The great thing, about rewriting  as a way of trimming the fat or kind of troubleshooting the bits of your song that aren’t working is that yet, like I said, it’s not, it’s a non-destructive process. So  you can do it and do it and do it and do it.
You can write 3, 4, 5, 6  versions of a song or a section of a song. And if none of your edits or rewrites are actually making it better, then you still have your first version.  So you’re not like  throwing anything in the bin in a way that you can’t pull it out again and, and just go, you know what, this is actually cool. I’ve changed my mind, or I’ve played it to people and they that the bit that I thought wasn’t working is what everyone is like getting excited about. And ’cause that obviously can happen.  So  bear in mind you are not gonna lose anything by doing rewrites.
And it took, it took me a long time to really embrace the habit of doing it and I’m really  glad I did. a  lot of people I know, you know, write six choruses, if you’re trying, if you write your song and you’ve got a feeling it’s good, I’m just gonna have a good drink of water,  why not even do it just ’cause you can  just write five choruses  and maybe you’ll write one that’s better than the one you’ve got and maybe you won’t. Maybe the first one was great after all.
 So yeah, embrace rewriting,  it’s a good, it’s a good habit to form. exercise  could be, take a song you’ve written that’s, that’s on the longer end, maybe something that’s above four minutes. and try, try losing a minute. Like try taking a four minute song down to three. see where you can be brutal and pull out those scissors  and hone and sharpen up  a song that you’ve got that you like.
But maybe it’s just  longer than it needs to be. And oftentimes, as much as you might be attached to the original version,  when you go through that process and hear it again, it can be really refreshing to, to be like, oh yeah, actually  it’s better ’cause it’s just kind of keeps moving along, you know? alright, be direct.  What aspects of your lyric are confusing and throwing the listener off and making it harder to connect with the emotion?
 So, yeah, I think I mentioned this in my previous, webinar. as a lyricist  your listener doesn’t really care about what you feel, they care about what you are making them feel.  So  being, being kind of direct about your, your lyric and your concept, is quite a good thing to keep an eye on.  I mean, there’s plenty of wonderful lyrics where, you know, things are open to interpretation and it’s, you know, not really pinned down what it’s about.
And that, that’s great. I think in those cases it’s really good to just go hard down the visual road  and make paint pictures with words, and make that the strength of the lyric. But if you’re trying to tell a story,  just focus on really, really letting the listener in.  I find often with, with co-writing with people, especially artists who are maybe a little bit  more concerned about how they come across, how, whether this, they feel like the song you’re working on is,  is cool and how they’re gonna feel singing it and performing it.
’cause that’s a huge thing, you know, if you’re just a writer, you’re not the one who’s gonna be on stage or on TV or whatever,  delivering a song to an audience. So an artist really, they have to feel like it’s  theirs and they have to feel good about singing it. So it’s something to be very, sensitive about.
 But oftentimes, I feel like, if, if a lyric is, is vague and it’s hard to grasp and grab hold of what it’s about,  it’s like, is that artistic license or is it just slightly lazy lyric writing?  And I feel like sometimes there’s a bit of a gray area between between the two. it can be, sometimes I think it can be really an excuse to kind of not dig a bit deeper  when you have that conversation with someone you’re writing with and it’s like, I don’t quite get that bit there.
What, like, it doesn’t seem connected to the story and, it’s like, oh, but it’s, you know, it’s ah, it’s kind of, Â it’s this and it’s, yeah, again, it’s like if, if you have to explain your lyric, it’s not, it’s not right. It’s not, it’s not there yet. Â That’s, that’s the kind of mantra I always feel like is a good thing to hold onto. If you’re in a co-write any kind of co-writing or collaborative situation with lyrics, Â anytime you or somebody else is, is like, oh, but this is what it means. And they’re kind of explaining it and kind of having to walk you through it by the hand.
 It’s kind of not,  it’s not there because, you know, if it’s on the radio, you, you can’t go around door to door explaining to everyone, like, what I’m trying to say here is this, you know?  So, yeah, be brave. I think it’s a key thing with, with lyrics is it is good to just be brave enough  to say something real about your life. And  it’s easy, I think to kind of, if, if you’re talking about something that’s very, like from your heart, you know, to, to kind of get the fear a little bit and be like, oh, you know, this is, I don’t know if I wanna put this out there.
Maybe it’s a bit too personal. And then you try and sort of cloak it in,  in kind of a hazy, hazy and vague sort of language. so I think it’s like, yeah, just be, be brave and say something real about, about your experience of, of your life. ’cause it, you know, writing lyrics is you are communicating with people, you’re sharing with people.  And if it’s something that’s universal to  being a human, to being the person and, and it’s something from deep inside off and those songs are the ones that really are  powerful and really connect, with, with people out there.
okay, next point. Sing ability.  Sing ability is  king. It’s so important when writing lyrics  and a great way to, to trim the fat with lyrics  while you’re writing them is kind of  sing them all the time as you write.
 So, you  know, I dunno about you, but like, if you’re in a writing session or if you’re writing on your own and you’re in sort of lyric head headspace,  you are kind of staring at a screen and you are just in, in words, words, words kind of meant world. And it can be easy to get quite separated from the  end result, which is music and melody and something that’s gonna be sung either by you or by somebody else.  And often  things that look great or work great on paper don’t work  when you step up to the mic to sing them.
and something I find I say in probably every single writing session I do is like, does it sing well? Is it singable or like,  what sings better? This version of that lyric or that version? And then again, like talking about the phonetics thing that, that, I talked about in the, last webinar about melodic math and the importance of phonetics of things just rolling off the tongue in a way that sounds cool and sounds good. And, so sing your lyric as you write it, like kind of all the time is, is great  because what can happen, if you don’t do that is you’ll write a lyric and you might really love it.
It might be like, oh, I’ve really nailed that idea and that’s something you’re super proud of.  And then either you or the, or whoever’s singing it steps up to the mic and they’re like, this doesn’t,  it doesn’t come off my tongue easily and there’s too many syllables and that  ugh, can’t breathe. And it’s like,  if you don’t do the process of weeding out that stuff while you write, it all has to be done at the moment when the singer gets up to sing.
 And I mean, that can be fine, but it can also be a little awkward. Like if you’ve got a session singer in that you’ve paid and they’ve only got an hour or something and all of a sudden there’s like a ton of issues with your lyric, around sing ability  and you’re like, oh God, you’ve gotta sort of rewrite on the fly. and it can be kind of a bit stressful and a bit weird, and I mean it, that  it, that can be part of the process as well.
Like where you, you someone gets up to the mic to sing  and those issues come up and you fix them as you go along.  But, I would recommend, doing the sing ability test as you write kind of all the time, just sing it, sing it, sing it, and, and you, and you’ll weed out the stuff that isn’t  helping as you go.
