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How to Write Your First Song

Adam White

Topics Covered

Setting words to music
Time and pitch
Working with melody
Chords and chord progressions
Song forms
Arranging your song

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Reviews summary

A songwriter's journey

This course is a comprehensive guide to songwriting, suitable for beginners and experienced musicians alike. It covers all aspects of songwriting, from setting words to music to arranging and producing your song. The course is well-structured and engaging, with plenty of practical exercises and opportunities to share your work with other students. The instructors are knowledgeable and supportive, and they provide clear and concise instruction. Overall, this course is a valuable resource for anyone who wants to learn how to write songs.

Provides opportunities to overcome challenges and complete a final song.

"This is a really engaging course it kept me interesred and challenged all the way through."

"During the course I wrote seven songs and our bass player has started writing too."

"I Learnt so much in the first 5 weeks of the course as it concentrated on the tools and techniques to us e when writing a song."

Develops technical songwriting skills, including chord progressions and arrangements.

"I've always been aware of their simplistic chord progressions but never really known how to correct that."

"The section of this course on chord progressions really helped me."

"This course is the best music composing course I ever did. It teaches all music composing elements, to bring out this course's students best music composing."

Provides diverse perspectives on songwriting from industry professionals.

"It's very useful to give you a boost in your own songwriting, and it's very instructive to work with all attendees with the same theme/lyrics on building a song, still with enough space for exploring with your own creativity."

"The tutors, interviewees/artistes and general advice to/encouragement of participants (students) were always helpful, inspiring and positive."

"This course has taught me a lot about writing music to go with lyrics, and it's enabled me to have fun composing melodies using free online software and sharing them online."

Covers essential music theory concepts for songwriting, making it suitable for beginners.

"It gives great insight into how to create a song from the way to sing the lyrics (scansion) through to developing chord progression and melody."

"The course has given me an intro into writing music and the basic knowledge to start creating a song."

"This course is a good balance between informal and technical, so there's a lot to learn here on many levels."

Focuses more on music than lyrics, which may not suit all learners.

"Some of the artists interviewed were rather flippant about the words which maybe reflects the current dearth of meaningful songwriting in mainstream pop / rock with the emphasis more on beat ,rhythm"

"I thought the course gave much more attention and importance to the music and more could have been done with the lyric writing (and ways to inspire this) content."

"I am sorry to leave a rather negative review."

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Career center

Learners who complete How to Write Your First Song will develop knowledge and skills that may be useful to these careers:

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