Hi everyone,

An invitation has been sent to you for our resuming of the songwriters critique by other songwriters.

I have made new changes to our songwriters workshops. As you have noticed there hasn't been a meetup as we have normally done since late last year. I have tried to work out how to best serve, help and satisfy everyone without wasting my valuable time. In the meantime I have been working on setting up a school for songwriters which is kicking off beginning of July 2009. I am currently doing a course in business management at RMIT and with their and the Department of Education's help (DEEWR) I will be able to operate this business offering a course you will find nowhere else in Australia. The course will be offered at at this stage at RMIT and Chisholm Institutes. So now you all know what I have been doing since we had taken a break from the songwriters meetups. You can visit http://www.meetup.com/melbourne-songwriters-workshop/ for updated info about the course.

So our workshops will now resume, but with a different setup to what we have done previously.

- We will run our free critique/feedback meetup every second month. (i.e. June, August, October etc.)
- We will run our workshop session meetup every other second month. (i.e. July, September, November etc.)

Members can attend both. The workshops sessions however has a small fee for a 30-45 minutes of the critiquing of your songs. In these sessions, I will look at your songs in detail and find ways of taking them to the next level. You will also receive publishing info and pitching sheets of which artists are looking for materials, info that music publishers only receive for a huge fee each year. At times these workshops could turn into collaboration sessions based on the number of participants. And more will be added.

The free feedback meetups though, only allocates a maximum of 10 minutes per song for a quick opinion by all other songwriters. It's free and fun, and full of food and drinks and networking.

The same meetups are being setup in Sydney as well but to run twice a year.

So I encourage you all to take advantage of these opportunities free or not, as you can afford or not.

I always remember this quote from Brendan Okrent (Senior Director of Repertory at the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers ASCAP) ?Songwriters are a rare breed of humans who exhibit incredible patience, spirit, energy, and faith. What they bring to us enriches our lives in every corner of the world. It is a noble and worthy profession. On top of any advice I might give comes my thanks to all songwriters for the gifts they give to each and every one of us.?


Hope to see you soon at our next Songwriters meetup.

Kind regards

Jacques Mario Gentil
Writer Developer / Music Publisher / Awards Winner Songwriter
Magesongs