Coursera Songwriting

Update and Thank You!

Hope you are well. I wanted to share a few important notes:

The Lesson 6 Assignment is due on Thursday. The peer

review deadline is Sunday.

Students earning a minimum score of 70 will receive a

Statement of Accomplishment. Statements will be
available at http://www.coursera.org/account/records by
next Tuesday.

Please take the time to complete the Post-Course Survey at

https://class.coursera.org/songwriting-007/quiz/start?
quiz_id=174. Your feedback will help improve the course.
You can also find a link to the survey on the left
navigation panel of the class site.
As the course is coming to an end, I want to say what a treat
its been, and what a great learning experience for me.
Teaching stimulates more learning for me than anything else.
When I try to articulate something clearly enough for someone
else to understand it, it takes on a whole new look.
One of my favorite bands in the 60s was Procol Harum. Heres
a snippet of a lyric from their third album, Shine on Brightly,
thats been with me for all these decades:
The lesson lies in learning
And by teaching Ill be taught
For theres nothing hidden anywhere
Its all there to be sought
Ive learned a bunch from your posts: such thoughtful and
interesting discussions. Youve not only helped me clarify
some of my ideas and ways of presenting the material, but
youve also alerted me to trouble spots that well try to

address the next time we offer the course again, over the
summer.
The peer review process certainly stirred the pot and started a
good deal of productive conversation. From my viewpoint,
peer review is valuable not because of the grades and
comments you get back, but because you have to assess the
work of others. That's where real learning takes place,
because it takes you a step deeper into the whole thing:
learning by doing, then learning by trying to articulate the
principles to other folks. I hope that has happened for
everyone in this class. Priceless.
Recently, when my new book, Songwriting Without
Boundaries, came out, I did a seminar tour that included
Boston, Austin, Nashville, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Sydney,
Brisbane, and a few other cities, taking attendees through
some of the concepts of the book: four 14-day sense-bound
writing and metaphor challenges. Here's a description from
my Introduction:
Each challenge asks you to concentrate on a different facet of
your writer, to explore, not only how you think, but the stuff of
your senses, then to relate those senses to the outer world,
transforming them into metaphor.
The first 14-day challenge, Object Writing, asks you to
respond to three prompts each day, of 10 minutes, 5 minutes,
and 90 seconds. It will help you be more vivid and specific in
your writing, and the timed writing will help your speed and
efficiency.
The second challenge is on metaphor. It asks you to use your
new-found skill at sense-bound writing in a step-by-step
process for finding metaphors. By the time you finish, you
should be a pro. This challenge also contains timed writing to
help you chop away the underbrush in your writing faster.
Then challenge 3 asks you to extend metaphors, learn to

explore them deeply, and see them from reversed directions:

both a pack of hungry wolves is a hurricane, and also a
hurricane is a pack of hungry wolves. Youll write a 5 or 10
minute response to each prompt, mostly four pieces each day.
The final challenge asks you to do it all in rhythm and rhyme.
Again, because the writing is timed, it forces you to go deep,
quick. It teaches you to think ahead rhythmically and
manipulate rhyme more fluidly.
In every city, seminar participants formed groups to take the
challenges together. Some groups as few as 5 or 6, some up
to 30. They put together Facebook pages for posting, or just
did it through email, depending on the size of the group. The
feedback was fantastic. Everyone raved about the challenges,
their growth as writers, and the relationships they cemented
by committing to the process.
I'd love to see the same thing happen here. You've made
some great connections through Coursera: you know each
other's music. You've made friends. I'd love it if you formed
some 14-day challenge groups to carry on life after
Coursera. :)
Give it a try.
My deepest appreciation and thanks to the wonderful staff at
Berklee Online. It's no wonder the school has won the
University Professional and Continuing Education Association
(UPCEA)'s "Best Online College Course" award 8 years in a
row. I encourage you check out my five online courses:

Lyric Writing: Tools and Strategies

Lyric Writing: Writing Lyrics to Music

Lyric Writing: Writing From the Title

Creative Writing: Poetry


Creative Writing: Finding Your Voice

Just go to www.patpattison.com and click on Online Courses.

Finally, my thanks to Coursera for the opportunity to reach so
many people at the same time. Amazing.
Thank you all for such a rich and rewarding experience.
Write Fearlessly,
Pat
Mon 1 Sep 2014 9:00 AM PDT

Week 6
Week 6's materials will go live today at 12:00 p.m. New York
time. The assignment is due on Thursday. The peer review
evaluations will be due on Sunday. This week, youll be
working on phrasing, the body language of your song. Ill
work through a song called Pieces, adjusting its phrasing to
support the emotion of the lines, and then apply the principles
to Hobo Wind. Your job this week is to apply the phrasing
principles to the song you worked on in week 5. Youll be
surprised at how dramatically things can change with a few
simple phrasing adjustments.
Also, I wanted to share some good news with you. Berklee
Online is going to award scholarships to two students who
have actively participated in the class forums and given
guidance to their fellow students. The scholarship will allow
the selected students to take one of my Berklee Online
courseswith a faculty member working with them for 12
weekswith the full tuition waived. If your name is selected,
Berklee Online will contact you by email.
Cheers,
Pat
Mon 25 Aug 2014 9:00 AM PDT

Week 5
Congratulations on your work in week 4. There has been some
wonderful conversation in the Forums about preserving the
natural shape of language in music. It's a rich topic, one I
developed a full 12-week course on at Berklee Online called
Lyric Writing: Writing Lyrics to Music.
Also, check out my recent interview with Jonathan Feist, Why
Rhyme?, in his Writing About Music blog.
Week 5's material will be ready today at 12:00 p.m.
New York time. It's a big lesson! You have a pretty full tool
belt by now, and its time to apply your tools to a complete
song. In week 5, youll start a new song, beginning with a new
title. First, of course, make sure you develop your title so it
gains weight each time you repeat it. Ill be working with my
own title, "Hobo Wind," and taking it through the same
process I want you to follow with your title.
Now youll see why you spent so much time working on rhyme
and rhyme types. Youll go through a brainstorming process
(called a worksheet) that uses a rhyming dictionary as a
search engine for ideasbefore you start writing the song.
Youll be amazed how many ideas youll get. Because your
ideas will connect sonically as well as conceptually, youll be
composing on two levels, and already have a leg up when you
start writing.
Next, youll write the lines of your sections. If you are writing a
chorus, you should concentrate on it first, but dont load it up
with too many ideas. Keep it simple. Save all those ideas for
the verses. Thats their job.
Youll work on melodic rhythm and melody, using either your
own chords or one of the loops Ive provided in the Resources
section of the class site. Because youre writing a melody for
your song, it will be important for you to match your verses as
exactly as you can, so they can accept the same melody.

Youll see how stable and unstable tones in your melody can
create prosody.
By the end of the week, well all have a song.
This will be fun.
Cheers,
Pat
Mon 18 Aug 2014 9:00 AM PDT

Welcome to Week 4!
Welcome to week 4, and good for you for finishing week 3. By
now youre pretty steeped in prosody and its most effective
expression, stable and unstable. Youve seen it at work with
four tools so farnumber of lines, line lengths, rhyme
schemes, and rhyme types. This week, youll work with
another tool, rhythm.
Words have meanings, music doesnt. Music is all about
motion, and motion creates e-motion. As a songwriter, your
job is to marry the meanings of language to the emotion of
music, enhancing both. The whole should be greater than the
sum of the parts.
Of course, lyric phrases contain motion too: rhythm produced
by arranging stressed and unstressed syllables into patterns.
Your job is to marry lyric rhythms to musical rhythms as
accurately and perfectly as you can. Your goal in this marriage
is always the same: you must preserve the natural shape
of the language by creating melodic rhythm that matches
your syllabic rhythm (patterns of stressed and unstressed
syllables) perfectly. This is called setting. Its one of the core
meanings of prosodythe appropriate relationship of
elements (in this case, syllabic and melodic rhythms).
In order to set stressed and unstressed syllables perfectly with
stressed and unstressed notes, you must first understand
what creates stress in language and what creates stress in
music. Thats what youll be looking at this week.

By the end of the week, youll understand how to recognize

stressed and unstressed syllables, and how to recognize
stressed and unstressed notes. Youll see the two aspects of
syllabic stress: in multi-syllable words and in one-syllable
words. Youll see that position in the musical bar is the sole
creator of musical stress, and learn to set stressed syllables at
stressed positions in the bar, and unstressed syllables at
unstressed positions in the bar. Youll see that accurate setting
creates a natural-sounding line, revealing maximum meaning
and emotion, while inaccurate setting always diminishes
meaning and emotion, and lets air out of the songs tires.
Included in the lesson are four videos from a Master class that
I filmed at Berklee to help reinforce the benefits of preserving
the natural shape of the language.
Also, check out this article on Aligning Your Lyrical Phrases
With Your Melodic Phrases.
This is where the rubber meets the road. Drive carefully.
A note about scheduling your time: spend some time this
week familiarizing yourself with using Audacity or
GarageBand, and posting to Soundcloud. This will save you
time next week, when you will be applying everything that
you have learned thus far, and spending a good deal of time
recording.
Cheers,
Pat
Mon 11 Aug 2014 9:00 AM PDT

Measuring Line Length

Hi Folks,
Um, we're going to see in week 4 that line length is best
measured by the number of STRESSED syllables in the line.
Rather than go into detail here, I've left that complex
discussion for week 4. Hang on, it's coming.

I await your thoughts.

Cheers,
Pat
Fri 8 Aug 2014 9:00 AM PDT

Welcome to Week 3!
By now youve got a sense of the power of prosodycreating
stable or unstable structures to support stable or unstable
ideas. The number of lines you use and the way you match
them make a real difference in the motion and e-motion of
your sections.
By popular demand, I have added a blues loop to the
Resources section for you to experiment with.
This week, youll work with rhyme to help you create prosody.
Youll add two more powerful tools to your tool belt: rhyme
schemes and rhyme types. They will add even more depth
and flexibility to your writing, giving you two more ways to
construct stable and unstable sections.
Youll see how rhyme schemes, by themselves, create a
feeling. They can be symmetrical, like aabb (e.g.,
win/spin/turn/learn) or abab (e.g., win/turn/spin/learn),
creating stability. Or, they can be asymmetrical, like abba
(e.g., win/turn/learn/spin) or xaaa (e.g., win/turn/learn/yearn),
creating levels of instability. All by themselves. So your choice
of rhyme scheme makes a difference. Ask, Is this verses idea
stable or unstable? and construct your rhyme scheme
accordingly.
And youll see how the six rhyme types work like musical
chords. They can feel stable (perfect rhyme and family rhyme)
or unstable to various degrees, using more remote rhyme
types. Youll learn how to open a stable rhyme scheme by
using unstable rhyme types. Its a great tool for keeping your
verse rhyme schemes matched, yet keeping the one with a
stable idea locked up tight and opening the gate for the other

verse where the idea is less stable. Take a look at Randy

Newmans Feels Like Home. The four-line pre-chorus has an
xaxa rhyme scheme, but the rhyme types create an unstable
first pre-chorus and a perfectly stable second pre-chorus. Eyeopening.
By the end of the week, youll be comfortable with rhyme
schemes and finding rhymes of different types to help color
your journey through a song. For homework, youll write a new
verse and chorus.
Itll be fun. :)
Cheers,
Pat
p.s. Ive created week 3 subforums in order for us to
continue our discussions in a more organized way.
So many. I had not thought songs had undone so many.
(Extra credit for recognizing the quote I just mangled.)
Mon 4 Aug 2014 9:00 AM PDT

Welcome to Week 2!
I hope you found last weeks concepts stimulating and useful.
They should help you choose and organize your song ideas
more effectively. I have really enjoyed all the interaction in the
forumswe have an impressive group of songwriters
spanning the globe. To help organize some of the dialogue, I
have created week 2 subforums in each of the forum areas
let's continue our conversations in these subforums over the
course of the next week.
Please note that the first assignment is due Thursday, and the
peer evaluations are due Sunday. Moving forward, the quizzes
will be due on Mondays, a week after the lesson is released.
Assignments will be due on Thursdays, 10 days after the
lesson's release. Peer review evaluations will be due on
Sundays, three days after the assignment's due date. I know

that many of you are quite busy outside of this course, but
please keep in mind that songwriting is a lot like playing an
instrument. It's better to practice even a little bit each day
than to have one long session once a week. I hope that you
are able to find even 10 minutes each day to devote to your
songwriting.
This week well start by looking at the most important concept
in songwriting (and, indeed, in all art): prosody. Its pretty
direct and simple: everything in your song should belong
thereall aspects of the song should work together to support
the songs central message. Common sense, really. But
incredibly helpful for the choices youll be making as you
write. Prosody (appropriate relationship between elements)
reveals real, practical writing tools that will help you line by
line, section by section, song by song to control simple
elementselements that are present in every song youll
write.
Over the next few weeks, you will be exploring five of the
compositional elements that can help support your song
ideas. This week covers two of them: number of lines and line
lengths. Every section you write will have either an odd or
even number of lines. Right? Right. This week youll learn
what a big difference the number of lines makes in supporting
your message. An even number of lines feels stable. An odd
number of lines feels unstable. By themselves. They can act
like a film score to support the feeling youre trying to create
in your song.
Youll also look at the lengths of lines and see how they affect
emotionhow they can support your songs message. Again,
stable or unstable. Youll be hearing these two terms every
week. Theyre the keys to understanding and creating
prosody.
At the end of the week, youll use these tools to write a verse
and chorus.

Buy yourself a tool belt. Lets start filling it.

Pat
Mon 28 Jul 2014 9:00 AM PDT

Welcome to the Songwriting

Course!
An Updated Welcome!
Whether youre a brand new songwriter or an old hand at it, I
hope youll find something useful here, something to help you
become an even better writer.
The course is tool-based, designed to dig into the craft of
songwriting, to show you practical strategies and techniques,
to reveal options and opportunities you might not have
noticed. Well cover a lot of territory in the next six weeks. I
hope you stay for the whole course.
Before diving into the video lectures for lesson 1, be sure to
check the Course Schedule, Resources, and Grading Policy
pages for useful information about the course. Also, please
complete the Student Survey so that I can learn more about
you. You can access these pages, including the survey, from
the left column of the course site. You can also access the
current survey here .
This week, youll look at strategies for finding and developing
song ideas, for creating an interesting journey from the
beginning to the end of a song. Youll look at the boxesa
method for testing your song idea to see whether or not its
able to cross the finished line. Youll discover an interesting
framework to help explore your idea effectively, in addition to
strategies for choosing the right point of view and song form
for your idea.
Be sure you have access to the following songs for this lesson:

"Eleanor Rigby" (John Lennon/Paul McCartney) performed by

The Beatles

"One More Dollar" (Gillian Welch) performed by Gillian Welch

"Still Crazy After All These Years" (Paul Simon) performed by

Paul Simon

"In Front of the Alamo" (Gary Burr) performed by Hal

Ketchum

"It Was a Very Good Year" (Ervin Drake) performed by Frank

Sinatra)

"For No One" (John Lennon/Paul McCartney) performed by

The Beatles

"Whatll I do?" (Irving Berlin) performed by Linda Ronstadt

"Cant Be Really Gone" (Gary Burr) performed by Tim

McGraw

"Judgement of the Moon and Stars (Ludwig's Tune)" (Joni

Mitchell) performed by Joni Mitchell

"I Cant Make You Love Me" (Mike Reid/Allen Shamblin)

performed by Bonnie Raitt

"The Great Pretender" (Buck Ram) performed by The Platters

"Strawberry Wine" (Matraca Berg/Gary Harrison) performed

by Deana Carter

"Why Can't I Have You?" (Ric Ocasek) performed by The Cars

At the end of this week, youll pick a song idea and show how
you might develop itwithout actually writing the song, itself.
Itll be fun. I promise.

Pat Pattison