Strangler:

I've participated in and led many sonwriters workshops at folk festivals, but the setting you're going into sounds very different. It would help us Catters to have a better idea what you are expected to accomplish through the workshops. I'ts impossible to lay out a format if you don't know what your goals are.

I've approached the workshops in a variety of ways, from very organized to more of a song swap with whatever commentary the other writers wanted to make. I've even done it alone (once.) Like you, I refuse to be dictated to by them little black squiggles on paper, which has worked fine for me, but is a major limitation in explaining melody and chord progressions.

With the time you have, one thing I'd encourage is to draw upon the people who are attending the workshop and let them talk about and hopefully, sing a song that they've written, or have worked on. That was what I did the one time that I ran a workshop alone. We also took that approach at a songwriters festival in Boston that I participated in. I think that it's very helpful to those who are interested in learning more about songwriting to have a chance to share what they've written and to ask for suggestions or changes. It will draw the whole workshop into an open discussion.

You can also talk about the different ways that people write songs, giving examples and talking about the approach that each way requires. Most songwriters have written at least part of a song in a dream, some write the lyrics first, some write the melody first, some write them as one.

I've done workshops where I've asked the other members to come prepared to talk about and give an example of songs with several different approaches:

Songs written from personal experience
Songs written from historic accounts
Protest songs, personal or political
love songs
humorous songs..

you get the idea.

Most songwriters workshops I've participated in focus almost exclusively on lyrics. That may reflect a limitation in the ability of songwriters to intelligently discuss melody and chord changes and how they came about. I am certainly very limited in that regard.

Finally, I know others who have led workshops that were more "hands on," where the group wrote a song by committee. I couldn't do that intelligently, and don't approach songwriting in collaboration with anyone.

There are two basic questions you have to answer first... What do you hope to accomplish with the workshops? and what can you bring from your own experience? It would help if you could make some comment on those two questions here..

This should be an interesting thread..

Jerry