Next Saturday (March 3), the songwriters' organization of which I am co-chair will be having its annual event that includes an afternoon of songwriting workshops (four hour-and-a-half sessions) and an evening open stage. This is an all-volunteer organization, and one of the people who had volunteered to run a workshop says he may not be there because of family obligations (a close family member of his passed away). So I will be filling in for him, and I need to come up with a songwriting-workshop idea on very short notice.

I think I'd like to do something on the subject of prosody (making the lyric of a song flow naturally and conversationally through the melody line, so that one does not ac-cen-TU-ate the wrong syl-LA-ble). But I'm not sure what sort of a short creative-writing exercise I could assign that would be both instructive and fun. It would need to be a half-hour to forty-five minutes long, so that the group will have time to re-convene and present their results to one another.

Anybody out there have any ideas? Have you ever attended or led a workshop on this subject? What was it like?

Also, any insights or comments on the subject of prosody would be very helpful. How about examples of songs with really great (or really terrible) prosody?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Sharon