How I would answer the girl that said she wants to write without it reminding her of the person she lost. I was in that situation when my son died. Writing is always therapeutic whether is it regular writing, poems, or songs. The first song I ever wrote was about heaven. And I wrote some poems about grief. Writing helps you get all the "stuff" to stop running in you head. You can leave it on the paper, and go on with your life. It isn't easy so you have to keep talking about it and writing in a journal about it, and eventually you will go on with your life and the person will be a lovely memory for you. Put it on paper, so you can leave it behind and be able to write another song, about another subject.

I'd not heard of Pat Pattison until yesterday. I was looking for information on writing a chorus and during my search I came across Pat's IMRO Songwriting Seminar. I thought that there may be something in there about chorus writing. Instead Pat in this seminar, talked about stable and unstable rhymes and rhythm structures. I'd never heard the terms stable and unstable in reference to rhymes and rhythm structures before and I was soon fascinated with these songwriting tools and how to use them. I ended up listening to the whole seminar and was impressed by the information and how superbly Pat taught. I then used these tools on a song I was writing and though I'd already used these tools without knowing the theory, now I could consciously apply the theory to my writing. Today, in this masterclass, I've stopped at the section about lyrics being too wordy. I knew what Pat was talking about. I regularly take out unnecessary words during my songwriting process which usually includes extensive rewriting , (including removing those pieces that repeat something previously said), to the point where each word has it's purpose and nothing can be added, nor subtracted, to improve the song; or so I have thought during my many years of writing. However I am yet to apply Pat's suggested exercise of selecting a favourite self composed song and removing 25% of the words. And then I got thinking about 'story' songs, 'story' songs being my favourite type of songs nowadays. And I have loved multitudes of pop songs over the years, as an example 'The Byrds' version of "Mr Tambourine Man', where they use only one of the 4 verses written in Dylan's original. In latter years though I prefer to play Dylan's full version (in the 'Byrds' style), as it tells me so much more and to me is more satisfying and fulfilling. As you won't know my songs I will list some of my favourite 'story' songs written by a well known writer, Gordon Lightfoot. These are 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald' 'Canadian Railroad Trilogy' and 'If You Could Read My Mind'. Now all of these are long, wordy, songs. And I think that they are as good as they are because they are wordy and at the same time, in my opinion, do not use any more words than are necessary to make them great songs. I can see how as a rule, a good 'hit' 'pop' song requires as few words as possible, to allow the light to shine on the words that are there and also maybe to capture the listeners who have a short attention span. In my youth a song had to typically be under 3 minutes long to be played on a commercial radio station, until perhaps 'Hey Jude' came along? Could it be that when Pat is talking about removing 25% of the words written in a song, that he is more talking about a song that is intended for and more suited to the charts?

1.5m people have taken his online course(s). Damn that's a lot of dreamers.

seriously brilliant. thank you for making this public

I love this man and his philosophy towards songwriting. Literally changed my entire work flow and perspective on songwriting. Thank you Pat 🖤

This was great!!!! I LOVE this mans way of presenting wisdom with wit and humor. Common sense delivery, while layering in the technical, the tools and the examples is so helpful for me. It helps to better visualize a path through the writing journey.

Great session. Thanks for the upload @JMCAcademy. I'll be revisiting a lot of my lyrics in light of these ideas.

This was great!! Thank you so much

hey you!good things take time to keep going guys.you will find your treasure

Thanks to patt and this channel, amazing

This goes on for about 2 hours so its a lot to take in. maybe need to listen to a few times.

That Chris guy is funny...great intro and respect to acknowledgment and reminder of who's land we are fortunate to come to and plant our seeds!!

that was a great song! to the dude with bad latency

I discovered I can write my lyrics out for Bing and get a pretty good evaluation and it's free. You might want to try it. Ask Bing for a grade and what's good, what needs improvement, etc.

Thank you Mr Pattison for sharing your knowledge and experience.

"Just a try" instead of "Just to try" is another possible improvement.

Furthermore, second verse can also be improved like this: "You'll lose on liquor at a party, and bide your time to share an uber home. You'll say your housemate's got . . ." This keeps it all in the same tense and is much clearer. There's another problem altogether in the second verse though, which is that it's a bit unclear to the listener WHO is it she's taking the uber ride home with? This song is beautiful, but it does have some kinks to be worked out still.

Thank you both for so many useful tips to improve my songwriting menagerie ❣🌻

Recently studying Hendrix and that guy was a genius.

Not to go against the great Pattison, but I saw a better way to do it in about 10 seconds: "He'll just want a casual thing." The advantage of this is that it keeps the pronoun, thereby clearly defining to the listener who's speaking, and also keeps it in future tense instead of going over to an undefined type tense. It also could;ve allowed him to maintain the next line the way it was, starting with "Someone." Anyway . . . Pattison's idea to start the first line with "You'll leave him . . ." was brilliant.

Great video he’s amazing!

Thanks For The Alpha Pat

What's the difference between First Person and Direct Address?

1:29 change the chords at least for the chorus and add some syncopation

I wish that interviewer would pay some proper respect and take his head off his hand. Very rude, lousy, inconsiderate hosting. Pat your a legend. I always get break through moments with your wisdoms 😌

How smug do you gotta be to rub it in that you stole their land and ain’t giving it back, you got a podcast to do lol

why they start wit politics.. smh goofballs

"top ten"? 🙄 I thought this was about good music 😏

Just started watching and hope to be able to glean some purposeful guidance here. It is important to remember whose land we are on. The world and its fullness belong to God, the One Who created it. The ancestral worship invocation is a tragic farce, and wholly out of place. It would be a very powerful topic for an anthropology lecture. Its a place where this theme could be more fully developed and given its due attention and importance. Now on to the discussion. I remain hopeful.

I can't find the connection between "traditional owners of the land"and songwritting... so goodbye!

Nice job w the country leftist