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Tag: songwriting major

songwriting major

Rocket Science, Spaced Learning, and Songwriting

Ben Camp, Assistant Professor of Songwriting

Ben Camp, Assistant Professor of Songwriting

Ben Camp is an assistant professor of songwriting at Berklee, and author of bencamp.com. He is signed to Sony/ATV as a songwriter and has written for artists on Columbia, Sony, and Universal. In this post, Camp details his innovative methods for increasing students’ ability to gain—and remember—new educational concepts.

Songwriting isn’t rocket science.

But these unlikely bedfellows do have one thing in common: they both require a firm grasp of the fundamentals—whether it’s song form and similes, or algebra and calculus.

So, here in Berklee’s Songwriting Department, we teach those very basic building blocks of Songwriting—rhyme schemes, metaphors, song form—right from the first class we offer.

But teaching something once doesn’t mean that it’s been learned for life. I’m less concerned what my students remember on the midterm, and more concerned with what they remember three months, three years, or three decades after my class.

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Getting the Internship – Mario Guthrie, Intern

Mario Guthrie, Fall 2010 Intern

Embarking on my internship search, I figured somehow, someway all the informational pamphlets thrown at me in the previous semester would start making sense.

Initially, the process seemed like it would be simple as I combed the internship database for at least 10 internships in New York City.  The database is easy to use and has neat features. You can upload your documents (resume & cover letters) and have them emailed through the database.  I went into this search with specific areas of the music business in mind: A&R, Publishing, Touring and Marketing.  Touring basically was non-existent in NY, so that left publishing and A&R, which apparently everyone and their mother wanted to do (as was said by one of my interviewers).

Following the instructions of the internship guide, I created an “internship log” document in Microsoft Word where I put all the information about my search including:

  • name of company
  • contact person
  • title of internship
  • correspondence regarding the internship

I applied to approximately 11 sites and scored 6 interviews.  Of the 6 interviews, 3 sites said yes to having me as an intern, 1 interview could not be scheduled so it never happen, and the other 2 sites still haven’t responded.

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Day 1 – pretty perfect.

Hey everybody!

My name is Liz Longley.  I’m a senior at Berklee, a songwriting major and vocal principal.  I’m so excited to be in Washington, D.C. with my band tonight.  Tomorrow night we’ve got a big show at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater.   We can’t wait! 

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