The other day, I had coffee with a music educator who is developing a songwriting curriculum for middle school general music students and we were discussing the importance of doing your own work as a songwriter. At SFME, we encourage everyone who wants to teach songwriting to write songs. That doesn...

From June 4-8, I attended the Association for Popular Music Education (APME) conference in Memphis, TN – hosted by the University of Memphis. For those who don’t know, I’ve been a long-time member of APME – I was on their board from 2014-2020, and in the last four years of my term, served as both Vi...

For whatever reason, lyrics seem to be both the easiest way into songwriting as well as the most challenging. Easy because they access language that we already have - no need for harmonic or melodic vocabulary - but hard because there just isn't a lot of real estate to say everything you want to ...