Students win national song contest

Bethlehem College students (from left) Daniel Cossey, 14, Mackenzie Lines, 14, Samuel Tanner, 14, Jethro Wall, 14 and Josh Dodanduwa, 13, won a national songwriting competition. Photo / Andrew Warner

Children around the country will soon be crooning along to a song written by five Bethlehem College students.

Daniel Cossey, 14, Mackenzie Lines, 14, Samuel Tanner, 14, Jethro Wall, 14 and Josh Dodanduwa, 13, entered the Hook, Line and Singalong competition with the rest of their music class earlier this year.

The annual competition, run by the New Zealand Music Commission in conjunction with Music Education NZ Aotearoa and Music Works, asks primary and secondary students to write a song that New Zealanders would want to sing.

The winning song is then distributed to all schools throughout the country to learn and on the last Friday of May, New Zealand Music Month, the schools all sing the song at the same time in a country-wide singalong.

The winners also get a $500 Music Works voucher and travel to Auckland to record their song in a studio with a New Zealand musician as mentor.

The five Bethlehem College students wrote their song Stickytarday together both in and out of class.

The name of the song describes a hot summer day when the tar on the roads becomes sticky because the sun heats it up.

"That's the feeling of the Kiwi summer," said Josh.

The boys began by creating the instrumentals for the song.

The intro was created first and was originally in a rock music style, but the boys were advised to "change it up" by their teacher Catherine Graham.

"She put us on ukuleles and bongos which was really fantastic," Josh said.

The boys got together and recorded the different parts of the song, then after much trial and error, put all the parts together for the final product.

"We had to do it through heaps of lunch times. We finished it on the last day, it took us five weeks."

Josh said through the songwriting process, the group learned the general structure of a song, how to make it flow well to make it catchy and how a hook and key changes were important.

The boys were told about their win when they were in maths class. They all got notes to go and see Mrs Graham, who originally fooled them into thinking they were in trouble.

"We were extremely excited about it," Josh said.

The boys will travel to Auckland on April 18 to record their song at Roundhead Studios with the help of musician Ben King.