Songwriting Workshop with Jenn Wasner

In Jenn’s upcoming workshop we will model our creative process on the seasons of the natural world.

• Spring: Planting song seeds & sprouting them — the easiest and most exciting part!
• Summer: Sweat! Long days pushing the boulder — easy to bail in the heat!
• Fall: Dropping our leaves and letting go. How to decide whether a work is finished?
• Winter: Rest and recovery — the work moves underground as we process our experience and build towards new ideas.

With this framework as a backdrop we will explore topics such as:

• Permission, Persona & Performance: Starting with the simple act of granting ourselves permission to create, we will aim to expand our expression by writing through alternate personas and building toward more fully embodied performances.
• Alternate Tunings, Odd Time Signatures and Circle Songs: Learning to follow the melody through unfamiliar terrain to create interesting and unexpected songs that keep our listeners (and ourselves!) fully entranced.
• Using the dream world to access our subconscious: Inviting symbolism, abstraction and absurdity into our writing by creating a dialog with our subconscious through simple practices like keeping a dream journal and incorporating visuals into the writing process. Embracing unselfconscious-ness is a superpower — don’t be afraid to sound silly!
• Literal vs Universal: How to be specific in the right way, a little bit goes a long way! Leaving space for the listener to insert themselves. Poetic license — knowing the difference between a real person and an idea of a person as they exist in a song.
• Sound as Emotion: learning to use your imagination and inner ear rather than relying solely on the "rules”--if something feels right, it is right.

I wrote my first song when I was 15 years old. In the 24 years since that initial discovery, the practice has been an indispensable part of my understanding of what it means to be human. It is my belief that a sense of alignment in life requires an understanding of and commitment to your own 'story'--a narrative that creates context for your experience and provides a sense of meaning and purpose.

Over the years, I've operated under many aliases and explored many different sonic landscapes, genres, instruments and tools --but ultimately all of these experiments have been in service of accessing a place of truth and better understanding of myself and others. To me, songwriting is equal parts an exercise in self-discovery, as well as an opportunity, if one is open to it, to explore the collective unconscious and communicate with the divine.

In this class I'll be sharing some personal context for my own work, as well as some of the methods I like to use to surprise myself and break out of the inevitable creative ruts we all stumble into from time to time. I'll come prepared with prompts and exercises, but ultimately I'm excited to be in dialogue with all of you and let our collective sense of inspiration and play lead the way. Together, we will explore a variety of access points to the place from which inspiration flows freely, equally accessible to anyone who wishes to find it.