Students interested in writing music and lyrics gathered in the Delaware Room of the HUB Friday for Brad Yoder's singer/songwriter workshop, sponsored by The Entertainment Network. Yoder performed a show after the workshop.
The singer/songwriter has been playing guitar for 22 years and singing all his life for choirs, in church and at colleges. Yoder, a graduate of Goshen College (1990) in Indiana, is originally from Virginia. He has been living in Pittsburgh for the past eight years.
"Songwriting can be like athletics. You may not be a marathon runner, but you are doing it for yourself," Yoder said.
He started off the workshop with "brainstorming goals to come up with better songs."
The first goal was to play around or "noodling" on the guitar. One can also sing during the experimenting.
Yoder advised to collect phrases or pieces that seemed like they would be good in a song.
He said another component of a well-written song is "emotion tied with image, a scene, object, face, or story." Yoder uses free association to come up with images and pays attention to the sound of words.
"My mom had a saying: People are 'as thick as thieves,' so I wrote a song about it," Yoder said.
As far as recording ideas, he advised to use a notebook, handheld tape recorder or a chalkboard.
"Experiment. Try writing a different song that is in third person if you write in first person all the time," the singer/songwriter said.
Yoder encouraged the students to learn other bands' or artists' songs.
"Don't play exactly the way they play it. Just get a deeper sense of what it is about."
In addition, he encouraged people to listen to a broad range of music or different genres.
Yoder promoted collaboration so that feedback and co-writing could happen.
He told the people who attended the workshop that they should write songs because of the fact that they enjoy doing it.
"It is something you can do your whole life," Yoder said.
After this advice, the people who attended the workshop shared some of their original songs.
Brad gave them feedback on their original work.
"It was very informative and helpful," said Luke Bowen (sophomore, communications media) after the workshop.
The show afterward started with Greg Meyer (junior, elementary education), opening with some cover songs. He informed the audience that it was his first gig.
The songs Meyer played performed "Time of Your life," "Hear You Me," "Stay Together For the Kids" and "Constantine." The student dedicated "Hear You Me" to his brother and the troops in Iraq.
"I like that particular song because I can relate to it. A lot of things in the song happened to me in real life," Meyer said.
Meyer's influences are Leonard Bernstein and Something Corporate.
Yoder described the first song of his set as the "song about the girl you'll never get."
"That's what drives people to acoustic guitars."
"This is a song my mother hates," Yoder said before playing "WWJD?"
Some of the lyrics to "WWJD?" were, "If you wonder what would Jesus do/I think he'd mess up it up just like you/But he'd do it with a lot more love."
The singer/songwriter explained the story behind "Virtual Girl."
"You guys are in college now and stare at computer screens. I wondered what it would be like if I downloaded a girl."
Yoder played a song he wrote in 1998 called "Used," which had a reference to Fred Rogers.
He was also inspired to write about the war. "Convenience Store" mentioned the American mentality of wanting things right away and not waiting.
It had a reference to the war going on at the same time as basketball's March Madness.
For more on Yoder, log on to his Web site.
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