February 2014
Guild Tidings
The official publication of
The International Songwriters Guild
Volume 19, No. 2
NEXT MEETING - 5:00pm Sunday, February 2nd, 2013
The International Songwriter’s Guild meets at 5 PM on the first Sunday of every month at the
Central Florida Musician’s Union building, 3020 East Robinson (at the extreme east end of
Robinson, near Orlando Executive Airport ) in Orlando.
Songwriters, composers, performers, publishers, and the curious are encouraged to join us.
Non-members are invited to attend a meeting or two to get a feel for our group and what we do.
For more information, visit our website at www.tinyurl.com/isgsongs or myspace page at
The meetings will be structured as follows: 5:00 to 5:30, business and introductions. 5:30 to
6:00, presentation by a guest speaker (when scheduled), 5:30 or 6:00 to 8:00, song critiques.
Please bring a CD or mp3 player or perform your song live, and bring 10 or more lyric sheets.
If we have at least 5 songs by members who wish to be scored, and 6 members scoring, then we
will have them entered in the Monthly competition. Everyone is encouraged to write
constructive comments on the lyric sheets.
Berklee On Line
By Jeff Mason
Berklee College of Music has a free, songwriting course beginning on Monday, January 27 which
you may enroll for course at this web address https://www.coursera.org/course/songwriting
It is a 6 week course taught by Pat Pattison. Pattison is a professor at Berklee and teaches
several online courses in songwriting and creative writing. He is the author of four books on
songwriting, “Songwriting Without Boundaries,” “Writing Better Lyrics,” “The Essential Guide
to Lyric Form and Structure” and “The Essential Guide to Rhyming.” Pat’s former students
include John Mayer, Tom Hambridge and Gillian Welch.
I took this course in October and found it to be a worthwhile venture. It
is, however, a complex and time consuming course. There are three deadlines each week
consisting of an assignment, a multiple choice quiz and compulsory peer reviews of at least
five student’s assignments.
The course is mostly about lyrics, beginning with song development and
point of view. I enjoyed learning Pat’s method of plotting a song. From there he moves on to
prosody, which is defined as the study of the metrical structure of verse and a particular
system of versification. He teaches prosody in terms of stable and unstable lines. The
following week, the course explains the different kinds of rhyme and their relationship to
prosody. The fourth week explains language rhythms in regard to stressed and unstressed
syllables. The fifth week is where you’ll use all you’ve learned...you will write a whole song
and attempt to match lyric rhythms with melodic rhythms. The final week you will learn about
downbeats and use them effectively in your song.
Through what I learned in the class I was able to take a song idea which
I’d shelved and rethink and retool it into a decent song. I think that alone validates Pat’s
teaching. Another important thing for me was that I discovered that I could write and produce
a song in a short time. The magic of deadlines!
The course consists of video demonstrations and integrated quizzes. One
is allowed up to 100 attempts at the quiz. I found that I learned and began to understood the
concepts after multiple failed attempts at each quiz! There are 21 songs referenced in the
course and you will be asked to listen to songs that demonstrate key ideas. You can access
these songs at the following web addresses
http://songwritingcourse.weebly.com
or http://songwritingcourse.weebly.com/in-front-of-the-alamo.html
I think that a knowledge and familiarity with a Digital Audio
Workstation (or DAW) is a huge advantage in this course, especially once I read the course
forum and saw that there were quite a few people experiencing difficulties with their first
time using such software. These folks were embarking on two learning curves at the same time.
The recommended DAWs were Audacity and Garageband. Another program will do as long as you can
convert your recording to MP3 format and upload it to Soundcloud.
There were a few things I disliked about the class. I have mixed
feelings about the peer reviews. I had one reviewer who obviously didn’t understand the
assignment and scored my work harshly. As the course progresses it seems to get more difficult
and I was uncomfortable scoring student’s work when I was barely grasping the concepts myself.
By the last week of the course I had begun to wish that I had a good music note and tablature
program that I was familiar with. On the musical end of the spectrum I thought some of Pat’s
instructions were difficult to understand. I think that Pat’s book “Writing Better Lyrics”
would be a handy tool to have, while taking this course.
If this is a true representation of Berklee’s other courses I think
the $1200 to $1400 for a 12 week course would be money well spent. I’m considering taking
another free course on January 27 “Introduction to Music Production” presented by Loudon
Stearns. I look forward to writing a review in the spring. See you next month.
ISG Bulletin Board
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or event on video may not be in your budget but you’re hoping that you may have something left
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who otherwise would have to pass because of funds. This is your special day and you most
definitely want to capture those moments. Visit my website at http://www.videosaysitall.com .
Thanks and call me anytime (352-267-5911)…Carlos Colon
Meeting space graciously provided by Central Florida Musicians Association, Local 389. You
are invited to join the largest union in the world, representing the interests of the
professional musician. Visit their website at afm389.org for more information. You may reach
them by phone at: 407-894-8666.
Why isn't your gig announced here? Call us with your appearance schedule!
Current members please send us your website info if you would like your site to be listed in
the ISG members page. Also if you have any songs that have placed first in the monthly
critiques, please send the mp3's to isgorlando@gmail.com if you would like to have them
featured in the ISG MySpace page. https://myspace.com/21075001
No critique contest for January.
New members always welcome!
Any Details not in this newsletter are at:
© 2014 ISG