Student Body & Brian Burrill
At tonight's meet we hosted a Song Writing Clinic with Brian Burill. Brian began the night talking about "The Creator Vs The Critic", in this he discussed good ways to get the whole musical idea out before criticizing yourself, and how not to force a song to go the way you predicted but accept the way it was meant to go. We then talked about what elements make a song good to us, some of the things we all agreed upon were having a repetitive element that allows the listener to stay connected through variety. When it comes time to have people critique your music Brian helped us to realize that non-musicians are the best type of people to have listen to our songs. This is because most musicians critique on a musicians level and over evaluate, as opposed to the a non-musician who will listen and tell you flat out if it sounds good. This will help you to know if the average person will enjoy your song. One great skill Brian helped us with was tapping into our full imagination and teaching us to connect our songs with all 5 senses. One of the last things Brian discussed was melody strategies and how to avoid "boring chord syndrome", some ways were to change the rhythm, ornamentation, stretching intervals, reversing or inverting the intervals. At the end of the night Brian opened the floor to allow students to ask questions about things they were having struggles with in writing their own song. He came up with a creative solution for every question that benefited everyone who attended. The meeting lasted a little over an hour and a half and had 45 members attended, everyone who attended walked out with an understanding on how to approach the song writing process and create some awesome songs.
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