Songwriters wanted; genius optional.

Don't get him wrong, says Ron Simpson, who has taught songwriting at Brigham Young University for the past 25 years; a natural aptitude is helpful, and genius certainly doesn't hurt.

But the George Gershwins and Paul McCartneys of this world are few and far between, he says. And for every one of them, there are dozens of average guys who learn to hone their songwriting skills.

"I see songwriting as a craft; I teach it as a craft," says Simpson. That means, he says, that if you follow certain principles you can raise your chances of success and increase your abilities to connect in memorable ways with your audience.

You can learn, he says, principles of form that determine where verses, choruses and bridges go. You can learn to avoid monochromatic, boring chord progressions. You can refine words and lyrics that impart messages and meanings.

Simpson knows those things because he's seen them happen time and time again in his songwriting classes. Over the past 25 years, some 1,500 students have come and gone through the class. And looking around him now, Simpson is pleased "at how well our former students have done, how well represented we are on the current music scene."

In celebration of that quarter-century milestone, BYU's Tantara Records has recently released two CDs featuring songs by current and former members of the songwriting classes.

"It Starts With A Song," Volumes 1 and 2, feature a "dazzling array of pop-related songs that celebrate 25 years of songwriting at BYU," says Ban Fales, operations manager at Tantara Records. "There was so much good material, it proved impossible to shake it down to one CD." For a complete list of songwriters on these CDs, please visit www.TantaraRecords.com.

Many names on the discs will be familiar to local audiences: Cheri Call, Rebecca Lopez, Mindy Gledhill, Hilary Weeks, Jenny Jordan Frogley, Julie de Azevedo, Cheri Magill, Jeff Hinton (of Joshua Creek), Jericho Road, Tyler Castleton, Staci Peters and more.

Others may be less well-known locally. Steven Stewart, for example, now lives in Finland and co-wrote that country's 2005 entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. Songwriter/guitarist Kim Simpson, of Austin, Texas, just completed a one-man tour of China for the U.S. State Department. Doug Walker was cast as the guitar-toting singer and front man for Opryland's premiere show, Country Music USA. Paul Jacobsen was a finalist at the 2009 Telluride Troubador Festival in Colorado. Benton Paul has toured with American Idol finalist David Archuletta and has been endorsed online by the Jonas Brothers.