At the Yosemite Songwriting Retreat, we chose instructors that are not only great musicians but also gifted educators. These individuals bring diverse practical skills and perspectives to their stimulating curricula. Previous instructors include Joe Craven, Melody Walker, MorganEve Swain, Cosy Sheriden, Laura Love, Sam Chase, Eliza Gilkyson, Laurie Lewis, Peter Rowan, and Terri Roche.

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Sadie Gustafson-Zook

CLASSES

Crafting an Honest Song: In this workshop we will create narrative songs based off of our own life experiences. During the workshop Sadie will guide us through a process  that uses free-writing exercises to hone in on a pivotal moment in our life, and organize our feelings, thoughts, and observations around that memory into the shape of a song. 

100 Things to do when you’re in a (song)writing rut: I have a long list of things to try, so pick your favorite and let’s go!

BIO for Sadie Gustafson-Zook: “She uses her voice with the precision of an instrument, leaping between registers and outlining jazz chords, all with grace and ease…” – No Depression

With a pure and agile voice reminiscent of Joni Mitchell, Sadie Gustafson-Zook’s hummable melodies balance with witty lyrics and intricate guitar playing to create charmingly honest and relatable music. A skilled performer, Sadie’s writing tackles internal and taboo subjects while holding the audience with warmth and levity. Sadie’s songs have been endorsed by some of the most respected songwriting contests in the country, winning the Acorn Theatre’s 2024 Singer Songwriter Competition, Kerrville Folk Festival’s 2022 New Folk Contest (as well as placing as a finalist in 2020), earning second place at the Rocky Mountain Folk Fest’s Songwriter Showcase, and winning first place at the 2022 NewSong + LEAF Songwriting Contest. On Sadie’s most recent album “Where I Wanna Be” (2024), Sadie takes the listener along on an intimate analog-recorded journey as she decides where to call home.

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Matt The Electrician

CLASSES

Sideways Songwriting: Using your “Peripheral” Vision

Calisthenics – Approaching Music and Movement

BIO: Matt the Electrician is Matthew Sever, a quirky, sincere folk/pop singer songwriter based in Austin, TX.  He has self-released 11 studio albums, and 2 live CDs since 1998.  Matt moved to Austin, TX from the West Coast in 1996 to pursue music full time.  He regularly tours all over the world, specifically The US, Canada, Western Europe and Japan.  His songs have been featured on Network TV shows, in feature length movies, and in TV commercials.  He regularly plays festivals, theaters, nightclubs, and house concerts, and will continue to do so until he cannot.
www.matttheelectrician.com

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Gail Dreifus

From Start to Finish

The goal of this workshop is to complete a song within the class time. It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or an experienced songwriter. We’ll begin with a discussion about song structure, followed by selection of a lyrical prompt and using the bulk of the class time to complete (or move forward with) your lyrical ideas. Come to this workshop ready to write and ask your inner critic to step outside. You might be surprised at what you’ll accomplish.  

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Susie Glaze

YOSEMITE SONGWRITING RETREAT WORKSHOP FEBRUARY 7, 2026
SINGING FOR SONGWRITERS: A VOCAL MASTER CLASS FOR PERFORMING
SONGWRITERS

Basics of Vocal Production and Performance – Taking it to the Stage

How can you, as a songwriter, think about improving your singing while your focus is on the structure of your song? Good vocal technique can do more for you as a songwriter than you think. It can improve your ability to be more present within the song, relate to the characters and the environment of the song, and become the true storyteller that you want to be.

Basics of Vocal Production. Simple tools for better singing mechanics.

MY “ABCs” OF VOCAL PRODUCTION – THE ESSENTIAL BASICS:

A. Manage your breath and breathing for support of pitch and intonation.

B. Relax the body and resonating chambers for fuller sound.

C. Emotional connection: Feel the emotional impact of your song’s characters and express the poetry and power in the message of your song.

Performance – Taking it to The Stage: Focusing on how you can implement good singing technique consistently into your performance, feel confidence and find greater relaxation in performing your songs. Singers who perform have a unique challenge, and songwriters even more so, to manage all the moving parts of accompaniment and singing simultaneously. We’ll talk about your emotional connection to your song which affects your vocal production. Perfect your singing technique to be able to deliver your songs effectively.

About the Workshop: Led by award-winning recording artist and bandleader Susie Glaze, this is a vocal workshop-coaching session for songwriters who perform. The workshop will introduce students to vocal production basics and will finish with performances of songs for a coaching session or simply for observation. Essential vocal basics will be applied specifically for singer/songwriters who play instruments to accompany themselves in performance.

BIO FOR SUSIE GLAZE

Award-winning recording artist, Broadway singer, journalist, educator and critically-acclaimed powerhouse vocalist, Susie Glaze has been called “one of the most beautiful voices in bluegrass and folk music today” by Roz Larman of KPFK’s Folk Scene. LA Weekly voted her New Folk Ensemble Best New Folk in their Best of LA Weekly for 2019, calling Susie “an incomparable vocalist.” “A flat out superb vocalist… Glaze delivers warm, amber-toned vocals that explore the psychic depth of a lyric with deft acuity and technical perfection.” As an educator, Susie has lectured at USC Thornton School of Music and Cal State Northridge on “Balladry to Bluegrass,” illuminating the historical path of ancient folk forms in the United Kingdom to the United States via immigration into the mountains of Appalachia. Susie has taught workshops since 2018 at California music camps RiverTunes and Vocáli Voice Camp. A current specialist in performance and historian on the work of Folk music icon Jean Ritchie, Susie’s new blog on FolkWorks.com, “Song Notes: A Folk Diva’s Guide to the Galaxy” began in January 2021. Her past articles for FolkWorks.org have also been cross-published in part at No Depression.com.

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Barbee Corff

Performance Toolkit for Songwriters

As a great piece of art needs a beautiful frame, your song deserves to be presented so your audience can follow your emotional lead. Let’s dig into navigating nervousness on stage, feeling safe, prepared and fully present. Through exercises, tips and professional interviews, build your own toolkit with a routine to get you warmed up, ways to get your body to communicate confidence, and how to step into your stage persona. All levels! Everyone gets a chance to share.

Bio for Barbee Corff

As a late-bloomer musician and founding member of girl band “Chickwagon” we supported the creative aspirations of women and girls of all talents, producing shows at festivals for 15 years. Joe Craven invited me to become official ‘Bling Queen & Emcee’ at RiverTunes music camp, where I met Gail and began my YSR journey. My years of emcee experiences and my own growing pains are why I teach performance workshops, where we learn from each other and build a custom toolkit to shine our best onstage!

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Dan Gross

Matching Music to your Lyrics

Lyrics and a musical accompaniment are inextricably connected. Sometime finding that connection can be illusive. This class will begin a process of hearing the relationship of chords to lyrical intention or vice versa. This class is for the beginning to intermediate songwriter.

Topics include:

  • How to move beyond 3-chord songs
  • If you’ve written lyrics, how might you fit chords over these to create the mood of the song?
  • If you’ve written a melody, (suggesting that chords are already anticipated) how might you drive more interest through the choice of chords?
  • Chord progressions: when is simple preferred; when is complex more appropriate?

Chords set a mood

  • Major, minor, & a few others
  • How do the minor chords relate to the major chords
  • Introduction to the Circle of Fifths
  • Play a song written with major chords. Replay same song shifted to minor chords.

Expressing chords in the Nashville system (I, IV, V, etc.)

  • Examples of perfectly “square” song (4 lines of 4 measures) in I – IV – V chords

Boil Them Cabbage Down |  G  /  C  /  |  G  /  D  /  |  G  /  C  /  |  G  /  D  G  |
Love is a Rose |  G  /  C  G  |  G  /  D  G  |  G  /  C  G  |  G  /  D  G  |

  • What happens when you introduce

Minor chord?  (VIm or IIm)

Suspended 4 chord?

Flatted 7 chord?

  • How do those “feel”?  … examples
  • How to “walk” through a set of interconnected chords; chord progressions in which only one note changes from chord-to-chord
  • Student examples of songs with interesting chords

Individual exercise #1

  • Pick a prescribed chord progression and write a quick 4-line song

Chords and Song Structure for Playing Well with Others

  • Chords to enable a “jammable” song: KISS
    Examples of popular folk songs with repeating chord patterns

Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (Bob Dylan) |:  G  D  Am7  /  |  G  D  C  /  😐

I’m Yours (Jason Mraz)  |:  G  D  Em  C  😐

  • Chords for singer-songwriter solo expression

Let Them Go (Dan Gross) |  D  /  C  /  |  D7  /  Dmaj7  / |  D  /  C  /  |  Cm  /  Gm  Gm/C#  D  |

  • You’ve written a song, but the chords are not simple, and you need band members to blend in.  How do you pass on your intent for the arrangement?  (… or do you really want accompaniment?)

Individual exercise #2

Pick a random “special” chord progression and write a quick 4-line song

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Bio for Dan Gross

Dan Gross has performed as a singer since his early school days in Bakersfield, California.  As a young man, he was drawn into folk and Bluegrass, learned the banjo, and explored the American landscape of folk music. He wrote his first song in 2012, performed it first at the 2014 Yosemite Songwriting Retreat, which set seed for more songs to come. Expanding musically to play bass, octave mandolin, tenor guitar, he writes in a variety of modes and meters.

Dan now happily calls Mariposa his home, where music and songwriting joyfully inhabit the place, drawing from the mountain experience of long-time locals and as well as from carriers of traditions in places far away.

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