Making Music At Masterdisk (that matters) - Michele Gedney

And so fast forward to all the years later, I start working with my friend Dora Williams at her retreat.

I'm one of the founding members and Rick was too.

the name of that retreat?

It's called Writing a Song That Matters.

And we started in, I think it was 2013.

I'm not quite sure, but it started around then.

And, you know, we were small at the beginning.

But I realized, you know, that the same kind of like outreach and dynamic that I had with Rick in like coming together over songs I wanted to employ at the retreat.

And it was just kind of an organic thing.

I didn't have like a plan of how to do that.

But I just remember introducing myself to the group with a song and then people started kind of pulling me into like little rooms off of hallways.

Like, can you help me with my song? And I was like, sure.

So we had no plan.

We had no structure necessarily at that time.

And so I realized like that was my, I keep hitting the mic.

That was my favorite thing to do was to like hear somebody's song and be able to kind of immediately pull out a few things that I thought could make it better.

That's a great perspective when you're this eyeball deep in the song.

Yes.

As soon as someone else hears it.

But they have to understand the craft.

Your friends can tell you it's great, but they can't tell you what's missing.

Exactly.

But it's not only like my input as a facilitator, but then when we get into a small workshop, situation, all of the other people in that workshop are also contributing to that kind of collaborative atmosphere.

And it's really magical.

So, you know, everybody is listening really closely and we all hear different things.