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...

One of the most common struggles songwriters face is not knowing what to write about. I hear it from students and professionals alike: "I just don’t feel like writing," or "Everything’s great—what am I supposed to write about?"

This is where prompt-based writing (also known as writing to a brief) c...

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 ...