[Applause]
what a privilege it is to be able to
talk to you today on something I am so
passionate about songwriting some of you
will be in jobs that you love and some
of you will be in jobs that you hate
some of you will think that you’re lucky
you’re fortunate to be able to be
creative to be musical to be artistic
maybe in what you do and then there’s
others in the room who probably at some
point in their life maybe when you were
a child somebody said to you you’re not
the creative one
you’re not the musical one there it’s
not gonna work no we need to move you
into something else
I had that experience actually I was
moved from my art class to the woodwork
class because I couldn’t draw I’m sure
everybody’s had a little bit about at
some point but today we’re going to talk
about creativity particularly in music
and particularly songwriting the strange
thing is that music is disappearing from
our schools GCSE numbers are getting
lower every year and that’s not because
young people don’t want to study music
it’s because somewhere near at the top
of academia they’ve decided to remove
GCSE as an option and a-level music as
an option it’s very sad but that’s the
world were in at the moment and the
strange paradox is that in higher
education numbers are going up there are
more music courses and more music
applications in higher education it’s a
strange world the body for music in the
UK called UK music released recently in
their survey that music is worth around
about 4.4 billion to the UK economy so
something’s going wrong there’s a little
bit of a disconnect between the message
that we send young people and what
actually is happening in the real world
I was brought up in a musical house my
dad was a music teacher and he gave me
the option he said you can learn any
instrument as long as you choose an
instrument and you can choose so I chose
the drums and he said no you can choose
a musical instrument but um I won and I
carried on and I played the drums for a
little bit for about seven years when I
was at school and then one day I thought
to myself I don’t like being the one who
sat at the back because I’ve got
something I want to say so I want to be
a bit further nearer the front of the
stage rather than being there the guy
who’s always sat at the back behind a
load of things and nobody can see me
there was a story there was a desire in
me that I wanted to share something with
the audience and at the same time my
youth leader I was in a youth group and
my youth leader said Saturday morning
we’re gonna go down the charity shop
come with me and we found an old
acoustic guitar for twenty pounds he
bought it for me he took me home he
taught me three chords and that was all
I needed to then go away and start
writing songs in my bedroom and suddenly
life changed I gave up the drums and I
came to the front of the stage and I
found 10 20 people who would sit there
and listen to what I was singing
something clicked and I knew I had a
story to tell and I knew I wanted other
people to feel that they had a story to
tell as well and then skip forward maybe
actually 30 years but we’ll come back to
that I found out that my
great-grandfather was also a songwriter
and I never knew nobody in my family had
told me but my great-grandfather used to
write songs that thousands of people
sang hundred hundred and twenty years
ago and nobody had told me and it had
taken me 30 years of a career to
actually find that out weird
nature and nurture are we born this way
or are we developed
just something develop in us as we grow
in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest
there’s a real conflict and underlying
theme in the play between nature and
nurture and the way we’re born and the
skills we choose to develop and the path
that’s placed in front of us and I
actually think there’s a little bit of
both that goes on there is no right or
wrong answer for those two there’s a
little bit of both
but as long as we can learn to tell our
story in some way we can all be creative
during this 33-year career that I’ve had
so far
it’s been an absolute privilege to play
in front of loads of different people so
one of the places that actually I got to
go to was the Ukraine I got to play in a
refugee camp they’d taken over a
derelict school building they’d used the
hall and all of the big rooms for
sleeping so they didn’t have a hall for
me to actually go and be with the
children in so we ended up in the
corridor of the school and you can see
them there and and the amazing thing was
is just playing a song and trying to
communicate it immediately came back to
me and they immediately engaged in the
songwriting process in the singing
process in the musical creation process
somewhere else I went to was India just
after the tsunami I got to travel around
13 villages on the eastern coast of
India with my guitar and in every
village I went to people were so excited
to just sing and I would play get there
play the songs and try to teach them
some of the songs and try to teach them
some of the melodies and it came
straight back there was a real hunger to
just be musical perhaps they’ve never
been given that before but then after
quite a long time of of being in this
kind of career things happened and I
suffered from depression for a couple of
years somebody stole the gift from me
somebody stole the story that I wanted
to tell and I to try and make a decision
as to whether I found it again ohright
laughter maybe that was a gift for that
part of my life and I had to move on but
I woke up one day and decided no I want
to write songs and I want to still keep
telling the story so I had to find some
new tools I had to find a new way of
doing it and that’s quite that’s quite
tricky when you’ve been doing it for so
long but what I found was a few simple
little tools could actually not only
help me but they could help everybody
else as well and I started to teach it
rather than perform as much I started to
actually go into places and teach as
well as perform and after day you will
all be songwriters too after today I
hope and you will leave him perhaps with
a way of looking at things that you can
develop your creativity and your
musicality when I go into colleges and
schools I ask people of the elements of
songwriting which are lyrics a melody
and some kind of structure that hinges
and glues all of those together which
would be the hardest which will be the
hardest thing for you to do 99.9% of the
students I speak to say lyrics there’s
something difficult about telling our
own story and putting it into words
perhaps we could sing a melody like you
do in the bathroom some mornings but
there’s something difficult about
putting your story actually into words
so I came up with this method which I
snappily came up with an amazing title
that everybody’s going to remember I
called it the key failing songwriting
method so that maybe needs a little bit
of work but you know that was what I
came up really quickly with and the idea
with this method is that you brainstorm
something really trivial I’ve got a
three-year-old son
so I’m regularly stealing his toys from
his play box in the lounge putting them
into my little bag and taking them off
to schools and colleges and he’s said
left at home a little bit sad wondering
where all of his toys have gone and I’m
getting these toys out of the bag for
the students and they use these toys to
stimulate some kind of direction in
their writing because if you say to
anybody if I said to you now write me a
song about love life and death and your
experience of those
yeah you’d find that one a little tricky
but if I said right one about this
little toy car from my son’s box you’d
start to brainstorm on a sheet hopefully
all the things that that car could say
and mean to you the color how it feels
to drive a car the memory that you have
of driving a car the last holiday you
had what you drove in a car and we
sketch all of this out onto a sheet and
we come up with some ideas and then we
look at the sheet and we pick the
strongest idea from the sheet and that
becomes our chorus and then we look at
the other lines on the sheet and we try
and hinge those together into a verse
and we end up after around about 10
minutes with the structure and the
formation of a song which we can then
just improvise and see what happens and
within about half an hour in a classroom
we’ve written a song it’s amazing it’s
magic so before you came in here today
there was a guy called Aaron my friend
he was running around with a clipboard
and some of you will have given him some
lyrics he asked you a question and the
question was if you had to write one
line of lyric about this this stimulus
which we today we used a battery and
what would it be and here’s what you
came up with and just to show you that I
didn’t actually write all of these
yesterday in advance I’m going to read
them out and if you wrote one of these
lines just put your hand up and shout
but there the whole thing works charge
my city charge my town who’s that yes
thank you everyone needs some energy in
their life thank you very much you can
shout as well go we’re me energy that
drives my life anybody know somebody put
a hand up but I’m not sure if he was
pointing at me okay here is the power
feel the power oh you did too
you’re already a professional I can go
this is my job is done
okay have an electric day charged up
right yes thank you your love flows
you did that one see they don’t admit
now they’re embarrassed
vaults flying tongue shocking yes thank
you
everybody sat over there that’s the
magical part of the room okay so what
we’re gonna do is we’re just gonna re
gig some of these so using my thing
we’re gonna find the the line that I
think is the most powerful line really
quickly and I’m gonna go for energy that
drives my life can you move that one to
the bottom if you put that one to the
bottom great and then we need a really
strong line to open the song that’s
another good thing that I keep saying
always have a really good opening line
everyone needs some energy in their life
I’m gonna go for that one that’s quite
community communal everybody needs it it
grabs everyone right to start the song
put out at the top here is the power
feel the power if you put that number
two and then what we’ll do is we’ll
change a word in that line because power
is repeated so if you change the second
power to light okay I’m going to change
this one if that’s okay with you have an
electric day charge it right okay let’s
say we’re electric so change half an –
we’re we’re electric takeout day we are
the sound so take that bit output we are
the sound good for speed we’ll throw
that one in and then put a space a
couple of space returns yeah
if you move energy that drives my life
up to the middle Spacey bit now we’ll
make that our chorus right there if you
put you are the energy you are the
energy that’s good
brilliant okay
so got a verse we’ll get a chorus I’m
gonna little bitch thing here going on
in around about three three minutes
what’s that maybe I don’t know okay
we’ll come back to that at the end
something else I discovered whilst I was
trying to learn these tricks and and get
little fast ways for people to become
creative again with stories because what
you’ll notice about this it’s not really
about a battery is it it’s about
something much deeper and something much
more powerful it’s about a community
communal feeling that actually something
is happening
in lemming Tain’s bah there is
electricity here something is going on
and I didn’t write this you did but
something else I discovered was that
there are moments in my day when
suddenly I feel more creative than other
times so I could sit down to write a
song and nothing happen but then other
times I would be doing something where
it’s completely inappropriate for
example washing up with your hands in
the sink or driving a car are the worst
times to try and write a song
I’ve tried they are and I got some
points as a result but but they’re the
worst times but sometimes that’s when
the brain clicks in with something to
write the song so I started to look at
this and I discovered that the medial
prefrontal cortex the part of the brain
at the front here which stimulates ideas
where the sparks happen we can only
actually manufacture a way to make that
happen we don’t have to wait for the
inspiration to be creative there are
triggers that you can use and the first
thing you need to do is really fuel and
feed your brain so you need to study
read watch videos talk to people and
feed the brain about the kinds of things
you want to be creative in the kind of
things you want to talk about that are
gonna help you tell your story and in
this hard drive all that is stored with
your memories and the stories everything
you’ve done and the information you’re
putting in and then you need to leave it
you need to let it marinate so rather
than try and get an immediate result you
need to let it sit there in your head
and then at various points when you’re
jogging walking washing up or driving
the car when your brain is engaged in
something else
the subconscious will kick in and spark
an idea for a solution which could be a
business solution something creative
you’re working on for me it’s
songwriting and the melody and the line
suddenly appears in those times and when
you use that formula you can only
actually then manufacture those sparks
to happen in your brain it’s quite
amazing I’ve tested it it works so now
I’m going to try and make a melody up
for your lyrics
that’s okay nice one see what we can do
you in a singing mood
I’m not sure half this half nervous off
yet everyone needs some energy in their
the energy
[Music]
you are the energy that drives my
you’re
[Music]
like lithium in a battery falsify turns
energy you are the energy that drives my
[Laughter]
you are now all songwriters welcome to
your new creative future thank you [Applause]
what a privilege it is to be able to
talk to you today on something I am so
passionate about songwriting some of you
will be in jobs that you love and some
of you will be in jobs that you hate
some of you will think that you’re lucky
you’re fortunate to be able to be
creative to be musical to be artistic
maybe in what you do and then there’s
others in the room who probably at some
point in their life maybe when you were
a child somebody said to you you’re not
the creative one
you’re not the musical one there it’s
not gonna work no we need to move you
into something else
I had that experience actually I was
moved from my art class to the woodwork
class because I couldn’t draw I’m sure
everybody’s had a little bit about at
some point but today we’re going to talk
about creativity particularly in music
and particularly songwriting the strange
thing is that music is disappearing from
our schools GCSE numbers are getting
lower every year and that’s not because
young people don’t want to study music
it’s because somewhere near at the top
of academia they’ve decided to remove
GCSE as an option and a-level music as
an option it’s very sad but that’s the
world were in at the moment and the
strange paradox is that in higher
education numbers are going up there are
more music courses and more music
applications in higher education it’s a
strange world the body for music in the
UK called UK music released recently in
their survey that music is worth around
about 4.4 billion to the UK economy so
something’s going wrong there’s a little
bit of a disconnect between the message
that we send young people and what
actually is happening in the real world
I was brought up in a musical house my
dad was a music teacher and he gave me
the option he said you can learn any
instrument as long as you choose an
instrument and you can choose so I chose
the drums and he said no you can choose
a musical instrument but um I won and I
carried on and I played the drums for a
little bit for about seven years when I
was at school and then one day I thought
to myself I don’t like being the one who
sat at the back because I’ve got
something I want to say so I want to be
a bit further nearer the front of the
stage rather than being there the guy
who’s always sat at the back behind a
load of things and nobody can see me
there was a story there was a desire in
me that I wanted to share something with
the audience and at the same time my
youth leader I was in a youth group and
my youth leader said Saturday morning
we’re gonna go down the charity shop
come with me and we found an old
acoustic guitar for twenty pounds he
bought it for me he took me home he
taught me three chords and that was all
I needed to then go away and start
writing songs in my bedroom and suddenly
life changed I gave up the drums and I
came to the front of the stage and I
found 10 20 people who would sit there
and listen to what I was singing
something clicked and I knew I had a
story to tell and I knew I wanted other
people to feel that they had a story to
tell as well and then skip forward maybe
actually 30 years but we’ll come back to
that I found out that my
great-grandfather was also a songwriter
and I never knew nobody in my family had
told me but my great-grandfather used to
write songs that thousands of people
sang hundred hundred and twenty years
ago and nobody had told me and it had
taken me 30 years of a career to
actually find that out weird
nature and nurture are we born this way
or are we developed
just something develop in us as we grow
in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest
there’s a real conflict and underlying
theme in the play between nature and
nurture and the way we’re born and the
skills we choose to develop and the path
that’s placed in front of us and I
actually think there’s a little bit of
both that goes on there is no right or
wrong answer for those two there’s a
little bit of both
but as long as we can learn to tell our
story in some way we can all be creative
during this 33-year career that I’ve had
so far
it’s been an absolute privilege to play
in front of loads of different people so
one of the places that actually I got to
go to was the Ukraine I got to play in a
refugee camp they’d taken over a
derelict school building they’d used the
hall and all of the big rooms for
sleeping so they didn’t have a hall for
me to actually go and be with the
children in so we ended up in the
corridor of the school and you can see
them there and and the amazing thing was
is just playing a song and trying to
communicate it immediately came back to
me and they immediately engaged in the
songwriting process in the singing
process in the musical creation process
somewhere else I went to was India just
after the tsunami I got to travel around
13 villages on the eastern coast of
India with my guitar and in every
village I went to people were so excited
to just sing and I would play get there
play the songs and try to teach them
some of the songs and try to teach them
some of the melodies and it came
straight back there was a real hunger to
just be musical perhaps they’ve never
been given that before but then after
quite a long time of of being in this
kind of career things happened and I
suffered from depression for a couple of
years somebody stole the gift from me
somebody stole the story that I wanted
to tell and I to try and make a decision
as to whether I found it again ohright
laughter maybe that was a gift for that
part of my life and I had to move on but
I woke up one day and decided no I want
to write songs and I want to still keep
telling the story so I had to find some
new tools I had to find a new way of
doing it and that’s quite that’s quite
tricky when you’ve been doing it for so
long but what I found was a few simple
little tools could actually not only
help me but they could help everybody
else as well and I started to teach it
rather than perform as much I started to
actually go into places and teach as
well as perform and after day you will
all be songwriters too after today I
hope and you will leave him perhaps with
a way of looking at things that you can
develop your creativity and your
musicality when I go into colleges and
schools I ask people of the elements of
songwriting which are lyrics a melody
and some kind of structure that hinges
and glues all of those together which
would be the hardest which will be the
hardest thing for you to do 99.9% of the
students I speak to say lyrics there’s
something difficult about telling our
own story and putting it into words
perhaps we could sing a melody like you
do in the bathroom some mornings but
there’s something difficult about
putting your story actually into words
so I came up with this method which I
snappily came up with an amazing title
that everybody’s going to remember I
called it the key failing songwriting
method so that maybe needs a little bit
of work but you know that was what I
came up really quickly with and the idea
with this method is that you brainstorm
something really trivial I’ve got a
three-year-old son
so I’m regularly stealing his toys from
his play box in the lounge putting them
into my little bag and taking them off
to schools and colleges and he’s said
left at home a little bit sad wondering
where all of his toys have gone and I’m
getting these toys out of the bag for
the students and they use these toys to
stimulate some kind of direction in
their writing because if you say to
anybody if I said to you now write me a
song about love life and death and your
experience of those
yeah you’d find that one a little tricky
but if I said right one about this
little toy car from my son’s box you’d
start to brainstorm on a sheet hopefully
all the things that that car could say
and mean to you the color how it feels
to drive a car the memory that you have
of driving a car the last holiday you
had what you drove in a car and we
sketch all of this out onto a sheet and
we come up with some ideas and then we
look at the sheet and we pick the
strongest idea from the sheet and that
becomes our chorus and then we look at
the other lines on the sheet and we try
and hinge those together into a verse
and we end up after around about 10
minutes with the structure and the
formation of a song which we can then
just improvise and see what happens and
within about half an hour in a classroom
we’ve written a song it’s amazing it’s
magic so before you came in here today
there was a guy called Aaron my friend
he was running around with a clipboard
and some of you will have given him some
lyrics he asked you a question and the
question was if you had to write one
line of lyric about this this stimulus
which we today we used a battery and
what would it be and here’s what you
came up with and just to show you that I
didn’t actually write all of these
yesterday in advance I’m going to read
them out and if you wrote one of these
lines just put your hand up and shout
but there the whole thing works charge
my city charge my town who’s that yes
thank you everyone needs some energy in
their life thank you very much you can
shout as well go we’re me energy that
drives my life anybody know somebody put
a hand up but I’m not sure if he was
pointing at me okay here is the power
feel the power oh you did too
you’re already a professional I can go
this is my job is done
okay have an electric day charged up
right yes thank you your love flows
you did that one see they don’t admit
now they’re embarrassed
vaults flying tongue shocking yes thank
you
everybody sat over there that’s the
magical part of the room okay so what
we’re gonna do is we’re just gonna re
gig some of these so using my thing
we’re gonna find the the line that I
think is the most powerful line really
quickly and I’m gonna go for energy that
drives my life can you move that one to
the bottom if you put that one to the
bottom great and then we need a really
strong line to open the song that’s
another good thing that I keep saying
always have a really good opening line
everyone needs some energy in their life
I’m gonna go for that one that’s quite
community communal everybody needs it it
grabs everyone right to start the song
put out at the top here is the power
feel the power if you put that number
two and then what we’ll do is we’ll
change a word in that line because power
is repeated so if you change the second
power to light okay I’m going to change
this one if that’s okay with you have an
electric day charge it right okay let’s
say we’re electric so change half an –
we’re we’re electric takeout day we are
the sound so take that bit output we are
the sound good for speed we’ll throw
that one in and then put a space a
couple of space returns yeah
if you move energy that drives my life
up to the middle Spacey bit now we’ll
make that our chorus right there if you
put you are the energy you are the
energy that’s good
brilliant okay
so got a verse we’ll get a chorus I’m
gonna little bitch thing here going on
in around about three three minutes
what’s that maybe I don’t know okay
we’ll come back to that at the end
something else I discovered whilst I was
trying to learn these tricks and and get
little fast ways for people to become
creative again with stories because what
you’ll notice about this it’s not really
about a battery is it it’s about
something much deeper and something much
more powerful it’s about a community
communal feeling that actually something
is happening
in lemming Tain’s bah there is
electricity here something is going on
and I didn’t write this you did but
something else I discovered was that
there are moments in my day when
suddenly I feel more creative than other
times so I could sit down to write a
song and nothing happen but then other
times I would be doing something where
it’s completely inappropriate for
example washing up with your hands in
the sink or driving a car are the worst
times to try and write a song
I’ve tried they are and I got some
points as a result but but they’re the
worst times but sometimes that’s when
the brain clicks in with something to
write the song so I started to look at
this and I discovered that the medial
prefrontal cortex the part of the brain
at the front here which stimulates ideas
where the sparks happen we can only
actually manufacture a way to make that
happen we don’t have to wait for the
inspiration to be creative there are
triggers that you can use and the first
thing you need to do is really fuel and
feed your brain so you need to study
read watch videos talk to people and
feed the brain about the kinds of things
you want to be creative in the kind of
things you want to talk about that are
gonna help you tell your story and in
this hard drive all that is stored with
your memories and the stories everything
you’ve done and the information you’re
putting in and then you need to leave it
you need to let it marinate so rather
than try and get an immediate result you
need to let it sit there in your head
and then at various points when you’re
jogging walking washing up or driving
the car when your brain is engaged in
something else
the subconscious will kick in and spark
an idea for a solution which could be a
business solution something creative
you’re working on for me it’s
songwriting and the melody and the line
suddenly appears in those times and when
you use that formula you can only
actually then manufacture those sparks
to happen in your brain it’s quite
amazing I’ve tested it it works so now
I’m going to try and make a melody up
for your lyrics
that’s okay nice one see what we can do
you in a singing mood
I’m not sure half this half nervous off
yet everyone needs some energy in their
the energy
[Music]
you are the energy that drives my
you’re
[Music]
like lithium in a battery falsify turns
energy you are the energy that drives my
[Laughter]
you are now all songwriters welcome to
your new creative future thank you [Applause]
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