andreastolpe.comReviews of andreastolpe.com

Not only learned all about songwriting but fell in love with cowriting songs, and met the most talented musicians I am happy to call my new musical family. Andrea is an incredible instructor, compassionate, intelligent, insightful, and great at giving guidance. I wrote a dozen songs in only 5 days not including the 3 songs we co-wrote. Amazing experience. I will be back to attend a future retreat!

Andrea Stolpe’s retreat is an opportunity for an intensive week in a peaceful setting to to develop all areas of your songwriting in the company of a small group of talented writers led by a master of the craft. It’s not only what you learn, but the interaction in the form of workshops, daily co-writes (and breakfast, lunch and dinner), that makes this experience so valuable. Everyone in my group felt they came away with new skills and renewed focus to apply to their writing.

I found this retreat a very supportive and nurturing atmosphere for my craft. My songwriting will forever be impacted for the better by this experience. I have already begun to use the skills and tools I have learned and I feel a positive improvement. My songs feel better and I’m not so hesitant to share them with the people in my life. I look forward to seeing how far I can take my new style and voice. I’m confident in calling myself a songwriter now.

Andrea's retreat was invaluable for me as a gigging songwriter and performer. I have always been able to write songs, but this experience provided me with a vocabulary and toolkit to make sense of that skill. I would highly recommend her retreat for anyone who is interested in writing songs and developing a greater awareness of their musical artistry. It would also be remiss of me to not mention the care and support of her amazing team: Madison, it so wasn't a 6.5! Thank you, Andrea, for everything this past week and for creating such a safe and welcoming space for all of us.

Coming from a time where so many of my writing experiences were on-line and/or on Zoom calls, I had been thristing for some in-person songwriting workshops and experiences. Learning from Andrea everyday was amazing. I really loved her eye to songs being everywhere; and that we might be throwing away many more ideas than we realize. The objective analysis of tune-tweaking/fixing is also so potent—to recognize the many varied ingredients of a song that may withstand examination and adjustment is a crucial bit of our toolkit. (Lyric people will tend to tweak lyrics; chord people tweak chords; singers adjust melodies...we can work with any & all of those parts, not confining to our initial tendencies.) Taking account of the full toolkit is essential and expansive. We can ultimately see so many intriguing possibilities. Watching Andrea workshop from this POV with multiple workshop participants was GOLD! Andrea is so quick and fluid with suggesting possibilities. Seeing suggestions implemented in real-time, and hearing a myriad of choices was amazing; and always gave the writer something to go with. What brought everything together, the true "X-Factor," was our group. The in-personess of being in-person! Also GOLD. We all became "gems" in each others' eyes as friends. I knew I would meet great people at Andrea Stolpe's Northern California Songwriting Retreat; but the group learning, workshopping, and writing experience—and camaraderie that we developed—surpassed my expectations. Back to the workshop-y parts though: a huge part of the time was spent in co-writes. I love co-writes! One per-day, geared towards the nightly performance, put us all under the pen, to conceive, write and perform. We showed ourselves and each other that it all could be done. Hearing everybody's songs at the three nighttime performances was a joy to share, with some outstanding songs that my live long beyond the retreat. It has been years since I sat around a campfire, and the opportunity to share song, story, and friendship was a special highlight. Playing underneath the stars to people's full attention was another highlight that I am still cherishing and warmed from, inside-out! After the pressure-cooker of co-writes and performance, the campfire sessions were the perfect times and setting to commune and share longer-baked originals; as well as covers that had us all lifting our voices together in song. Big props to Andrea, Madison and the AS Team for creating an outstanding experience. An sweet and potent blend of techniques, workshopping, creation, and community.

This is awesome

Literally the best music retreat I've been on.

The guest speakers and all of the things i learned is what really made this retreat great. The course was designed very well and even being a writer with a decent amount of experience i was able to take away some very important lessons.