The Music Department was delighted to welcome back singer-songwriter Hannah Jane Lewis last week for a day's songwriting workshop with our GCSE and BTEC musicians.
Music pupils, as part of their study, must compose a free composition in a style of their choice and recently many of them have opted for current, popular styles.
Hannah studied music at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts before returning to the UK to launch her pop career in 2016. She is described by critics and fans as having ‘that early Taylor Swift feel to her mixed in with a bit of The Band Perry and her own uniqueness, creating a great, refreshing style of music’. It was a great experience for our young musicians to learn from Hannah to and to have the chance to find out more about the music industry.
Director of Music, Mr Curran, said:
‘The focus of the day was to learn processes for songwriting which involved exploring techniques and structures used by successful artists as well as how to generate mood through music.
After a morning session analysing a selection of musical devices and creating lyrics in small groups, the pupils spent the rest of the day in creative mode designing structures, hooks and catchy melodies. They then brought it together with a preview at the end of the workshop.
As the quality of songs was so high this year, it is the intention for some of them to be developed and premiered at Shiplake Rocks in June 2024.’
Speaking at the end of the day, Hannah said:
‘All of the boys worked really hard today, and their hard work paid off massively. Hopefully, they will all want to tweak their work and think about the production of it over the coming months.’
Thank you Hannah for taking the time to work with our pupils - we can’t wait to see some of these new songs live at the next Shiplake Rocks!
