Sequoia Songwriting Day 2: When Songwriters Collaborate

It's lunch time, well sort of, here in the Los Altas Lodge where all of the creative energy gets stirred up.   We met this morning at 10, did vocal warm-up and stretching exercises, learned how to flex all of those vocal muscles, and then settled in for our first co-writing assignment of the week:

Brett Perkins, our fearless leader, tosses out the phrase "It Happens to the Best of Us", and then says, "Ok, start writing."For 10 minutes, we had to 'free associate,' writing anything that popped into our heads, without editing.   As song-writing exercises go, this is one I remember from three previous retreats with Brett, and is my favorite, because it allows you to really go in any direction you want with no set structure.

After he stopped the clock, Brett gave us our writing partners for the day.

I got paired with a soulful balladeer from Denmark, Tom Steffan, who has given me permission to talk about him today.

He's off no doubt writing our beautiful song, while I am here catching you up on the process of co-writing a song, which is different for everyone, but for me and for Tom today, it worked something like this:

Tom read what he wrote while I listened, then jotted down phrases that just 'jumped out at me.' Then I did the same thing, read out loud to Tom what I had written in the 10 minute exercise, while he jotted down notes that resonated with him.   Then we paired the phrases together.   Like a patchwork quilt, taking some from him, some of the fabric from me, until we had about eight lines cobbled together, which then also gave us the idea for the chorus.

That's roughly the lyric so far ... about a journey, children seeking wisdom from elders,  coloring inside the lines but outside the box, looking to the universe for answers .....

You'll have to tune it for part 2, to see how it turns out.   Right now I've gotta blow this popsicle joint and start doing my part of this song.   We are writing melodies now, much like we did the lyric, then will cobble together the parts we like today at 3:30 when we meet again.   And from that process, a song will come to life ...