SongMatrix Retreat, 2025

This is an immersive experience with Wayne Chase, author of How Music REALLY Works! and SongMatrix: How Songwriting REALLY Works! (forthcoming).

Retreat Information and Booking

DATES: August 20 - 24, 2025

LOCATION: REO Resort, Boston Bar, BC, Canada

INFORMATION & BOOKING: Bryan Fogelman 604-307-3122
bryan@reorafting.com

Presenter: Wayne Chase, musicologist and author of How Music REALLY Works and two forthcoming books, SongMatrix: How Songwriting REALLY Works, and Words with Power.

Dates: Aug. 20 – Aug. 24, 2025

Exclusive Content: Each participant will receive more than 400 pre-release pages of material from the forthcoming book, SongMatrix: How Songwriting REALLY Works, plus exclusive content from the forthcoming book, Words with Power.

Retreat Content

Write an Actual Masterpiece During the Retreat!

How is it possible that some songwriters have been able to turn out masterpiece after masterpiece, consistently? What did they know that you don’t know? How did they write so many timeless songs, songs well-loved through multiple generations?

You’ve probably performed many of the songs of these writers, each of whom wrote multiple classics. They’re in a league of their own: Bob Dylan, Lennon-McCartney, the Gershwin brothers, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Smokey Robinson, Andersson & Ulvaeus, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Mercer, Brian Wilson, Neil Young, Cole Porter, Leonard Cohen, Jagger-Richards, Jerome Kern, Berry & Johnson, Hank Williams Sr., Rodgers & Hammerstein, Gordon Lightfoot, Harold Arlen, John & Taupin, Van Morrison, Tom Waits. And others.

These are songwriters whose work is on a whole other level. How did they get there?

The answer is that they knew certain songwriting techniques that today's songwriters and producers have never had access to.

You can learn those techniques. The same ones known and used by the world's greatest songwriters. The same ones required to gain entry to that league.
At this retreat, you will apply all the techniques necessary to write an actual masterpiece during the retreat. And if you work at it diligently, you’ll succeed.

To get to that level yourself, here are some of the things you will find out:

Lyrical Techniques of the Masters

• How to write a lyrical masterpiece in 10 to 20 hours

• How great lyrics implement the interrogative, imperative, and subjunctive moods

• How great lyrics incorporate apophenia triggers for narrative modulation

• Why random selection of words and techniques is vitally important in great songwriting, and how to leverage it

• How great song lyrics implement techniques such as ablaut reduplication, anadiplosis, chiasmus, diacope, and symploce to refresh the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad in the listener’s working memory

• How great song lyrics implement techniques such as adynaton, catachresis, hypallage, prolepsis, and syllepsis to spark a listener’s emotional identification with characters

• How great song lyrics implement techniques such as anastrophe, congeries, enallage, hendiadys, and pleonasm to stimulate the creation of long-term episodic memories in the listener’s brain

• How great song lyrics exploit the psychological effects of time-indicating words and idioms

Musical Techniques of the Masters

• How to write a memorable melody using the melodic chunking technique of the world’s greatest songwriters

• How harmonic scale degrees are used in great song composition

• How all notes of the chromatic scale are used in great song composition

• How and when great songs both implement and break 2^n structure

• How great songs incorporate certain backing vocal techniques such as non-lexicals, pre-echo, vocal takeover, line completion, and counter lyrics.

• How great song composition maximizes the effectiveness of enharmonic change

• How great songs establish a certain melodic pitch range within the first 10 seconds of vocal onset

• How unique recurring chord sequences are used in great song composition

Measurable Standards of Song Quality

• How to objectively test the quality of your song using the Song Audition Matrix (“SAM Exam”): If it passes, you’ve probably got a masterpiece; if not, you probably don’t.

• What to do if your song fails the SAM Exam

• How to calculate your song’s Human Interest Index score (lyrics)

• What to do if your song fails to achieve a score of 70 or higher on the Human Interest Index

• How great songwriters defuse ten musical and lyrical "landmines"

• Why AI is of no use whatsoever in either writing the lyrics or composing the music of a masterpiece-quality song.