When a song is submitted to a Play It Strange songwriting competition, there can be a number of active seams in the process of that submission. Let’s look at them.
This article I am writing is to shine the light on the collective group of music teachers that, on a wide perspective, bring expertise and an accomplished support structure to these factors. There is however one part of this that is important to note - the music teachers connected to the specific school that the songwriter attends – or, in fact any teacher, cannot contribute to (1) – the writing of the song. Their support plays an important part in easing and solidifying the song’s submission. Let’s look at some examples.
Let’s take a young songwriter aged 16 attending a co-ed school in Hamilton . We’ll call him Graham. Now Graham wants to enter the Peace Song competition of 2025. The song he’s written is titled Near Hosts and he has written it while accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. He approaches his music teacher and tells her of this. And he asks for her help in submitting the song. And he plays it to her.
The teacher is enamored of the song’s appeal and its metaphorical lyrics. And Graham asks his teacher if she has thoughts on the arrangement – specifically – he’s thinking that if Near Hosts’ is a finalist song chosen by the judges then he would look to record it with a string section. She takes that on board, listens to the song and agrees with his ideas and she, seeing as she plays violin and cello writes out a string section and then they re-record Near Hosts as the final version to submit as an entry. This happens and Graham sings it and the teacher plays violin and cello as a reference for the final recording if successful by the judges’ decision.
There we have it. And we at Play It Strange salute the enormous effort that so many music teachers put into supporting and encouraging the writing of songs by their students in our competitions. Exemplary !!!!!
PLEASE NOTE : anyone can contribute to the arrangement of an entered song as that isn’t part of the judging process. The judges focus on:
Lyrics 50%
Music (chord sequence, lead vocal melodies and prosody (the appropriate “fit” of the music and lyrics together) 50%
And so - Graham decides to submit the song. The lyrics are written out and sent in with a recording of the song.
Graham plays guitar and sings into a cell-phone to record it. Or this…..
A classmate of Graham’s who has a reasonable skill at multi-track recording on a programming software such as Abelton Live puts it down :
Then when the list of finalists is posted online, Graham sees his song has been chosen and preparations are put in place.
In July 2025, Graham goes to The Porch Studio to record Near Hosts. He invites a violinist and cellist from the school orchestra. And he takes the string score written out by his music teacher.
All is in place. Recording begins. The Porch engineer weaves his/her magic and a mix of Near Hosts comes to be. It joins the incoming stream of finished studio tracks from various schools, gets mastered at Kog Studios and is then posted online . Spotify, Bandcamp, Apple. Pretty much all of them. And there it rests - Near Hosts….for the world to hear. And it is happening more and more – with a music teacher giving support as each step arrives. And the music teachers help to make the entry process seamless.
Wonderful.