When I saw the words "songwriting workshop with Robin Pecknold", I knew at once that I was going to end up signing up for it. I've been a Fleet Foxes fan since the early days (and don't try to come for me because I have the receipts) so when I saw the opportunity to learn about the craft from the singer/songwriter behind the group? Shut up and take my money.
On the topic of money: $120 buys you four classes with School of Song, a group based in Los Angeles running online music classes hosted by a whole bunch of musical luminaries. Robin Pecknold is their highest-profile teacher to date, and his class was advertised as covering the following topics over four weeks:
- Process & Manifestos
- Melody & Lyrics
- Utilizing musical ‘technologies’ for defamiliarization
- Attention & Novelty
I've played in bands since I was a long-haired teenager, always gravitating to guitar but amassing other stringed instruments (bass, banjo, ukulele) along the way. A recent foray of experimentation with keyboards saw me purchase a too-large-for-my-desk 88-key midi controller just after Christmas 2021, at which point I realised I had to sign up for this class. Despite all my musical experience, the last decade has mainly seen me recording unfinished covers of Beatles songs, or messing around with friends recording semi-pastiche UK grime which we've been doing since we were teenagers. I hadn't written an actual song since I started university, back in 2005.
All of which eventually led me to logging onto a Zoom session on Sunday 16th January for Robin to begin his first lecture of the class. I watched in amazement as the user count ticked up and up and up until there were more than 800 people in the session – and this was only the first of two timeslots for the class that day. Almost without introduction, there was Robin, sitting in an anonymous room presumably in his home, and introducing himself to the virtual classroom.
Once I got over the fact that I was listening to the insight of the man who wrote "Mykonos" and "Lorelai", I began making notes and trying to take in his insights which would hopefully transform me from bedroom tinkerer to... well, a slightly more accomplished bedroom tinkerer. I have to be realistic about this: obviously folks like Pecknold and my other singer/songwriter heroes didn't attend classes like these – arguably you can't even teach this stuff at all. Our musical heroes seem to just pop into being, fully-formed, with all of their raw talent already in place. At the age of 35 I think my moment to record the next "Helplessness Blues" has already faded – but I was excited to get what I could from this course and hopefully be able to feel satisfied that I've produced something I'm proud of.
School of Song courses are centered around the community of students: there's an extremely active Discord community where users share advice, tech tips, lyrical inspiration and—above all—positive feedback on each other's ideas. Each week, Robin sets a homework prompt, and everyone gets together on Zoom to share their finished recordings and discuss them in small groups. This part was highlighted by previous attendees as one of the highlights of the experience: getting supportive feedback and criticism of their ideas from other people experiencing the same creative challenge.
I dived in. Our first homework prompt had two choices: "The Archaeologist" or "The Problem Solver". The former was a task to come up with four distinct pieces of music—just a verse, a few lines, a melody, whatever—then stitch them together into a single song, however incoherent or ill-fitting. The latter was a series of question-led prompts, which Robin revealed as a prominent Fleet Foxes technique, eg:
- Mykonos: Can I write a song with two choruses?
- White Winter Hymnal: Can I make a pop song that’s mostly acapella?
- Crack-Up: Can I make something that feels like a ship being pulled apart by an iceberg?
He provided a list of similar questions which we could choose from to inspire our own creations.
I choose the Archaeologist prompt, reasoning that if I wrote four pieces, it increased the chances of me coming up with something I liked and could take further later, even if it didn't work as part of a whole. With only six days to complete the writing and recording, I jumped into chord patterns and lyric ideas.
Robin also recommended a book called "I Remember" by Joe Brainard. It's an autiobiography where the entire thing is sentences like this:
I remember my first cigarette. It was a Kent. Up on a hill. In Tulsa, Oklahoma. With Ron Padgett.
I remember my first erections. I thought I had some terrible disease or something.
I remember the only time I ever saw my mother cry. I was eating apricot pie.
I remember how much I cried seeing South Pacific (the movie) three times.
Robin said how useful this book has been for him to generate inspiration: pick it up and open at random, and see where the memory takes you. I bought a copy and was amazed to find it worked: I skimmed a few pages and suddenly found myself transported back to primary school at a poetry recital, sneaking into my first 18+ movie when underage, reliving the worst Christmas I've ever had and hanging out in graveyards after church when still a child. I wrote my own "I remember" sentences and used these as the basis to generate lyric ideas for the class.
Disaster struck midway through the week: I picked up a cold (thankfully not the cold, but still). My voice was nasal-y and scratchy and I couldn't hit any of the notes I'd recorded on my demos when Friday evening rolled around and my assignment was due the next day. In the end I concluded that "done is better than perfect" and recorded the song as best I could, but as soon as my cold cleared up I went back and re-recorded the vocals (which is the version you'll hear below).
People had already been posting some of their recordings before the "official" song sharing day on Saturday and it was both daunting and inspiring to listen to them – so much talent was on display. People's voices were incredible and their lyrical ideas profound and exciting. I was glad I hadn't listened to too many of them before uploading my own recording or I might have imposter-syndrome'd myself out of there.
To my surprise, Robin was a constant participant in the Discord discussions, answering people's questions and reacting with excitement and genuine interest to people's heartfelt ideas and reflections on the experience. He also left comments and feedback on people's songs uploaded to the "jukebox" tool the School of Song have created – this felt like the golden seal of approval if you had a comment from @robinpecknold. I guess Fleet Foxes aren't touring right now, hence his ability to teach this course, but I've found myself hugely impressed by his level of commitment and interest in the whole thing – kudos!
Saturday evening rolled around and it was time for the song share: I got bundled into a Zoom breakout room with 3 strangers, and luck of the draw (eg. my date of birth) meant I got to go first. I sent everyone the link to my song, and for the next two and a half minutes we all sat there on mute, listening to it. It was a really bizarre feeling to know that people in Wales, Kentucky and Canada were all sitting and listening to the music I'd recorded in my home studio earlier that weekend, as I sat there trying not to watch them listening. After it finished they gave me lots of appreciative feedback and highlights, and I made sure to do the same for everyone else's—especially the super-talented music teacher who went next and shared an amazing country/jazz/pop jam with an entire orchestra's worth of instruments.
We're only halfway through the course right now and I'm really enjoying the experience. It's forced me to start writing things again, and to try to accept (and even love) my voice, something I've never been confident with and had never properly recorded or performed with before. I know when I listen to the things I've recorded for School of Song so far that they still sound juvenile and rusty, or just clear imitations of other artists/sounds that I like. But I can also feel the development that's happened these past few weeks as I've tried to re-awaken muscles I haven't exercised in a decade, and found that there are still a few creative sinews there.
I can also feel like if I persevere with this, with the help of the community that powers School of Song, I can figure out my own sound and find a way to write and record some music that represents me. I don't think I'm going to become the next Fleet Foxes, but I think I can be happy with writing some songs me and my friends might enjoy, and that's good enough for me.
You can hear my efforts for the Archaeologist prompt here and the lyrics are available on my Soundcloud page. I also have a work-in-progress with a bit more instrumentation (but barely any lyrics!) here – give it a spin!
If you like the sound of this, you should sign up for School of Song right away – it's the best thing I've done for years.
