This week Jake had his first songwriting lesson! Instead of just giving Jake a bunch of instruction and then setting him free to write songs on his own - we use every piece of instruction in real time as we write a song together. I show Jake how to do each thing with an example - and then have him try it as we move further and further in writing our song. This way - Jake learns by DOING instead of just by listening. Each lesson I will push Jake to tackle different parts of the writing process - and every 3 to 5 lessons we will have a finished song!
We worked on:
1. Song Structure
2. Basic rhythms
3. Adding lyrics to specific cadence
Song Structure
Today we worked on basic song structure and outlined the pattern we will be following for our songs:
Verse
Chorus
Verse
Chorus
Chorus
(Sometimes bridge)
Basic rhythms
We went over basic rhythms - how to fit different rhythms into lines of the same length, how slightly the changing rhythm from line to line gives our songs more versatility.
Adding lyrics to specific cadence
We then picked a chord progression and started filling in melodies and lyrics to a specific cadence in our song.