Bindu Subramaniam on the Power of Music for Emotional Growth
Our co-founder and CEO, Bindu Subramaniam, is a singer-songwriter who believes in the power of music for learners of all ages. In her self-paced course on songwriting, she explains the role of lyric writing – an especially powerful exercise for pre-teens and teens.
Lyric writing is more than just fine tuning your writing skills early (which is always a good thing). It’s also about the emotional strength it helps build along the way.
One of the main activities Bindu introduces in her online course, Songwriting, is the popular object writing exercise pioneered by Berklee College of Music songwriting professor Pat Pattison. The exercise begins with a prompt (for example, “chair”), and students write about it in as much detail as they can. They describe it using their five senses, and two others called the organic sense (how does the object affect your body’s function, like heartbeat?) and kinesthetic sense (how is the object oriented in space and how are you related to it?).
The value of the object writing exercise
The object writing exercise is a great way to free up writer’s block. In addition, Bindu’s younger songwriting students have reported that it helps them make sense of their more complex feelings and articulate them better (even to themselves).
Music is a powerful tool to build resilience and help everyone express themselves better. As a team of musicians, educators, and parents ourselves, it has been a joy to read our students’ writing. While it is a joy to watch them excel as musicians, we are especially proud of the effect the songwriting course has had on their ability to communicate with others and navigate their worlds. If you are a musician looking to expand your skill set, an aspiring songwriter looking for a place to start, or just someone who loves to learn, SaPa’s online self-paced course on Songwriting is for you.
