Songwriting is an integral part of my work as a music therapist, and it is something that I love to do. But it doesn’t always come easy: sometimes I need a little extra motivation. That usually comes in the form of an upcoming music therapy session or class in which I’ll be utilizing the song, a deadline for a blog post, or a launch date for a songbook or other product.

What I hear from other music therapists is that as much as they want to sharpen their songwriting skills and do more of it, they just don’t have the external motivation and can’t find the time to fit it into their busy schedules.

So that is what this Songwriting Challenge is all about: giving you that extra push to increase your repertoire of self-written tunes in just an hour or less per week over the course of 5 weeks.

The Details

Once you sign up to join the challenge (which is completely free), you’ll receive one prompt each week via email. This prompt will give you a starting point, but where you go from there is completely up to you. My hope is that each prompt will give you the chance to exercise a different songwriting muscle and therefore help you become even more well-rounded as a songwriter.

And to keep you accountable, I invite you to share your creations over in the Listen & Learn Facebook group. This will also be a great way to learn from one another, as we all have our own approaches to songwriting even given the very same prompt.

Recording & Sharing

Please note that you do NOT have to be skilled in recording in order to share your songs with me and the other challenge participants. It’s as easy as creating/posting a quick and simple video, recording a voice memo on your phone and saving/sharing as a Dropbox or Google Drive link, creating a free Bandcamp account and linking to your songs there, or I am happy to share them for you if you can get as far as emailing your song or video file to me.

The Results of the Challenge

What would a challenge be without some sort of incentive? While I created this challenge to help you become a more practiced (and therefore better!) songwriter, I’m also offering the following prizes to 3 participants chosen at random after the final week of the challenge. The only stipulation is that in order to qualify, you must join the Facebook group and share all 5 of your songs.

Prize 1: A year-long membership to Listen & Learn Plus ($120 value)

Prize 2: Access to my 3-hour CMTE course, Early Childhood Programs: Create, Market, Make Music! ($60 value)

Prize 3: Copies of 3 digital songbooks of your choice from the Listen & Learn Music catalogue ($36 value)