My Experience At The ASCAP Songwriting Expo – DAY 3

I unfortunately slept in this morning a missed the first class due to being so tired from the previous day. When I got downstairs it seemed as if I wasn’t alone in my exhaustion. I passed Darrel Brown and his manager in the hallway and Brown shouted to me that he loved my song from yesterday — it was so cool! Great way to start off the day!

The first class I attended was Savan Kotecha’s “The Economics of a Hit Songwriter”. Kotecha wrote “Problem”, “Beauty and the Beat”, Bang Bang”, and many more huge current hits. He played a voice memo from the moment the initial idea for “Problem” by Ariana Grande was created and it was cool to hear the bones and basic structure of the song before it became a massive hit. He emphasizes collaborating with other music creators a lot. This is something I’m really focused on incorporating in my life and haven’t done much of to date (95% of what I’ve written I’ve done alone). He said that if you want to be the best at any aspect of songwriting, be the melody person. Melody will pull you through every trend, phase, and will always win.

The last part of the expo was the Writers Jam featuring Andrew Bird “Fake Palindromes”, Aloe Blacc “Wake Me Up”, Ashley Gorley “You’re Gunna Miss This”, and “Andrea Martin “It Kills Me”. They all sang multiple songs of theirs and talked about the genesis of each song. It was a huge highlight and wonderful way to end the expo.

The day ended early and I hung out with everyone and grabbed great sushi. I hung out in the hotel with two buddies of mine, Jeff Pollach (pictured below) and Eddy Walda until 2am jamming on songs and drinking wine. Exhausted and desperately missing my now fiancé, I made the 2.5 hour drive home to San Diego, barely keeping my eyes open.

It was convenient to stay at the Lowe’s hotel (where the conference was held) as each day was very long, but it was also very expensive (around $250 per night)! I would recommend finding someone to share a room with to split the cost and still keep the convenience of not having to travel. You might think that it would suck to share a room but I really had zero down time and only used the room to sleep.

I hope you found this blog interesting and helpful. ASCAP picked it up Day 2 and shared it with their followers on Facebook and Twitter. Please sign up for my free fan club (Home page) to read future blogs and hear my new music. I am reachable at info@jessicalernermusic.com