process, and some playback of existing songs, including Rodger and Amy’s song ‘Renegade Fishermen‘ from 2007 (a word-setting task), plus some pop songs including Sarah Bareilles’ Love Song, The Beatles’ Yesterday, George Formby’s Little Ukulele and various other songs that came up in conversation.

And then onward to the first full task, which is to separate lyric-writing and lyric ‘setting’ (i.e. writing the music). Each songwriter is to write a lyric in its entirety, and then pass it on to another songwriter for completion. This is the simplest form of collaboration because it doesn’t involve any negotiation; some songwriters find it very liberating to write music for a pre-existing lyric, although some have difficulty with writing a lyric with the knowledge that they have no control over how it’s going to sound.

Our week at Barncrosh Farm coincides with the terrible Nov 2009 weather that hit Cumbria and to some extent our current location – Dumfries and Galloway. 30 roads are reported closed, so we may end up with more songwriting time than we planned!