POSTPONED: RESIDENTIAL COURSE: Making Songs with Pete Astor at The Farmer’s Arms

This event is postponed and a later date will be confirmed shortly.

‘A songwriter who never falters and is maybe even getting better with age.’ All Music

‘The master of less is more’ The Guardian

Looking to start writing those songs you’ve always known were in you or re-lighting your musical and lyrical fire? The Making Songs residential workshop at The Farmer’s Arms will give you the space and the tools.

The course will run between 22nd and 26th May including four nights of full accommodation at The Farmer’s Arms with food from the pub menu cooked by artist chef Alistair Debling using locally sourced sustainable ingredients. The Farmer’s Arms is an arts led diversified model of a country pub at the south end of the Lake District.

Workshops

There will be four days of workshops where we will explore songwriting spurs, techniques, connections and cultures with a performance on the penultimate day. This will be a space for you to develop your own voice, your songwriting creativity and to make work in ways that are beyond the reach of the more traditional, mechanistic ideas about the craft.

This Grizedale Arts course is open to all levels and is all about making songs in a supportive environment wherever you are in your songwriting journey. You may be an experienced songwriter, or a singer wanting to write. You could simply be someone eager to put your words and music out in the world or even someone that doesn’t play an instrument but has something to express. Whatever your reason, this course will support you.

This can be with a traditional songwriting tool like the guitar, any version of electronics you choose to use or simply just using your voice. It’s the expression and the intention which counts and this is what we will build on, unpacking what songwriting is in an accessible and inclusive way. Through workshops with musician, writer and educator Pete Astor, the objective of Making Songs, the philosophy even, is that at the end of the course you will feel confident to make your own songs, in your own voice. Making Songs is all about the process, like making a piece of art where the ideas and concepts are the key drivers. So, the focus will be on unlocking your own creative expression, using strategies and techniques to deliver songs that make true connections with people.

The Programme includes:

• A valley tour with Pete and Adam Sutherland (director of Grizedale Arts). There will be focus on stories of the area, activities and people. This will be an anecdotally-based observation of the use of landscape and nature (and weather) as a metaphor, through the work of historic and contemporary figures.
• Walking and writing – visit and tea at Parkamoor off grid farmhouse. Will the rhythm of walking promote creative thinking or rather the tea and crumpets?
• Teaching sessions and workshop time – throughout the week

Evening Talks and Films 

• Tuesday: Talk/discussion with Pete and Kirsty Allison (author of Psychomachia, founder of Cold Lips Zine and member of Peckham based electro duo Vagrant Lovers)
• Wednesday: Pete Astor’s Youth Club 1972 – a jukebox selection of formative music in The Farmer’s Arms bar (public event)
• Thursday: Public performances of work from the week (optional)

What will the course cover?

• Surrounding space and how to walk and breathe inspiration
• Unlocking intention and biography; using what you have inside to make songs
• The magic relationship between words and music: architecture, biography, poetry
• Application of strategic approaches to song-work; architect, builder, nihilist and punk
• Developing songwriting skills; inventing, understanding and liberating
• Unpacking and exploring cultural and musical spaces to situate your own work without being a follower
• Easy techniques to start and finish songs and then start over again
• Understanding forms of address in songs; tone, voices, intention
• Collaborations: you and me and the group
• Applying conceptual and theoretical ideas to creative work with a light touch
• Using reflective practices to frame and develop work with dialogue and feed forward
• Celebrate achievements and have fun

About your tutor:

Pete Astor is a musician, writer and educator. He led early Creation Records trailblazers The Loft and The Weather Prophets, releasing records that helped define the sound of the label and the emerging Indie genre. He is the author of a study of Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ Blank Generation, part of Bloomsbury Academic’s 33 and a Third Series, along with articles on songwriting practice for the Cambridge Journal of Popular Music and Ashgate books. Astor has taught songwriting for over twenty years, running songwriting course at Goldsmith’s College from 2004 to 2012. Most notably teaching songwriters from James Blake to Katy B. He is currently Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster, teaching and researching songwriting and creative practice.

As a musician he has sustained a lengthy solo career, writing, recording and releasing records on a range of labels including Matador, Heavenly, Warp and Fortuna Pop. He has been signed to the estimable Tapete Records since 2017 and released the acclaimed Time on Earth album last year.