JMC Masterclass: Songwriting Essentials with Pat Pattison
Ойын-сауық
Songwriting Essentials with Pat Pattison, Lyric Writing and Poetry Professor at Berklee College of Music.
Having had a longstanding association with JMC, we are thrilled again to be hosting Pat Pattison for an online masterclass for all of our students interested in improving their songwriting, and learning from a master songwriting teacher. Pat is no stranger to many of our songwriting students, with his books and instructional videos being a part of our courses now - and with Pat being a mentor for many of our songwriting teachers.
Pat Pattison is a professor at Berklee College of Music, where he teaches lyric writing and poetry. In addition to his four books, Songwriting Without Boundaries (Penguin/Random House), Writing Better Lyrics, 2nd Edition (Penguin/Random House, The Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure (Hal Leonard), and The Essential Guide to Rhyming (Hal Leonard), Pat has developed five online courses for Berklee Online: three on lyric writing, one on poetry, and one on creative writing, all available through online.berklee.edu.
In addition, more than 1,500,000 students have enrolled in his coursera.org MOOC "Songwriting: Writing the Lyric" since its first run in 2013. He has written over fifty articles for various blogs and magazines, including American Songwriter, and has chapters in both The Poetics of American Song Lyrics (University Press of Mississippi) and the Handbook on Creative Writing (Edinburgh University Press).
Pat continues to present songwriting clinics across the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. Pat’s students include Grammy-winners, professional songwriters, and major recording artists, including Gillian Welch, John Mayer, Tom Hambridge, Joelle James, Karmin, Liz Longley, Charlie Worsham, Greg Becker, Justin Tranter, and many more.
To find out more about our talented students and courses, head to:
www.jmcacademy.edu.au
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How I would answer the girl that said she wants to write without it reminding her of the person she lost. I was in that situation when my son died. Writing is always therapeutic whether is it regular writing, poems, or songs. The first song I ever wrote was about heaven. And I wrote some poems about grief. Writing helps you get all the "stuff" to stop running in you head. You can leave it on the paper, and go on with your life. It isn't easy so you have to keep talking about it and writing in a journal about it, and eventually you will go on with your life and the person will be a lovely memory for you. Put it on paper, so you can leave it behind and be able to write another song, about another subject.
@whatabouttheearth
8 ай бұрын
Try writing a song about nothing. Make the words based solely on their texture and the vague implications that those textures seem to make that you didn't intend (so vagueness that seems like meaning but it's not because you didn't mean it), and than move on to another line based off of texture alone. Artists like Bush sort of do this in Sixteenth Stone, you can discern that some is very specific and personal but about some random situation, but alot is for texture alone. Do do an exercise where your song means nothing, and the sole point is for the texture of the individual words and those words together leads you. In this you are less tethered to intentionality and your own writing takes you on a journey, you don't lead it, it's almost as if the song writes itself through vagueness and liminality and you are merely a vehicle.
I'd not heard of Pat Pattison until yesterday. I was looking for information on writing a chorus and during my search I came across Pat's IMRO Songwriting Seminar. I thought that there may be something in there about chorus writing. Instead Pat in this seminar, talked about stable and unstable rhymes and rhythm structures. I'd never heard the terms stable and unstable in reference to rhymes and rhythm structures before and I was soon fascinated with these songwriting tools and how to use them. I ended up listening to the whole seminar and was impressed by the information and how superbly Pat taught. I then used these tools on a song I was writing and though I'd already used these tools without knowing the theory, now I could consciously apply the theory to my writing. Today, in this masterclass, I've stopped at the section about lyrics being too wordy. I knew what Pat was talking about. I regularly take out unnecessary words during my songwriting process which usually includes extensive rewriting , (including removing those pieces that repeat something previously said), to the point where each word has it's purpose and nothing can be added, nor subtracted, to improve the song; or so I have thought during my many years of writing. However I am yet to apply Pat's suggested exercise of selecting a favourite self composed song and removing 25% of the words. And then I got thinking about 'story' songs, 'story' songs being my favourite type of songs nowadays. And I have loved multitudes of pop songs over the years, as an example 'The Byrds' version of "Mr Tambourine Man', where they use only one of the 4 verses written in Dylan's original. In latter years though I prefer to play Dylan's full version (in the 'Byrds' style), as it tells me so much more and to me is more satisfying and fulfilling. As you won't know my songs I will list some of my favourite 'story' songs written by a well known writer, Gordon Lightfoot. These are 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald' 'Canadian Railroad Trilogy' and 'If You Could Read My Mind'. Now all of these are long, wordy, songs. And I think that they are as good as they are because they are wordy and at the same time, in my opinion, do not use any more words than are necessary to make them great songs. I can see how as a rule, a good 'hit' 'pop' song requires as few words as possible, to allow the light to shine on the words that are there and also maybe to capture the listeners who have a short attention span. In my youth a song had to typically be under 3 minutes long to be played on a commercial radio station, until perhaps 'Hey Jude' came along? Could it be that when Pat is talking about removing 25% of the words written in a song, that he is more talking about a song that is intended for and more suited to the charts?
@Skitdora2010
6 ай бұрын
The saying is if it takes you over three minutes to explain something, it means you are an idiot. As a kid my favorite song was the Letter B by Sesame Street. A good library will have books on song writing. You can Write Great Lyrics By Pamela Phillips on pg 64-65 does a good job explaining chorus. She explains the build/pre chorus, and different types of formulaic chorus depending on the song formula you are using. Usually I freely give out information, but her information provided is too factual to paraphrase and too specific for me to break it down without feeling like plagiarizing. Overdrive works with your public library so if you have a library card you can access many digital books from home and might find good books on there. The chorus does not move the story, it releases tension and is repeated several times so should be most catchy and include the song name several times so people know the name to ask for when trying to find it. How many people got Aha Take on me title wrong when calling in their local radio station and requesting it, you think? Could you imagine the radio DJ hearing people humming songs off key to try to get them to play a song who's words they didn't even remember? Did you watch that Married With Children Episode where Al was looking for the song " Anna Go to him" and only got a bit of melody right? It introduced Joey from Friends and he bought Kelley Garfield Spoils the Picknick. If you write a song, you don't want Als going crazy trying to remember the name but even worst, not even remembering the words. Must have been the melody which hooked him.
I love this man and his philosophy towards songwriting. Literally changed my entire work flow and perspective on songwriting. Thank you Pat 🖤
@RickyProphet
3 жыл бұрын
Love the name, Ass...Couldn't agree more on both, Name and Comment!
seriously brilliant. thank you for making this public
Great session. Thanks for the upload @JMCAcademy. I'll be revisiting a lot of my lyrics in light of these ideas.
This was great!!!! I LOVE this mans way of presenting wisdom with wit and humor. Common sense delivery, while layering in the technical, the tools and the examples is so helpful for me. It helps to better visualize a path through the writing journey.
This was great!! Thank you so much
Thanks to patt and this channel, amazing
Thanks for uploading the video. These tips are like gold. The piece about structure and not staying to a fix form is interesting. I have recently watched read one of Pat's book. The book is well written and full of useful tips.
1.5m people have taken his online course(s). Damn that's a lot of dreamers.
@kevinjoseph517
2 жыл бұрын
o yes
hey you!good things take time to keep going guys.you will find your treasure
This goes on for about 2 hours so its a lot to take in. maybe need to listen to a few times.
Thank you Mr Pattison for sharing your knowledge and experience.
that was a great song! to the dude with bad latency
I discovered I can write my lyrics out for Bing and get a pretty good evaluation and it's free. You might want to try it. Ask Bing for a grade and what's good, what needs improvement, etc.
That Chris guy is funny...great intro and respect to acknowledgment and reminder of who's land we are fortunate to come to and plant our seeds!!
Recently studying Hendrix and that guy was a genius.
Great video he’s amazing!
Thanks For The Alpha Pat
What's the difference between First Person and Direct Address?
@28Seconds-ld6cp
5 ай бұрын
First person narrative is, "I did this and she did that." Direct address is , "I did this and you did that." In both cases, you are using the pronoun "I" and speaking from first person point of view. But in FPN, you use "I" to talk ABOUT someone. In DA, you use "I" to talk TO someone. I hope this explains it well to ya.
Furthermore, second verse can also be improved like this: "You'll lose on liquor at a party, and bide your time to share an uber home. You'll say your housemate's got . . ." This keeps it all in the same tense and is much clearer. There's another problem altogether in the second verse though, which is that it's a bit unclear to the listener WHO is it she's taking the uber ride home with? This song is beautiful, but it does have some kinks to be worked out still.
1:29 change the chords at least for the chorus and add some syncopation
"Just a try" instead of "Just to try" is another possible improvement.
Not to go against the great Pattison, but I saw a better way to do it in about 10 seconds: "He'll just want a casual thing." The advantage of this is that it keeps the pronoun, thereby clearly defining to the listener who's speaking, and also keeps it in future tense instead of going over to an undefined type tense. It also could;ve allowed him to maintain the next line the way it was, starting with "Someone." Anyway . . . Pattison's idea to start the first line with "You'll leave him . . ." was brilliant.
Thank you both for so many useful tips to improve my songwriting menagerie ❣🌻
I wish that interviewer would pay some proper respect and take his head off his hand. Very rude, lousy, inconsiderate hosting. Pat your a legend. I always get break through moments with your wisdoms 😌
@normancrew2739
2 жыл бұрын
Before you comment, learn how to spell.
@amandaamourashford
2 жыл бұрын
@@normancrew2739 haha nuh all good mate :) hope your ok.
Just started watching and hope to be able to glean some purposeful guidance here. It is important to remember whose land we are on. The world and its fullness belong to God, the One Who created it. The ancestral worship invocation is a tragic farce, and wholly out of place. It would be a very powerful topic for an anthropology lecture. Its a place where this theme could be more fully developed and given its due attention and importance. Now on to the discussion. I remain hopeful.
@debradavis3758
3 жыл бұрын
????
@neilbanks6845
2 жыл бұрын
Your in the wrong land !!!
@bardiam8284
2 жыл бұрын
@@debradavis3758 I know, right.
@bardiam8284
2 жыл бұрын
Are you responding to some other obscure video?
@user-wo7rk7rt6q
2 жыл бұрын
@@debradavis3758 Seems Ive been hacked! Think no more about it.
How smug do you gotta be to rub it in that you stole their land and ain’t giving it back, you got a podcast to do lol
why they start wit politics.. smh goofballs
@ashtonsgotsauce9981
Жыл бұрын
boohoo
"top ten"? 🙄 I thought this was about good music 😏
I can't find the connection between "traditional owners of the land"and songwritting... so goodbye!
@ashtonsgotsauce9981
Жыл бұрын
get over it
@bldmeridian1734
4 ай бұрын
Wahhhhh😢
@vocaldiscovery5705
2 ай бұрын
You won’t be much of a songwriter if you have no heart for our connection to the land.
Nice job w the country leftist
@whatabouttheearth
8 ай бұрын
Seize the means of po dunktion!!! ✊