The Art Of Songwriting – Un-Convention Comes To Newcastle
By Stephen Noble on June 7, 2011 in Music
Whether delicate and poignant, racy and cutting, or, as the modern trend seems to expose, lyrics about how much money you have and exactly what kind of expensive tat you like to lay your hands on often makes the tune a song.
So, for the the first time in the North East, Un-convention, the Salford based not-for-profit that holds music events around the world, has been brought to Newcastle by Shipyard Songwriters, and as you can piece together by now, it’s about the art of songwriting.
Taking place on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 of June, the event combines talks, conventions and performances with some highly respected lyricists to aid the craft of honing a song.
“So much of what makes up music is songwriting”, says Jill Heslop, organiser of the weekend, “a lot of people listen to the words more than the music. The music isn’t secondary, but people aren’t really looking at songwriting as an at form, what it can do, and how it’s steeped in history.”
- Adrian Crowley, who’s talking on Sunday, and above Aiden Moffat who will be talking on Saturday
“I suppose there’s lots of conventions on the business of the music industry but not so many dealing with the creative aspect behind songwriting.
“It’s very good that people teach others about how to be savvy in the music industry, but I don’t think that’s why people start doing music and that’s what we want to get back to – the fact that generally people don’t write songs because they want to make loads of money and be famous, they write songs because that’s what they love to do.”
The weekend features gigs and talks from the talented Cath & Phil Tyler, Nev Clay and Ross Millard of The Futureheads.
Prices for events very from £3 to £10, all hosted in intimate venues like Morden Tower and the Central Hotel.
Spaces will be limited, but seeing as a lot of the talks are followed by a performance, it’s a chance to get closer than normal to a performer.
Jill added: “It’s very varied and we try to keep it that way so it can be lots of things to different people, and we hoped that people would be interested in the entire concept and not one little event.
“I think there’s obviously certain events that will appeal to a certain type of people because they’ll know the names and they’ll like the artist if nothing else, but we want to keep it general because songwriting isn’t genre based, we just want to look at songwriting as an art form.
“There’s a lot of performances too, most of the talks are linked with performances because we felt that talks can be stale a lot of the time, and most of the people who are doing them are performing songwirters so they can sing what they’re talking about, and it makes it easier for people listening as well.”
For a full list of events, have a look at the website.
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