Courses FAQ

There is no minimum or maximum. You will choose the courses that are right for you at a pace that is convenient for your schedule. Many members continue to take classes on an ongoing basis to hone their skills and for support and feedback.

SongU.com has a thriving international community of songwriters in different time zones. We do run several GMT-friendly meetings on weekdays and on Saturdays. For more details, see "About Instructor-Led Courses".

Each course is numbered by levels (e.g., 100, 200, 300). Generally speaking, the 100 level classes tend to contain more foundational information, great for newcomers or for a kick start for experienced writers. We recommend beginning with 100-levels. The higher numbers tend to have more specified the subject matter and material.

These are suggested for the knowledge that's required to understand a particular lesson, but are not mandatory if you have obtained that same information at another workshop or on your own.

No, this is a full audio/video recording of the course just as it happened, available to play back at your convenience for 14 days.

You can refer to the DIY course, GEN 110 Preparing Your Audio for Uploading, in your Active Courses area. This course will walk you through how to make sure your MP3 can be uploaded easily to SongU.com. One of the most common reasons is if the MP3 filename has a strange character in it.

Instructor-led courses take place in an interactive audio/video e-classroom at a designated time with your instructor and peers. Instructor-led courses include small-group song feedback sessions. Enter on computer or call-in to the e-classroom. Time zone conflict or missed class? No worries. Meetings are recorded and transcripts are available for 14 days.

1. Select an Instructor-Led course from the catalog and register for it.
2. Look for your confirmation email and follow any instructions.
3. Note that some Instructor-Led courses like FDBK sessions require you to "bring a song" to the session. If so, there will be a link in your Active Courses area where you can select your song to be played and include a note for the instructor to read.
4. At class time, go to your Active Courses and click on the link to go to the course and enter the e-Classroom. View a short 'how-to' video.

• First time? Be sure your audio and/or video work properly. You can test out the e-Classroom using our Virtual Writer's Room
• Miss class? No worries. Meetings are recorded and transcripts are available for 14 days.

Our Instructor-Led courses meet in an e-Classroom that supports audio/video and text access, as well as telephone (call-in) access to a live class in progress. Interaction encouraged. View system requirements.

These are popular small group sessions in which you can get feedback on one of your songs-in-progress from a professional songwriter or publisher and peers.

Courses meet in one-hour blocks and are scheduled on Mondays through Thursdays and Saturdays. Courses are listed in Eastern Time (ET - U.S, New York) and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT+0) for international participants. Courses generally meet in the evening, but we also offer many courses each month at "GMT-friendly" midday and Saturday morning hours. View instructor-led course schedule.

For your convenience, all live courses are recorded and an audio/video transcript is made available for 14 days which will allow you to observe and listen to the class exactly as it happened.

Yes, you can still get feedback on one of your songs even if you cannot make the meeting time by registering as a participant. The instructor will leave feedback for you on the recording.

Even if you miss the registration for a specific course, you can still sign-up to hear the audio/video transcript-only version of that course. All live course transcripts are available for 14 days after the course runs. Simply go to “Add Live Courses” page and sort by “Transcript-Only (prior courses)”.

All DIY and DIY Video Recordings are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week allowing you to work through them completely at your own pace and comfort level. DIY Video Recordings are the audio/video recorded transcripts of several of our most popular instructor-led (Live) courses exactly as they occurred. Other DIY courses are primarily text-based and typically have four to six lessons containing examples and exercises to help you strengthen or tune up your skills at every level in lyric writing, music, commercial songwriting and more.

DIY courses contain anywhere from 1-6 lessons, each of which takes from 10-30 minutes to complete. DIY Video Recordings typically have a running time of about 60 to 90 minutes.

DIY courses provide instructor solutions in the "Putting It All Together" exercises at the end of each lesson when appropriate. Or, you may bring your question to an Instructor-Led Feedback and Mentoring session (FDBK). You can also submit a Help/Support request for the DIY and/or DIY Video Recordings and we'll make sure your question gets answered by a faculty member.

The course content will be available for as long as you are a member, even after you mark it completed.

Yes. We’ve created several versions of each DIY Recording. The appropriate one will be delivered to you automatically based on whether you're on a PC, Mac, and Tablet, iPad or Smartphone.

You just need a browser that is HTML 5.0 compliant -- all of the major browsers support this now so as long as you have an updated version of your browser software, you should be ok. For the best experience, we recommend Chrome, Firefox or the latest version of Internet Explorer. Safari and other browsers work, but they tend to take a bit longer to buffer for the "video" to begin playing. Also, as with the regular "live" classroom sessions, you still need a decent Internet connection.