• Articulate your angle or concept to your group–as concisely as possible. Is it focused enough? Discuss.
• Choose two consecutive paragraphs. Are you using verbs that describe what music does in interesting ways? Highlight every verb. Are you using verbs with distinctive meaning? Are you using active verbs (rather than passive). Active verb: “Marvin Gaye politicized his music with What’s Going On?” Passive verb: The music was politicized on Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? Discuss.
• In second color, highlight a few phrases or sentences you’re proud of. Discuss.
• In a third color, highlight a few sentences that need work. Discuss.
• Highlight every music term  you can find in your draft (in any color). Discuss.
• As a group, take a nice long look through our Music Terms page. Are there any terms you aren’t using that would help you expand your ideas. What would the terms help you explain or demonstrate?

• Have a conversation about what is most exciting or engaging about each of your drafts.
• Revisit your conversation about your angle or concepts. Are they focused? Does each paragraph develop the angle in a new way? Does anything feel extraneous?
• Do you use repetition to help you create a cohesive structure–repeated phrases, imagery, idea, or source. Do you add a new twist with each repetition. Recall Hanif Abdurraqib’s repetition, with differences each time, of the phrase “in the beginning.” Have a conversation about whether you are doing this well–or how you might try it, if you’re not already doing it.
• Take a critical look at your first sentence and your last sentence. Are they sharp? Interesting? Do they connect to your angle / concept? How might you revise them.
  
• Choose one of your sentences–any sentence–and revise it three ways. You might break it into multiple sentences; experiment with different tones; play with word choice; or change up the order of the clauses. Discuss.
• Have a conversation about the work you still need to do.  Help each other make a list of changes you want to make as you revise.
• If you haven’t already, have a conversation about what you think you’ll include in your portfolio–and why.

A good memoir mixtape tells a story. Often, the writer will make connections between entries–and repeat details from one entry to another, expanding or putting a twist on them. Like lots of good writing, repetition, with a difference, makes for a compelling structure. It moves readers along, taking us somewhere new from beginning to end, creating a narrative arc. With this mind, discuss the following questions with your assigned memoir mixtape.

1. What is the writer’s concept or angle.

2. What story does the memoir mixtape tell?

3. What details repeat? How are they different when they do?

4. What is the narrative arc of the piece? How does its angle develop? What do we know by the end that we didn’t at the beginning?

5. Choose your favorite use of language in the piece.

1.

• Identify the angle / concept  of one of the artist profiles we read
• Does the title signal the angle / focus? If so, how?
• Identify a moment where the writer uses details to develop or expand on that angle
• Discuss how the first sentence of the profile relates to the writer’s angle
• How does the writer explore the angle to go beyond common knowledge–to teach readers something new?

2. From any of the profiles we read, choose a moment where the writer integrates a discussion of technical aspects of music or uses music terms in a way that feels organic. How does the writer make it work for an audience who may not be well-versed in music technique?

3. From any of the profiles we read, choose a description of the artist that you think is particularly well-written.

4. From any of the profiles we read, choose a final sentence that you think works particularly well.

In Russia, they’re much more afraid of the word ‘riot’. In America, they seem to be more afraid of the other word.  –Linsday Zoladz, on Pussy Riot (How to Write About Music, p. 247)

He is from nowhere. –John Jeremiah Sullivan, on Axl Rose (How to Write About Music, p. 231)

The Spanish press—-man, they weren’t kind. They said Axl was a “grotesgue spectacle”; they called him “el divo.” –John Jeremiah Sullivan, on Axl Rose (How to Write About Music, p. 244)

When I started, it was more often male singers with whom I connected–Elvis Costello and I shared a lot of range–and a little while later the dark brown tones of Nico’s singing provided another source of influence, or inspiration. –Tracey Thorn (Naked at the Albert Hall, p. 7.)

I’ve always thought if Dusty’s voice was a color, it was silver. –Tracey Thorn (Naked at the Albert Hall, p. 36.)

Dragged out from behind the kit and made to stand center stage, it was immediately apparent she lacked the stage presence to do so, and wasn’t a natural performer. –Tracey Thorn, on Karen Carpenter (Naked at the Albert Hall, p. 54.)

And in ‘Goodbye to Love’, listen to where she sings ‘Time and time again the chance for love has passed me by, and all I know of love is how to live with out it’. Now, that’s all in one breath. –Tracey Thorn, on Karen Carpenter (Naked at the Albert Hall, p. 57.)

Scott Walker is  perhaps the greatest example of how far you may have to run to explore those depths and escapes the confines of your beautiful voice. –Tracey Thorn (Naked at the Albert Hall, p. 194.)

Jarring lyrics and soothing arrangements, a juxtaposition I’ve always liked. A sense of having it both ways; ease and its opposite all at once; pleasure and pain; the lovely and not lovely. –Tracey Thorn, on Scott Walker (Naked at the Albert Hall, p. 195.)

Elvis was certainly slippery–deep voiced but childlike in his exuberance, he had a sound that messed with received ideas about maturity and stomped all over the racial divisions that ruled both public space and the music charts at the time. –Ann Powers (Good Booty, p. 126)