Teaching songwriting to music education students

This spring I’m having the pleasure of co-teaching the NYU Music Education Popular Music Practicum. This is an opportunity to enact my long-held belief that music teachers should know how to write songs. My method for teaching songwriting is to say, okay, go write some songs. But I don’t throw the students straight into the deep end; I start with a series of scaffolded songwriting challenges.

The first project in the songwriting segment was to write new lyrics for an existing tune. Two different students rewrote Lady Gaga songs to be about pigeons–one expressing the writer’s love of pigeons, the other expressing her fear of them. Two different students also wrote Weird Al style parodies of “WAP,” one about cookies, one about oatmeal. Both exploited the incongruity between their G-rated subject matter and the flamboyantly explicit sexuality of the original. Another student wrote a sassy gender-swapped take on “Super Bass” by Nicki Minaj. Still another sang “Jolene” as “Vaccine,” one of several pandemic-themed entries. Not all of the submissions were jokey, some were quite affecting. One student wrote a response song to Radiohead’s “Creep” from the point of view of the woman he’s singing to. I couldn’t have been happier with how it went.

The next project was to write a new melody for an existing set of lyrics. The very first submission I received was this treatment of “Yesterday.” Words fail me, you need to just listen.

Another student wrote a Postmodern Jukebox style old-timey jazz take on Missy Elliott’s “Work It,” cleverly substituting scat singing for the backwards lyrics. This could have been problematic, to say the least, but “Work It” may be the only exception to the usual “white people should never do covers of rap songs” rule. Several students did minor-key renditions of major-key songs and vice versa, turning ballads into bangers and bangers into ballads, thus giving unexpected new meaning to the lyrics. Aside from “Yesterday,” the most surprising take was a minimalist minor blues arrangement of this Miranda Cosgrove song, which ended up having remarkable emotional power.

The next project will be to write a rap verse to an existing flow. First, however, we are going to have a sober conversation about rap in music education, how to approach it, what the complex racial and class and gender politics of it are. It’s too big a topic for one session, but it’s better than not getting to discuss it at all. After that, the final challenge will be to write an original song from scratch. That includes the option to take one of the previous projects and adapt it further. A student might take their new tune for existing lyrics and then write new lyrics for it, for example.

So, why am I doing this? I think songwriting should be a routine part of music classes at every level. DAWs and other music technology have made it possible to teach general music as an art class, rather than a passive “music appreciation” or history class. My book with Will Kuhn isn’t about songwriting per se, it’s about production, but the same philosophy applies: we want to help teachers create an art class for music. In order to do this, music teachers have to have some personal experience with art making. You’d expect an art teacher to have done some drawing and painting, right? But we don’t expect music teachers to have written any music. This needs to change.

As we go about this, it’s important to distinguish between songwriting and composing. You might argue that they are technically the same thing, but the cultural connotations of words matter. The word “composing” evokes music notation, probably written on parchment with quill pens to flickering candlelight. Actual present-day composers tend to use computers, but the connotation persists. When I say that music teachers should be able to write songs, I do not mean “to write them with notation.” I mean they should write the way pop, rock and hip-hop people do: by ear, with recorded music as the final product. Composing is a fine thing and everyone should have the opportunity to try it! But it’s an advanced technical skill with a lot of prerequisites. Songwriting can be done by anyone. Small children do it instinctively and effortlessly. Technical music knowledge can help with songwriting, but the lack of it is no barrier.