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IMRO Songwriting Workshop with Buddy Mondlock
August 17, 2019 @ 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Free
Buddy Mondlock has given songwriting workshops across the US from the Napa Valley Folk Festival to Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has also led several workshops across the Atlantic at the Belfast- Nashville Songwriters Festival, for KODA in Copenhagen and at IMRO in Dublin.
Buddy’s songs have been recorded by Guy Clark, Nanci Griffith, Garth Brooks, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary, Janis Ian, Maura O’Connell, David Wilcox, Edwin McCain… the list goes on. He has recorded six CD’s including “Everything Waits To Be Noticed”, a songwriting and recording collaboration with Maia Sharp and Art Garfunkel. His most recent is “The Memory Wall”.
How do you talk about creativity? Making something out of nothing. What could be more mysterious? And yet Buddy Mondlock is wonderfully articulate about writing songs. The process is clearly fascinating to him and he has paid careful attention to what goes into making a good song. He’s able to communicate what he has learned in 30 years of song writing. In this workshop you will hear about the many elements involved with bringing a song to life and how to communicate feelings and ideas through music and words. Using his own songs as examples he talks about things like layers of meaning, the effective use of imagery and detail, storytelling, technical aspects like structure and rhyme scheme, the importance of editing and knowing when not to edit, the integration of music and words, and even the up sides and down sides of collaboration. His many years as a staff writer in Nashville show up in his insights about publishing and the business of songwriting as well as his tips for songwriters who are interested in getting started down that road. There are likely to be some fun songwriting exercises that everyone will participate in and you can also bring a song of your own to play. We’ll pick names out of the hat and get feedback from Buddy and the group. But in the end what he will tell you is that a great song has to come from the heart. All the cleverness and technique in the world will never be a substitute for true feeling.
