Social and Musical Effects of Co-writing : Performing and analyzing six co-writes

Abstract: This study examines social factors in songwriting collaborations with the aim to understand the inner workings of co-writes. Previous research indicates significant benefits with songwriting collaborations, both related to productivity and creativity (e. g. Bennett 2012, Littleton & Mercer, 2012). Nonetheless, it can be creatively frustrating to make music in a collaboration that does not work like expected. What is significant about the musical work in a fulfilling co-write? And how can you find your way out of struggle together? While there is qualitative research on musical collaborations, this study is distinguished by that the researcher is partaking in several co-writes. Six collaborations were documented with various methods, including video and audio recordings, post-hoc reflection, semi-structured interviews and communication memos. The comprised material was transcribed and analyzed in order to reveal socio-musical tendencies in the co-writes. The research suggests four socio-musical categories for explaining actions in co-writing sessions – ‘Artistic Concept’, ‘Concept’, ‘Meta’ and ‘External’. The two first categories are more artistically connoted, where the last two are more socially signified. During the study, purely artistic actions were outweighed by more socially connoted actions in the co-writes. This resulted in a fairly low generation of musical material per session. The prevalence of bonding may be seen as a way of avoiding rejection, which is a possible outcome when suggesting musical ideas (Bennett, 2012). The sessions that were most fulfilling for the researcher were characterized of nonverbal, musical means rather than linguistic ones - where the collaborators didn’t talk about the music, but connected through songwriting. High rates of fulfillment connected to musical communication was also supported by numerous co-writers in the project.