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STRATEGY FOR THE DAY: Push the envelope. Make mistakes.

I have been busy teaching songwriting classes; just finished a course at Beverly Hills Adult School with a great group of people. As usual, there was a wide range of interests, from contemporary pop/rock and R&B to one woman who wants to write musicals in the style of Rodgers and Hammerstein. A student from Israel who is studying English came up with some excellent titles and one lyric with a lot of potential. i suggested she take on a collaborator; it will be very difficult for her to complete the lyric on her own since it would work best as a country song, a genre that uses a lot of idioms and catch phrases. (It's a problem I ran into years ago when trying to translate one of my own song lyrics into French, fortunately I had my friend Jean-Louis Pujol to come to my rescue.) Idiomatic and conversational speech is central to contemporary lyric writing; the best of today's singer-songwriters are blending conversational language with unusual imagery and fresh insights, artists like Shawn Mullins and Jason Mraz. It always amazes me when someone writes good poetry or lyrics in english when it's not their primary language. You're dealing in nuances, slang, unusual turns of phrase, and the every-morphing landscape of the english vocabulary.

I started teaching a new course at Culver City Adult School the night after I finished at Beverly Hills. The two courses are on different schedules, one starting a half hour after the other. I got confused and let my Culver City students go a half hour early. I'd like to make it up to them but I'm sure they won't want to stay a half hour after class; the class ends at 9:30 at night. We covered all the material and they were probably just as glad to get home a half hour early. It's another interesting group ranging from a blues singer-songwriter to a woman who writes liturgical music and is in a choir that recently sang for the pope. Add a couple of R&B writers, a good musician or two and others who don't play at all and you get pretty disparate mix.

UPDATE: A few months ago I asked in my journal if anyone knew what the queen carries in her purse. My friend No'am Newman, who has been very helpful on the subject, sent the following quote:

"The mystery of the Queen's handbag has been solved, says The Sunday Telegraph. Since HRH does not carry money, there has long been speculation about the contents of her bag. When coffee was served at a recent regimental dinner at the Guildhall in London, the Queen cast a covetous eye over the chocolate covered mints on the plate in front of her. 'Does anyone want one?' she said, turning to her fellow guests. They politely declined. 'Oh good,' she said, opening her handbag and sweeping all the mints inside. 'The corgis will love them.'"

So now we know!!!

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Read A Brief History Of Love Songs by Robin Frederick at the Sound Experience Music web site.

Copyright 2004 Robin Frederick. All rights reserved.