Making music. Leuphana Song Camp 7 January 2023
2023-01-07 The first Leuphana Song Camp will take place in cooperation with the Hamburg School of Music on 7 January 2023. "Normal" song camps are events within the industry. Songwriters, professionals, either national or international, meet to write as many singles/songs as possible in a short time that meet predefined criteria, for example for very specific artists. This song camp, on the other hand, is an open format with a workshop character where people from very different areas of the music industry meet to develop new songs together.
This different focus and the cooperation with the Hamburg School of Music make the Leuphana Song Camp something very special. Participants gain in-depth insights into the creative process of songwriting as well as concrete tools for practical use. The camp is organised by Jan-Philipp Kelber, songwriter and lecturer for special tasks at the Institute for Art, Music and its Education. "Most people who write music know this," says Kelber, whose most recent release was 'Weinst Du' on Montez 2022, "when you're out walking, you get an idea for a song, maybe a few chords or a melody. At home you sit down at the piano, music paper and pencil lying optimistically in front of you - and the idea is just gone. You can do better. And that's by having something to record with you at all times and in all places - your smartphone, of course. And also capture ideas at the same time, i.e. record them. Then the flash RAM is free again for the melody in B-Chorus.... We write in our heads as long as we can, and only add the instrument late in the process, so we stay very focused on the task at hand, be it melody or harmony. We work on the lyrics until we have a real idea - because without a real feeling for what we write, nothing comes into being that touches other people later, and that is our 'job' after all."
The fact that the Hamburg School of Music could be won as a cooperation partner is enriching for both sides. "What we bring with us from Leuphana," Kelber explains, "is the didactic context and many great, curious students. HSoM, on the other hand, has the artistic know-how in the form of great coaches - so the cooperation is really complimentary." The cooperation and the song camp are in the context of a comprehensive DFG-funded research project on songwriting camps by Michael Ahlers, professor of music didactics with a focus on popular music.
"People who write music often do it alone," Kelber points out, "they pick up the guitar, settle on a key they've always been comfortable with and decide not to rhyme the lyrics ababab this time. Songwriting camps, on the other hand, and the one at Leuphana in January even more so, broaden your horizons, show you that things can be done differently, give you ideas that you'd never have on your own".