Mitch Barrett

Mitch Barrett has been performing original and traditional Appalachian music and storytelling across the United States, and abroad ,for the past twenty years. Mitch has received several awards for his Songwriting, most recently at "The Rocky Mountain Folks Festival" in Lyons, Colorado, where He won first place in this National Songwriting competition. Mitch is very rooted in traditional Appalachian music but he is known for his contemporary representations of Appalachian Music, Storytelling, and Culture.

 

Songwriting Residency:

The residency would consist of Mitch working with small groups of no more than 30 children at a time.

He will do a performance of several of his original songs as an intro to songwriting.

He will then break these songs down, sharing with the students the initial inspiration for each song. Then he'll show them how a song is built, from inspiration to the telling of the story, to basic verse, verse, chorus, verse, verse, bridge, last verse, last chorus, song structure.

This simple,effective structure works for any style of song and is
adaptable for 4th through 12th grade students.

Goals:

To involve students in the process of writing a song.

To show students how songwriting is an extension of storytelling/story
writing. 

To share with the students the experience of communicating through
music,songwriting,and storytelling and how important it is to clearly
communicate our emotions, ideas and beliefs.

To introduce the students to basic elements of harmony,melody,and time structure.