What on earth is a songwriting camp?
A songwriting camp is a gathering of producers, top-liners (melody experts), hook writers, music composers, songwriters and artists/singers, in a pre-selected location for the purpose of cross pollenating creativity and writing.In the professional world, these are run by management teams, record labels and publishers to respond to a need or a gap within their own libraries or for specific tracks for their artists.It involves working with some people you may know or entire groups of people you have never met before, working on the creative production of a song over a number of days, usually around four or five days. They are the number one place to learn about the craft of songwriting from a commercial viewpoint.
Beyoncé’s Lemonade was a strikingly personal album, full of scorned-lover songs, but it was conceived by teams of writers with key moments from an army of writers and producers. Most of what you hear in fact has come from songwriting camps.
Tileyard's the UK's leading one and that is why I want to go be at this.
Find out more here:
What is a Songwriting Camp exactly?!
Why do I need to raise money?
The four day camp I've been invited to is in London, so I need to raise some funds for food, accommodation, travel and expenses while I'm there. There's also a camp fee of £799 which covers the studio, audio engineer and production costs.
What's in it for Jam?
Each day of the camp, I write to a live commercial music brief. This is when labels and publishers tell composers and songwriters what kind of songs that they require for their singers and artists. We then write according to those specific briefs and the label track it and I keep all my masters and writer's rights, as normal.
This is an insanely brilliant opportunity for me because this is the only songwriting camp that has live commercial briefs each day. I'll also come away with at least four new, professionally produced tracks that I can add to my portfolio and new songwriter credits to add to my profile.
All of these things are building blocks to a long-term sustained income from songwriting - something I have to think about as I get older.
Representation
Queer people of colour like me are not very well-represented in commercial songwriting in the UK. Tileyard acknowledges this and my representation at their writing camps is crucial right now in history.
My ability to attend and pay for accommodation and everything is also vital. ie I need to be able to show up and represent myself there. That’s why this funding is so important right now.
If you want to see a little bit more about my songwriting process how share and collaborate, check out my reels on my insta and socials here.
I have applied for a small, quick turnaround grant form Help Musicians and set aside some of my own saving for this too - it's that important to me.
So if you can spare a little something to help get me there, it would mean a lot to me both professionally and creatively.
Massive love,
Jam x