What we’re about
Good news! We've decided to rework the Baltimore Songwriter's Intensive Group back more in the style it used to be in its formative years. Diana Hanson-Young has come back to us as the Meetup leader
We'll give this new format a six-month trial, until January, 2025, and see if it works. Otherwise, we all agree that the meetup has run its course.
1. Monthly meetings are FREE, starting with the meeting this Monday July 22.. Diana's agreed to pick up the costs for six months. She's committed to helping new and existing songwriters to hone their craft so when they work on their individual songs, there is an understanding of the basics. Of course, Diana stresses that these tutorials will be "her" opinions -- there are a million ways to do things and see things and tackle songwriting -- but this will be the way that she knows, and if she can communicate that, the basic rules will be invaluable as you break the rules and/or create your own.
2. Diana will take responsibility for tutorials for six months, which are essentially structured like a six-month lesson plan for Basic Songwriting.
3. Each class will have the 15-30 minute tutorial starting at 6:05 PM (5 minutes for intro, otherwise, intro at the end to those who are late). Diana will pull up the lessons from the early days and draft a basic songwriting class -- Brian and Diana and working on the class outline and subject matter and we hope to have that for you on Monday
4. Brian has sent around a list of great ideas for expanding the scope of the class, so during the next six months "restructuring" period of time, we'll look for volunteers who can help us reach out to REverb again, to do some live performances, including live performances of our work perhaps in other cities or other existing venues. Other ideas he had will also require great volunteer help!
5. Each monthly lesson will be the half-hour tutorial (which we may try to record and put on YouTube so there's a way those who miss the first classes can catch up) and then the rest of the class will be presenting the assignments, which will flow from the lesson plan. Diana will provide (as she did in earlier years) material like poems, writings, photographs, scenarios) that all of us can draw from to write our songs that follow the assignment.
6. The following meetup will have a new tutorial, which will generate a new assignment based on the lesson, and everyone will present their work from the previous assignment. This plan worked really well before and gave everyone structure, plus a reason to write a song using the tutorial material, rather than bringing in independent work to have the group critique. We're basically going back to a learning-based structure.
7. During that time we'll get outside guests to come in and critique, as well as present parts of tutorials.
8. If you commit to the six months of free lessons (first lesson to start August meetup) -- through January, 2025, please commit to come to all the classes and write the song that is part of the assignment. Any performance venue we can rustle up will feature songs that are written for this structure.
9. There will also be in-class writing assignments -- words to snippets of music, and music to snippets of words.
For this meetup on Monday we will discuss this new plan as well as other ideas for moving forward with the reboot of the Songwriters group. At this meeting we will also map out the dates for all the meetings for the through January 2025.
So sign up for not only the July and August meetups, where we'll take in all the new ideas and fold them into these ideas above -- but also the September meetup, which is the FIRST one in the series of six lessons for Basic Songwriting
Thanks,
Diana and Ben
