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REGISTER NOW for one of our exciting  9-week songwriting courses in Joburg, Pretoria, Soweto, Durban and Cape Town. Now also available as a correspondence course! E-mail us at info@songnursery.com for a registration form.

 TESTIMONIALS

 

“I wanted to formally thank you and acknowledge you for my personal experience with the songwriting course. Your style and understanding allowed me to work with my limitations and my creativity. Yet you also pushed me to re-write, to perform and ultimately to create a song I am very proud of.” – Lisette de Lorme, Songwriter’s Toolkit Joburg

“Thank you Philip for the very enlightening songwriting course and sharing with us your vast experience of the music industry that would take most people many years to learn. Your course has helped me to listen to songs with a trained ear and extract elements from them that can improve my own songwriting.” Selim Kagee, singer and budding songwriter, Cape Town

Selim Kagee performing his newly written material at the Songwriter’s Toolkit Showcase at the Obz Cafe Theatre

SONGWRITER’S VICTORY!

Al Paton, alumni of both the Songwriter’s Toolkit and the Vivacious Voice singing courses in Cape Town, won a lyric-writing competition on KFM.

“Last week I won a lyric writing competition for a jingle I co-wrote with my mom for the Nashua Cape Cobras provincial cricket team. Our lyrics were chosen to be produced by Gabi Le Roux, (Mandoza/Jack Hammer) for the team’s song. The jingle will be played at all games in the 45-over series, and all subsequent Nashua Cape Cobras games!

Al Paton

I wanted to say thanks because the Songwriter’s Toolkit helped us do it. It breaks the myth that songwriting is something you’re either born to do or not. Instead of having to be some sort of crazy genius locked in a tower to write songs, all you need is a flash of brilliance and then knowing the creative techniques you taught. The “concept spine” is great. So many songwriters don’t stick to the topic and end up with vague, watery lyrics, so by nailing down the concept of the song, brainstorming ideas and then using the thesaurus to expand the ideas, you end up with a lot of related material very quickly. All I do now is string together the ideas and fill in the gaps. The song ends up writing itself! What is also crucial is knowing the common mistakes people make, and things like re-writing, how to objectively look at your own songs and those not-so-obvious rules of a great song. I loved the information on promoting your songs too – makes it great for more serious songwriters.”

– Al Paton, professional singer-songwriter, producer, engineer and owner of Urbanmix Recording Studios in Cape Town (www.urbanmix.co.za )

LISTEN TO ‘DAZZLE THEM WITH WORDS!’ WINNER CAROL MOFOKENG’S DEMO, PRODUCED BY CAMILLO LOMBARD. CLICK ON COMPETITION.

VIVACIOUS VOICE ‘DAZZLE THEM WITH WORDS’ NATIONAL LYRIC WRITING CONTEST WINNER: CAROL MOFOKENG (photographed by Anita van Zyl from IDEA EXCHANGE)

 

Did you know?

Songwriters are part of a multi-billion rand industry. The South African music industry alone is worth R2.5 billion. Here are more fascinating facts:

• Writing hit songs pay mega-bucks: between 2002-2007 SAMRO paid out R100 million per year in royalties to composers. This is R40 million more than in 1996. In the year 2005 alone, they paid out a staggering R183,1 million.

• The international music market is bigger than bananas!: Recorded music products worldwide are part of a $50 billion market. This far exceeds the markets for traditional primary products such as coffee ($17 billion), cotton ($20 billion), tobacco ($21 billion) or bananas ($27 billion).

• We are on the rise, and it’s never been better to be South African: While the global music industry is shrinking, South Africa’s music industry is booming:

– We are one of the fastest growing music markets in the world:

In 2005 South Africa’s recorded music market grew by 22% in the number of units sold, while countries with the biggest markets such as Japan, Germany, France, Australia and the United Kingdom all suffered negative growth

– Sales have grown from R535-million in 2000 to just less than R1-billion in 2005 (RISA ).

– It pays more and more to be South African: of the total number of unit sales of music in 2002, South African music accounted for 42,6%. In 2005, it increased to 52 % – 11.7 million units sold was locally produced.

• It pays to be on stage: Live music events contribute R700 million a year to the economy

• In South Africa, your music can be heard on 91 radio stations

© Copyright Planet Pip Music 2007-2010