The Songwriting Master Class: Better Lyrics… Better Stories… Better Songs with Nathan Brown

Wednesdays, Oct 26, & Nov 2, 9 , 2022, 6:30pm-8:30pm CST
Instructor: Nathan Brown
Nonmember: $135; Member: $115; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*Hybrid – students may attend this workshop in person at Gemini Ink or via Zoom

This workshop deals with finding a song’s “main goal,” its central theme, and then explores the various ways we can “drive home” that story for other listeners to appreciate. We’ll take a look at the inner workings of several song forms and structures so we can better understand how to apply our particular stories to those classic structures.

Who should take this class? Anyone with an interest in songwriting, no previous experience required.

In this class, participants will learn these aspects of songwriting:

• Topic and lyric generation
• The four key structures—or song designs—to hang our stories on
• Detail and Description… but just the right amount
• Rethinking titles and first lines
• Finding a song’s main goal, and sticking to it
• Each participant will walk way with at least a first verse and the chorus–

a great start to their own song!

Nathan Brown is an author, songwriter, and award-winning poet living in Wimberley, Texas. He holds a PhD in English and Journalism from the University of Oklahoma where he’s taught for over 20 years. He served as Poet Laureate for the State of Oklahoma in 2013/14, and now travels full time performing readings, concerts, workshops and speaking on creativity, poetry, and songwriting.

Nathan has published over 20 books. Most recent are his new collection of poems, In the Days of Our Seclusion, the first in a series, now known as the Pandemic Poems Project, and a new travel memoir Just Another Honeymoon in France: A Vagabond at Large. A previous collection, Karma Crisis: New and Selected Poems, was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Oklahoma Book Award.