Songwriting is usually thought of as a skill that a person is either naturally gifted at or spends time developing in an intuitive manner. It not usually thought of as a subject that can be studied, and it is very rarely taught anywhere. As a result, the methods of the great songwriters have remained a mystery to many aspiring musicians. There are a handful of books available about songwriting, most of which, however, only address lyric writing, and tend to leave the music side of the equation to guesswork. And aside from a few workshops here and there, this is a subject that is not even addressed in most music colleges. So for someone to put together any type of methodical in-depth training on the topic of songwriting is quite a contribution to the world of music education.

The creator of the course, Kevin Thomas, has graduated from some of the best music schools in the world, Musicians Institute (MI), Berklee College of Music, University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, and he holds a Masters Degree in Music. He is currently an adjunct music professor at MUM. Berklee College of Music happens to be the only music college in the world where one can actually major in Songwriting. Much of the Creative Songwriting Video Course is influenced by the unique program that has been developed at Berklee College of Music, in addition to the practical experience from his professional songwriting, arranging, composing, producing, and recording career, which includes the music hundreds of songs, and almost half a dozen full length CDs. This does make him more than qualified to teach such a course.

The concepts covered in the Creative Songwriting Video Course cover just about every aspect of the songwriting process from conception to completion, and is designed to help both beginner and advanced songwriters alike. Topics include how to get started writing, developing and editing a song, creating a strong hook, lyric writing, chord progressions, melody, song structure, and quite a few other areas. For each section there are extensive video trainings.

The format of the course is primarily video tutorials that incorporate both written text and video/audio demonstrations of the topics covered. This makes the program very accessible to many different learning styles. Where some people prefer to learn from reading, some from hearing, and others from demonstration and doing, video encompasses all three. This is a much better way to learn music than from a book or audio recording.

The current price of the course is unbelievably low, priced at $75, considering the many hours of video training that are included. The course is accessed online in a back office that users can log into to study. The fact that DVDs are not actually shipped to your home is probably what has kept the price from rising to several hundred dollars. The videos all expand to full screen, so the back office seems to work just as well as DVDs would, and students save lots of money this way.

I understand that the entire course is going to be rerecorded with many improvements sometime later this year, and anyone who owns the current version at this low price will receive free updates for life. The website does indicate that the price will be going up, so it would make monetary sense to purchase now at a lower price, and receive any new versions for free.

In conclusion, I think that this course from Kevin Thomas and Songwriting Planet is something that musicians and aspiring songwriters have been hungry for for a long time. I hope that he continues to expand on his collection and releases more advanced follow up programs.

Pat Haughey

The Creative Songwriting Video Course

Did you ever have to read a textbook in school? Remember how hard it was at times to keep your mind from wandering every five or ten minutes? On the other hand, do you remember reading novels or stories as a kid that you just couldn’t put down? Maybe you’d even stay up late at night turning pages under a blanket with a flashlight so your parents didn’t find out that you were still awake.

How can we make sense of the difference between these two types of reading experiences? The answer lies in using your common sense, or your common senses I should say.

It was the Images, Sounds, Tastes, Smells, and Touch that kept you reading that great book. And it was the lack of examples that made it so difficult to read the textbook. Don’t allow your lyric writing to become textbook style abstractions; you will have a very hard time captivating listeners with a style that is lacking in concrete images.

The more you can paint a picture with your lyrics using the senses, the more it will draw listeners in, so that they will almost instinctually be compelled to listen deeply to the whole song.

A great technique to help you achieve this is to write all your lyrics twice. Write them the first time in whatever way they emerge from that burning volcano of creativity within. Then go back and check your lyrics line-by-line and replace any abstract phrases with concrete examples that you can See, Hear, Touch, Taste, or Smell.

Additionally, there are two other senses that are important. They are: the Organic Sense, which includes the internal body feelings, like an ache in the back or butterflies in the stomach; and the Kinesthetic Sense, which has to do with the feeling of body motion in relation to the world, like your stomach dropping when jumping off a high step, or feeling the motion on an accelerating subway train.

Here are two short examples to demonstrate these different styles of lyric writing:

1: Abstract Lyrics

It’s so lonely without you here
My mind’s confused and my thoughts unclear

2: Rewritten in a Poetic, Sensuous, or Picturesque style

I float through the dark on an iceberg bed
Sea sick as waves of perfume haunt my head

It could easily be argued that these two sections make exactly the same statement. However, the second example, due to its use of sensual rather than abstract ideas, contains many more layers of meaning. A symbol often has dozens of connotations, and multiple meanings, whereas an abstract statement usually only contains one denotation, which may be precise and clear, but usually lacks the depth needed to touch a heart, set a mood, or inspire passion. The manner in which we weave the sensory information of symbols and images together will often determine the unique character, personality, and depth of our lyric writing.

This is really the BIGGEST SECRET to Great Lyric Writing. So I Hope this tip helps you to literally – Come to Your Senses!

Kevin Thomas

Songwriting Planet

Guess How You Can Write Chord Progressions the will ALWAYS SOUND GREAT with your Melody, and make listeners feel TOTALLY CONNECTED to the song.

How? It’s Simple: DON’T GUESS!

Many songwriters simply guess which chords to use with their melodies; they try a variety of different ones until something sounds right.

There is nothing wrong with using your ear to find good sounds, but just guessing which chords might work with a melody is like trying to find a new car to for sale by driving up and down every street in the city looking for one, rather than simply going to the new car lots. You might eventually find a good one, but you would be really doing things THE HARD WAY.

For Songs, the big car-lot of chords that will ALWAYS SOUND GREAT with your melody will come from the Same Scale. When car shopping, if you want a Chevy you go to a Chevy dealer, if you want a Ford you go to a Ford car lot. It is no different in songwriting. If your melody comes from a D major scale, a G minor scale, or a Bb Blues scale, you need to know the chords in that key.

This works the other way around also. If you begin with the chords, your melody should come from the same scale that the chords come from.

HOW DO YOU FIND THESE MYSTERIOUS CHORDS?

Let’s quickly go over major keys, and stick to triads (3-note chords) for now to keep this simple. In any major key, which will contain 7 notes, the chords follow the scale tones in this order: I is major, ii is minor, iii is minor, IV is major, V is major, vi is minor, and vii is diminished.

So in the key of C here are the chords: C Dm Em F G Am Bdim.

In the key of D we get these chords: D Em F#m G A Bm C#dim.

The order of major, minor, and diminished chords will always be the same, no matter what major key you are using.

So here is the BLUEPRINT: If you begin with a melody, determine what scale you are using, know what chords are in that key, and choose from them.

You can also do this the other way around: chords first, melody second. If you begin with the chords, determine what scale they belong to and create your melody from that scale.

This takes less than a minute to figure out, and Everything will match up LIKE MAGIC.

You can always choose a chord or two from outside of the key for Interesting Flavors, but most of the chords and melody notes need to come from the same scale, or song will taste like a Pizza with Tuna and Peanut Butter toppings.

Songwriting Planet

Why has Meditation always been so popular amongst musicians? Perhaps it has to do with the nature of the creative process itself. To be truly creative one must go beyond the surface level of life, look for deeper meanings, and bring out with unique artistic vision those often overlooked magical connections between the inner realm of ideas and outer world of physical objects. This necessitates not only looking for camouflaged meaning in the world around us, but, more importantly, tapping into both the shadowy and celestial resources of the human mind.

Musicians seem to be intuitively drawn toward these synchronicities between inner and outer spheres that so often emerge through music and art. This is frequently experienced as an exhilarating sense of being In The Flow while performing or writing music. Musicians often become seekers of techniques such as meditation in an attempt to break free from limiting mental boundaries and expand their consciousness in order to access these mysterious and alluring planes, in addition to finding a higher meaning for their art.

Yet wise musicians usually realize at some point along their pursuit toward mastery of their craft that without some formal instruction their first task becomes reinventing the wheel, which could put off completing any polished creative works for quite a few years. Sooner or later every musician needs to balance their creative drive with learning some technique through lessons, self-study, classes, and, if you are seriously thinking about music as a career, music college. But the problem arises when studying technique through music education inhibits the natural creative inspiration of passionate young musicians. How can one learn the ropes without accidentally hanging oneself with them?

In Fairfield Iowa a striking combination of brilliant educators and mystical traditions seemed to have discovered the solution. Maharishi University of Management (MUM), a fully accredited university that is known for its academic excellence, offers degree program up to the PhD level, and a new innovative music college has just emerged from its horizon. A unique feature of the university is that both faculty and students practice Transcendental Meditation^® on a daily basis as an essential component of the curriculum.

Transcendental Meditation^®, commonly known as TM^®, is by far the most thoroughly researched form of personal development. There have been over 600 scientific research studies conducted by eminent scientists at major universities throughout the world proving its effectiveness at increasing intelligence, developing emotional maturity, synchronizing brain wave function, and improving just about every area of physical health imaginable, from reducing blood pressure and acquiring a better night’s sleep, to actually reversing the aging process.

The idea at MUM is to go beyond simply cramming students full of information and rolling their bloated tassel-flaunting heads out into a confused workforce as many universities do, but to developing the whole person so that he or she might leave college with a fully developed mind that has both exemplary knowledge and the inner wisdom and capacity to use that knowledge for a higher purpose. It is a revolutionary approach to education: in addition to knowledge of the outer world, teach the student how to dive deep within and know themselves, which has perennially been the highest quest of truth seekers from all cultures.

This year MUM launched a new Creative Musical Arts program, which is the first music college program of its kind. The development of the student’s full creative potential is of the utmost importance, which is a very different paradigm than that of traditional music colleges. Self-realization, personal growth, and the development of consciousness for the budding next generation of musicians is the ultimate goal.

Kevin Thomas, founder of Songwriting Planet, taught a course in Songwriting at MUM during the Fall semester 2010, and it was a huge success. The admissions to the course were nearly double that of the standard class size. There was such high demand for the course that accommodations were made and students of all different musical backgrounds and levels of experience were accepted.

The outcome was far greater than anyone had anticipated. Student songs consisted of styles as diverse as Rock, R&B, County, Hip-Hop, Folk, East Indian, Operatic Choral arrangements, and quite a few new genres that are yet to be defined. Students who had experience with songwriting in the past took their craft up to a whole new level, and students with no experience in songwriting finished the course with a portfolio of polished songs. But the biggest success shinned through the students as an inner light growing brighter day-by-day from their expanded level of consciousness through Transcendental Meditation^®.

Anyone currently looking into music colleges should consider the MUM Creative Musical Arts program. In addition this being a great university music program, students will leave with a greater knowledge of who they are on the inside, and a clearer direction of their higher purpose both in their music career and in their lives.

Click here for info on the MUM Creative Musical Arts Program

Click here for info on Songwriting Planet

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