Dear Mr Crow Hugger

I think you've made some really useful suggestions, and can already see where I can fold them in. I have to admit am somewhat scared by the idea of having to critique someones song in front of an audience. There is no option for "pre-registering", I'm afraid, so I will have a group of unknown size, of unknown ability, and would have to sort of pick one at random. I'm not that experienced when it comes to critiquing someones work, and am worried that this injects a lot of random factors that are going to be beyond my control. I can see how that'd work really well if maybe I had a bit more experience teaching or critiquing.

This all said, I think the idea of getting everyone to arrange something, try out what works, what doesn't is a really great idea. I'm thinking maybe the way to go is to pick a traditional song that everyone knows ahead of time, which won't throw me as many curve balls. Everyone gets a say in how it's arranged, even if they don't have an instrument there. We can try out different percussion, rhythm and voicing, and see which ones they like the best, get them to come up with a structure to the song.

I will be sure to mention the issues that you raised with a few examples of my own songs. I can, for example, play them a bit of a song in an early form that really doesn't work for one reason or another, and then show them how I fixed it. (scary in its own right!)

~Glyn