CONSTRUCTION OF A SONG
Rewriting
Before demo-ing any song, you'll want to be sure it's the best it can be. Usually the first draft of any song can use improvement. So before your ecstasy about finishing it compels you to spend your hard-earned cash on a demo, it's well worth putting your song away for a few days. Being able to look at the song more objectively may spare you the frustration of hearing a publisher or producer say, "This is really good but the second verse needs a rewrite," and knowing you'll have to spend even more to re-record the vocal. Not that a rewrite is a guarantee that it won't happen anyway, but at least you'll know you gave it your best shot.
It's often said that writing successful songs is 10 percent writing and 90 percent re-writing. In interviews with hundreds of hit songwriters, I have rarely heard them say that their hits came out all at once in their final version. The ones who can get close to the finished song the first time around have been at it so long that their creative flow and critical faculties practically work in unison. Even relatively inexperienced writers will find they can occasionally write a song in 15 minutes that's practically in its finished form. But for most writers, those times are rare.
One of the differences between a pro and an amateur writer is that the pro usually recognizes from the beginning that he or she will probably be able to come up with rewrites to improve the song. The amateur tends to think that everything that comes out of the original, inspired state is wonderful and shouldn't be tampered with.
The latter attitude is the enemy of professionalism. Most writers go through this stage of development with great difficulty. The first time a publisher or producer rejects a song and suggests a rewrite, the writer usually rebels, thinking, "Who are you to criticize my work? Nobody knows better than I when it's finished or not!" I've watched many writers go through this stage, take the suggestions, rewrite and be forced to admit to themselves that they really liked the changes they made and felt the songs had become much stronger. Once they have gone through that experience, the perspective makes them much more open to change, particularly if the end result is getting a song recorded or published. This doesn't mean that every criticism you receive is valid just because it comes from a so-called authority, but it is necessary to keep an open mind even if you eventually decide to leave the song unchanged.
Although it may be important to your livelihood that you rewrite for commercial considerations, it's most important to satisfy yourself that this is the best work you can do. Hopefully, you want to create something that will continue to be enjoyed for a long time. Five or twenty years from now, you don't want to be embarrassed to hear that song and know that if you'd just been a little harder on yourself, you'd be proud of it.
Sometimes it's valuable to imagine your toughest critic reading your lyric or hearing your song and picking it apart. It may point up some flaws that you hadn't noticed before.
Here are some areas to look at for possible rewrites:
(1) Make sure your lyrics and music work well together and you haven't placed accents on the wrong syllables or tried to fit too many words together in a short musical space. Words need to be easily sung and comprehended.
(2) Can you substitute an image or action or dialogue line that will condense and heighten the impact of the song? The less wordy a lyric is, the more room an artist has to phrase it in his or her style.
(3) Is every line important and every word necessary? Hit writer David Gates says that if he can omit a line without affecting the meaning and flow of the lyric, he knows he has to replace it with a stronger one. Every line should contribute to the overall meaning.
(4) Does your song contain all the dynamics necessary to hold a listener's attention? Does your chorus stand out melodically from your verses? Can you rearrange rhyme schemes or meter to enhance the difference between sections of your song? Try some alternate melody lines while imagining an appropriate singer performing them. You may find something better than your first idea.
Jack Segal, hit lyricist, super craftsman and teacher, lays out some tools for rewriting in his lyric class and they're well worth knowing: Reduction, Inversion, Insertion and Rhyme Relocation.
A) REDUCTION
Reduction is the shortening of sentences or lines. Specifically, making fewer syllables and fewer metric feet. Let's take a line that's seven metric feet. (U= unaccented / = accented)
U / U/ U/ U/ U/ U/ U/
And there I was just hang - ing on to all those worn out lines
Take out the useless words and cut it down to five feet with a one-syllable pickup:
U U / U/ U/ U/ U/
I was hang - ing on to all those worn out lines
Always look for ways to streamline your lyrics. If the above line was locked into a musical pattern that accommodated the first version, the reduced version would lend itself to a variety of new phrasing possibilities that the first version didn't offer.
B) INVERSION
Inversion is a tricky form of rhyme relocation, reversing part of the line so that a new rhyme word emerges from the interior to the end position. It's important to preserve the natural, conversational flow of the line and if the inversion appears to have been done only to achieve a rhyme, it feels awkward.
"I loved you then, I love you still,
Break us up, they never will."
That's an example of a mediocre line gone bad. "I love you still" is an acceptable inversion of "I still love you," but the last line is one you'd never say in conversation. Obviously, the most natural line is "They'll never break us up." You could say "they try to break us up, they never will." You'd then have two complete thoughts. If that possibility messes up your meter, you'd have to go back to the first line and look for another end word to give you a new choice of rhymes. In doing so, you might use another form of inversion by inverting the order in the first line to "I love you still, I loved you then" giving you "then" to work with. In this case, you're also reversing the natural time order of "then"/"still" which weakens the line. You could also say, "I love you now" instead of "still" though it does have a slightly different meaning which is an important element for consideration in this jigsaw juggle.
Sometimes, it's better just to start over!
C) INSERTION
This is filling in the blanks when the desired meter, number of syllables and lyrical concept are known: You've got your verse or chorus written, your meter is established, you know what you want to say. You realize that there's a weak line in the middle that could be replaced. Now you have a real jigsaw puzzle.
Here's an example in something I wrote. The first draft:
She drifted past the mirror but she didn't even look.
A week ago she would have fixed her hair.
I could see that the spark had vanished from her eyes,
And she was too far in the ozone now to care.
I felt I needed something to replace the third line that said something about the emotional impact, the desperation the man was feeling.
She drifted past the mirror but she didn't even look.
A week ago she would have fixed her hair.
I was fading from her life and trying to hold on
But she was too far in the ozone now to care.
Even that line went through the same process, from: "She was shut out of my life and I needed to break through" to: "I was fading from her life and I needed to break through," which felt more vulnerable, to the final choice which felt vulnerable but also more helpless.
D) RHYME RELOCATION
Rhyme relocation is the flip-flopping of the rhymes to strengthen the power of the lyric and rhyme. The stronger rhyme-word of the two should come second whenever possible. Inversion is actually a form of rhyme relocation. You get more power out of placing the strongest word as the end rhyme. There are words that are obviously more powerful than others, said/dead, had/bad, dream/scream, well/hell. Obviously, the second word in each pair would evoke the strongest emotional response in the listener. If you find you've got the strongest word first, try to reverse them. It won't always work and ultimately, it's a juggle between the power of the line, power of the word, meaning and flow. The principle, overall, is always to escalate toward the most powerful word, line or idea.
If you're writing a story song, save the payoff till the last verse. The last line of every section is a power position because it's where the tension is released. If you blow it with a weak line, chances are that the listener will feel let down enough to have forgotten that brilliant line in the middle of the verse. In the case of lines, an interesting example is in George Michael's (Wham) hit, "Careless Whispers," "To the heart and mind Ignorance is kind." If you turned the lines around, you'd get a slightly more natural, conversational feel but you'd lose considerable impact since "Ignorance is kind" is the real payoff line.
If you're writing the lyric first, you have the luxury of performing these changes without restriction, however if the change gives you a different meter, you'll want to follow through with the same meter in the rest of the verses, or the rest of the choruses (if that's what you're changing). If you don't, you'll give your melody writer a nervous breakdown. At times, it's actually easier to make reductions when the melody and lyrics are already married. When you're able to sing it, you'll notice the awkward little spots where you could drop a word or two and give the singer more time to hang onto a word. It's also easier to feel when an insertion might help to enhance the rhythm of the lyric. Adding a word or two in the right place could help make the song "catchier."
There are obviously no hard and fast rules about this, but the general principle is that every word should perform a valuable function for the song. If it does nothing to enhance the rhythm, meaning or sound of the lyric, it shouldn't be there.
Once you're used to working with these techniques, you'll find that you'll use them very quickly to explore the new possibilities they provide.
Next: Writing on Assignment
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