September of Sound
What is September of Sound?
Everyone has music inside of them, whether they know it or not. For this September, Shrewsbury Songwriters invites you to join us embark, or continue, on your music writing journey through song or tune writing. For every week of September there is a brief to write to (different ones for songs and tunes) which will help get your creativity flowing!
Fancy listening to a live showcase of local song and tune writers? We’ve got you covered with our September of Sound Showcase! Head over here to find out more.
Well folks, that’s the last brief of September of Sound 2025! Remember the September of Sound Showcase on the 19th of October and there is a normal meetup the day after on the 20th.
Now start polishing off your new creations and get them performance ready!
FAQs
Don’t panic! This is just a fun challenge for yourself and you don’t have to share it with anyone. Make it work for you and don’t feel any pressure to make it in a particular way.
Each brief is released a week after the last one, so the 2nd brief will be a week after the 1st (which is the 1st of September), which will be the 8th of September and so on.
Brilliant! If you want to share any of your September of Sound songs or tunes on social media, then use the hashtag #septemberofsound to make it easy for people to find it. We can also post a YouTube link of your video if you haven’t got social media, just message me and I’ll pop it up for you. BEFORE YOU POST – It is vital to copywrite your music before you post anything online, I’ve outlined how to do this here.
You can also share your music at the Shrewsbury Songwriters meetup and also get to chat about them with fellow composers. The September one is on the 15th of September.
You don’t need a special degree or training to write music, just give it a go and use the briefs to help form a bit of inspiration. This may be the month you start your new composing journey!
We did a showcase last year for people who had joined in with the challenge and it went really well. This year Albert’s Shed in Shrewsbury has kindly agreed to host the showcase.
We have 10 artists this year, all performing their own pieces, with some written for the September of Sound challenge or for one of the Shrewsbury Songwriters’ briefs earlier this year.
The Showcase is free and will be from 7-10pm on the 19th of October. Head over here to find out more
The Briefs
Can you believe it is Autumn already? The answer is probably yes. Use your songwriting skills to celebrate the beginning of the season of golden leaves, fruits and seeds, Cinnamon lattes and hedgehogs!
Let’s Make It Up As We Go Along…
Sometimes while writing we can overthink things and our creativity gets locked-up. So this week, let’s throw all of that out and improvise everything on the spot – the music, lyrics, theme – everything! (Add your own preferred evil laugh here)
To help make sure you are truly improvising things, grab a stopwatch (or stopwatch app) and for each verse (or a chorus) and musical phrase (say 4 bars) give yourself 60s to write what you can and then stop and move on to the next. You might want to get a ruthless friend or family member to help you out and force you to go on to the next!
If you’re writing a song, don’t think you have to add everything at once – you could do a separate process for the lyrics, music, chords etc. Similar thing with instrumental writers – don’t try and add any harmony or chords at the same time, do a separate thing for those (or you might want to add them later in a more relaxed process).
After you’ve written as much as you think the piece needs, stop and review your “fragments” and see if you can meld them together, or perhaps you might have the start of several pieces that you can go on and develop.
Now you can relax and have a nice cuppa tea. Maybe your ruthless friend can make it for you…
This Time It’s Personal
Take a moment from your life (good or bad) and use it to inspire a song or tune. It could be something you did, how a friend helped you, a life-changing moment or anything else that was an important moment in your life. Really delve into your emotions for this one, how did it make you feel? Remember that you’re telling your audience a story through your music and you want to try and get them to feel what you are feeling.
Tune/instrumental writers – it might seem as though this is a brief only for songwriters but really putting a story into a piece of music with no words creates some of the best instrumental pieces. You can break down the story into individual phrases, using things like rising or falling notes, volume, different instrument sounds and ways of playing notes (AKA Timbre), tempo, key changes, harmony – these are your words, your verses, your choruses and you can use them to communicate your story to your audience through emotion.
If you would like an example of a tune that tells the story very well, then I can highly recommend a project I saw recently by Mirranda Rutter, Rob Harbron and Sam Sweeney called Bird Tunes. They were telling a story about a Wren that flew in while they were composing the album and they tried three times to get it out of the house and nearly succeeded but didn’t quite get there, each time the Wren went into a different room. Then on the fourth try they finally managed to rescue it and get it out the house. The tune that resulted from this is called Wren Bourree and the B-part was inspired by this story. Just from these notes, you can close your eyes and replay that situation even though you weren’t there. That is what you are aiming for with this brief.
Continunununu-ation
We all have our favourite pieces of music that we think “I would really like to write about that subject” or “I would love to build a set of tunes with that one in”. So this week, make your dreams become reality by choosing a tune or song you like and…
Songs: Use the theme of the song to write a new song.
Tunes (Instrumental Pieces): Write a new tune that could come before or after your chosen tune.
The Brief
At some point in a music writer’s life, you may be asked to write something for a particular purpose or in a particular style. It’s good to practice being able to turn your writing skills to different subjects and in unexpected ways, so let’s use this week’s challenge to try it out.
Ask a friend or family member to come up with a brief to write a song or tune to. This could be a subject, a story, a style or genre or anything else that they would like to feature in their piece. They may even decide to ask for a piece that could be included in a play!
Do your best to write to their brief but above all have some fun with it and, if this is your first time writing to a brief, see what you think and whether it is something you might like to do in the future.
Pot Luck
For this last brief, choose 3 words from the list at random and use them to inspire a new song or tune.
Cinnamon | Auburn | Dress | Rugby | Pinch | Walk | Iceberg | Camel | Channel | Salt | Glass | Orange