The pandemic has led a lot of people to take up new creative hobbies. Last November I tried NaNoWriMo for the first time in lockdown. Last month, I took a songwriting class.

Making up songs is something I’ve done off and on, casually throughout my life, but never pursued in earnest. As a kid, I invented theme songs for the stories I acted out with toys. I sent my grandparents a cassette tape of songs about cats that I improvised. (Did my long-suffering relatives appreciate my off-key, feline-chase-scene version of the William Tell Overture? Probably not!) 

In first grade, I wanted to be a composer who wrote musicals when I grew up, before the writing dreams took hold. As a teenager, I had a folder of terrible lyrics stuffed in a drawer. I wasn’t a serious musician and I don’t have a gift for singing, but music has always compelled me. I wrote my first full-length novel about a musical prodigy, and am working with a publisher on it now.   

In lockdown, I had some song ideas again. Then I revisited the music theme in fiction by starting a fantasy novel about a composer, and realized that part of me wanted to turn those songs in my head into real music as badly as my character did. As music re-emerged as a force in my life, I downloaded some composition software called MuseScore, tried to put notes to some past songs, and found a songwriting class. 

The class was run by Murray Webster of London Songwriters, an experienced singer-songwriter and teacher. It lasted a month and sessions met online one evening per week. Murray teaches courses on both lyric and melody. I enrolled in “Write Great Melodies.”  

I’m glad I took that class. It was a small group, and much new (to me) material was presented. The sessions focused on rhythm, melodic notes, chords, and pitch/prosody, with intensive teaching and lots of examples from popular music. So much skill goes into creating something like Katy Perry’s song “Firework,” and it was insightful to learn how the pieces came together and why each one worked the way it did. Each week had listening and composing homework. I learned a lot in a short time and am still unpacking it. 

I appreciated that Murray believed in his students. He encourages everyone to express themselves and comes from the standpoint that everyone can learn and create. I left the class reflecting on the concept of unique voice. Because everyone is different (all the participants had different experience levels and backgrounds when it came to music and lyrics), no one else can write your songs. And maybe someone else will like them. 

We all have might-have-beens and dreams that never came to pass. Some of these aren’t possible in our world. (I’ll likely never fly on a broomstick.) Others might be worth giving a go.   

Since lockdown has eased, I’ve tried a lot of new things this year: horseback riding, kayaking, doing a Workaway, and now the songwriting class. The world seems full of wonder when I think about how much there is to learn and how many possibilities there are for the years ahead. 

What’s something you’ve always wanted to try?