Mike's Musings: Music Teachers and the World of Songwriting

Hi all,

Let’s take a few steps up; keep an eye out for what is real and how evolution makes steps buoyant – an achievement with the arrival and fortitude of original songs.

Songs? Indeed.

Those concoctions of words and music as they come to be. Creative forces in the repertoire of the Play It Strange songwriting competitions. All of them special...

Let’s take a competition from any one of our Strange years. What experience would I embrace if I were stepping up to the plate with the intention of writing a song for the competition?  And while we're out here let’s look back to the foundation of my time in that world.

It wasn’t hard to be swept up in what is now called the British Invasion – excitement in two words. All finding me in year 9 (around 13 years old, the 60’s) as happened once upon a time. There was the mirror of The Beatles repertoire that drove thousands of us on with spontaneous dreams, ensconced in the drive and passion to write the words and music of original songs and send them out into the world. Where and what is the first step poised in front of me? Is it steeped in a magical recipe of wonder and realization? Why, yes it is.

The merging of words and music into the unique construction of what becomes a song is something that breathes life into where and who you are. And the music teacher allotted to your music curriculum and/or melodic and lyrical adventures plays a crucial role. (You may not ‘take’ music as a course of study, but you may want to be a songwriter in the realm of the Play It Strange competitions and have borne witness to this evolution.) So right here – right now – may I talk about it? Thank you – let’s.

In 1967, Tim Finn and I were boarding school hostel students at Sacred Heart College in Glen Innes. We had become obsessed with The Beatles and bore witness to their extraordinary domination of the world’s focus on popular music. It’s easy to gather their statistics – their dozens and dozens of songs were written primarily by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, though George Harrison made valuable contributions. And they almost lived on the charts of many countries.

So there we were in the magic decade and as we walked into and out of the school music rooms in order to sing, play pianos and acoustic guitars, we discovered a platform of creative drive with our imagination intent on holding some part in our musical advancement. Tim wrote a strip of words that he put forward as a potential lyric andI thought ‘this is cool’ and weaved a musical backing to it. As the ‘glue’ dried, I played the guitar and Tim sang like a true magician and, with an uncle’s Christmas Present in the form of a recording session at Stebbing Recording Studios, the ‘song’ became a ‘single’.

Hence, were we enabled such that people here, there and everywhere were able to check it out? No – in a word.

The ‘scientific’ delivery of recordings has only just reached its potential. But to stand back today and ponder, it is clear that music teachers who see/saw popular songs as a truly creative pursuit are principals in the writing of songs in that they can, and often will, give feedback and steerage to those students who concoct lyrics and music into the ground swell of songs by youth of today. They are a true indication of what is turning the VOICE of YOUTH as real and worthy.

We hold music teachers who stand up for songwriting as the momentum of young NZers who invent a reality that can entertain and impress a huge number of the young and old who hear them. This is a new reality for our youth to celebrate. This is possible now!

So does this symptom of creativity exist today? It certainly does! Entering the Play It Strange competitions is a strong wheel in guiding it. Out and into the future.

Mike Chunn, Tim Finn and Geoff Chunn at Sacred Heart College