Truefire Ellis Paul Song Factory The Song Grows Up

The Song Grows Up from Ellis Paul, the second edition of his Song Factory series, is where your song crafting skills and perspiration take over from the inspiration and passion that brought your song idea to life (see Ellis’ Birth of a Song edition).

Many songwriters believe that the true art of songwriting doesn't emerge until the editing process begins, and it's here in this edition that Ellis passes on the insight, process, and his highly acclaimed “Editing Wheel” toolset for editing and refining your work to produce a finished song suitable for performance and recording.

Ellis Paul has written over a thousand songs and has co-written with a who’s who list of major artists. Also a passionate educator, Ellis has mentored hundreds of songwriters over the years and his teaching materials and toolkits on Performance, Song Creation, and Song Editing are referenced daily in the writing rooms of thousands of accomplished songwriters all over the globe.

In the first section of The Song Grows Up, Ellis presents his Editing Wheel toolset: The Mission Statement: The Why, The What & The Who, Your Verses: The Story Begins, The Melody: The Staircase, The Senses: Witness the Song, Orchestration: Tension & Release, Narrator & Audience: Are You Talking to Me?, Believability: Speak Your Truth, The Bridge: Fresh View, The Chorus: The Emotional Lift

”We’ll be working with a toolset I call "The Incredible Editing Wheel,” which essentially is a process for refining your song's Mission Statement: the who, what and why of the song. Once you understand what the song is saying, who the audience is, and what you want it to do in the world, you'll have a better time recognizing where it falls flat in meeting those goals.

The Editing Wheel visualizes the process by breaking the song into its various parts - the verse, chorus, melody, orchestration, narrator, the senses, believability, and bridge - and asking, How does each part of the song support the mission statement? What is the tone, the subject, who is the narrator? How can each one of these sections be refined in a way that improves the mission of the song? How can the story be told better, sung more beautifully, more melodically, played with greater emotion?”

In the second section of the course, Ellis presents a series of lessons focused on the The Arc of the Song demonstrating how his own material was crafted using the editing wheel toolkit.

”In the Arc of a Song section, I’m going to show you three of my own songs; Battle of Charlottesville, The Innocence & the Afterlife, and Straight to the Moon. I’ll take you from the birth of the songs from the first draft, all the way to the final draft. All my journal entries and the MP3's of the work tapes will be included, so you can see the process of taking a song into the final stage.”

Ellis will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches as you work through the course. In addition, you’ll be able to loop or slow down any of the videos so that you can work with the lessons at your own pace.

Grab your pen and guitar - let’s write songs with Ellis Paul!