Danny Arena

Craft of Songwriting Teacher

Danny Arena is a songwriter, composer and professional songwriting instructor. He holds degrees from Rutgers University in both computer science and music composition.

He developed his songwriting workshops several years ago at Billy Edd Wheeler's "Great Smokies Song Chase," where he served as a songwriting faculty member. He is currently an Associate Professor at Volunteer State Community College in Nashville, a member of the faculty at Vanderbilt University and a columnist for the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) Newswire and American Songwriter Magazine.

In addition to being a frequent guest speaker at the Berklee School of Music, the NSAI Workshops, Belmont University and Vanderbilt University, he has also taught at regional songwriting workshops throughout the U.S. and abroad. He has developed songwriting lessons to be used by over 3000 members of the NSAI regional workshops worldwide and his articles for American Songwriter Magazine, Musesmuse and Just Plain Folks have reached over 20,000 songwriters.

He has been a keynote speaker for the NSAI Symposium, served as a judge in several national songwriting competitions and is a mentor for the songwriting organization Just Plain Folks. Every spring he conducts his popular six-week songwriting "short courses" on Music Theory, Composing and the Nashville Number System and is the co-author of the audio songwriters reference series entitled "The Songwriters Survival Kit."

He is a staff songwriter for Curb/Magnatone Music in Nashville. He is also busy at work on developing his online songwriting courses. For more information visit his website at http://www.songu.com