Songwriting Workshop with A. G. Cook (August '25)

All access to lecture recordings, songwriting prompts and all course materials for A. G. Cook's songwriting workshop taught in August 2025: by purchasing this past course, you're able to watch A. G. 's lectures and go about the course at your own pace!

In August 2025, A. G. Cook led a four-week School of Song workshop that treats songwriting and production as a set of learnable design principles — equal parts listening practice, compositional strategy, and world-building. Class 1 (Contrast) sets the foundation: how opposing sounds and elements create motion, how lyrical tone vs. musical tone can generate emotional complexity, and how shifts in density (horizontal and vertical) and arrangement scale (small-to-big) shape a track’s arc. The lecture moves through clear examples, visual scores, and DAW-level breakdowns so you can hear (and then build) contrast deliberately.

Class 2: Self as Collaborator flips the focus inward: how limitations become a creative partner. We explore Games & Systems (from lyric oracles, dice, and cut-up logic to broader constraint-based writing), Persona as a compositional tool (including “imaginary genres” as a way to invent new rulesets), and Photographic Songwriting—starting from a concrete image, memory, or document-like moment, building full structure from a raw sketch, then translating that original “snapshot” into a finished production without losing the source feeling. The throughline is collaborator-collage: building a coherent world and a clear set of rules so other people (and future-you) can enter the song and make meaningful choices inside it.

Class 3: Covers uses covers and rewrites as study — less about imitation, more about reverse-engineering taste. A. G. breaks down why to make covers (style, voice, arrangement, effect chains, structure), how to identify the elements that “pop out,” and how to convert that analysis into original work. The class includes detailed walk-throughs—down to stems, sessions, and the logic of note-for-note complexity versus intentional simplification—so you learn how to “read” a track like a blueprint, then apply those moves to your own writing without losing your identity.

Class 4 is a rapid, high-level suite of lectures that zooms between micro technique and macro architecture: Feedback (how to detect where something is weird—without needing the perfect fix), Alone Together (collaboration models and band-project dynamics), and Metastructure (how big projects hold together across many songs). From there it expands into Opposing Teams (creative roles and split approaches inside a project), Two Tempos Theory (how tempo perception changes in different ranges and why that matters for feel), Edges of Sound Design (when complexity helps, when it’s obligation, and how to get deep results with fewer tools), and Plotting Live Performance (live as its own version—less “authenticity,” more communication, staging, and re-making material for the room). Across all four weeks, you leave with names, frameworks, and repeatable methods for making bolder decisions, building stronger sonic worlds, collaborating more clearly, and finishing work that feels intentional at every scale.

Here are some words from the students who took this class:

However much of a fan of your approach to songwriting I was before this class has now multiplied. There were many moments in these last few weeks where I felt more of the shadowy areas of my map were newly drawn and the fog lifted. Mostly, I’ve come to realize that constant fixation with exploration and imagination through musicmaking is a wellspring of genius that is available to all who seek it. Sending my gratitude

more like slay g cook

I’ve studied music at various conservatories and music schools throughout my life, but AG offered insights I could never have gotten anywhere else. As an oboist improviser and an aspiring contemporary classical performer alongside being a producer, I find his perspective on sound and music, and how he has shaped the sound of pop to be deeply inspiring.

It was the perfect blend of high level conceptual approaches to thinking about songwriting mixed with some practical ways to help break through the i don't know where to start phase. thank you <3

AG, you changed my life with this class. You cracked my egg and I am officially becoming a producer/sound designer. Thank you for being so generous with your time, wisdom, and craft, this is going to be a part of my origin story now. You did that!!

This archived course includes:

1. Class Video Recordings – Watch all 4 of A. G.'s lectures and Q&As on his songwriting process.
2. All course materials, including songwriting prompts crafted by A. G.
3. Access to the "community jukebox" – upload your new songs to the jukebox and share the tunes with fellow classmates!

FAQ:

Q: What musical experience should I have?

A: People across all musical levels will be able to gain something from the course. 

Q: What if I've never written a song before? Can I still participate in this workshop?

A: Yes! As with any new skill, just starting is usually the hardest part. The songs are optional and this workshop will provide the structure and accountability we all need to get started and follow through, for beginners and old guard writers alike.

Questions? Email us at hi@schoolofsong.org.