lotuscent said:
so i gather that you actually have students record their songs? all of your students are players of some sort or another?
how do you throw a hook in a hat? that is a very intriguing idea.
the more experiences songwriters usually have either recorded their songs or bring in a guitar and perform them. I was actually surprised that a few of the students had no musical experience at all... they had written poems and wanted to know how to turn them into song.
The "hook in the hat" thing is fun. Put a bunch of lyrical hook lines in hat...e.g. "What She Don't Know Won't Hurt Me", "She got new heels and I got the boot", "Two hearts are better than one", "The last time I start over again", "THis broken heart feels so right", or about a thousand more I could throw off the top of my head. Students each draw out a "hook" and write a song based on it.
I try to avoid getting too deep into theory in a songwriting class. They are inextricably linked, as you know, but if you stray too far into harmonizing scales and modes and the like, not only will you lose all the non-musician students, but you'll end up talking theory all day long, which is really another class of its own.
Instead, I talk about most songs being based certain chord changes, and breifly explain that chords often come in groups of three... the 1, 4, 5 progression. That will cover most pop, rock, and country songs right off the bat.

I generally leave the theory at that, and tell the students if they want to know more they should take a atheory class.
I spend the bulk of music-time talking about how different note choices effect the a songs mood, and how to write music that compliments the lyrics. For example, you don't want the highest note in the crescendo of you song to land on the word "scream", because "ee's" are hard to sing, particularly on high notes. Another example would be talking about how linear melodies are common in today's pop music because they are easy to sing, however a well-placed large interval jump in your melody can really evoke a powerful emotion, e.g. the first two notes in "Somehwere Over the Rainbow".
Anyway, it's that kind of stuff that I tend to dwell on, as opposed to straight theory.
A