Writing

[stephen]

How many times do you guys think someone should write and rewrite a song before they think it complete?

[horacejesse]

Who is counting, Stephen? You revise until it is ready. Along the way it is easy to convince yourself it is finished when it is not. Sometimes I have to lay them aside for awhile and go on to something else. I always come back though.Rewrite, revise...there is a difference. After a million revisions one decides to rewrite. After numerous rewrites one is still revising. It can be a long process. I feel real lucky and thankful when it is short.The usual is: numerous times you will think a song is finished; only once will you be right.

[jchitty]

I think Horace has a point when he says, "you revise until it is ready." I do a lot of rewriting and revising on my songs....I'm fairly prolific as well. My problem is not coming up with ideas for re-writes or the rewriting process in general......my problem is finding the money to demo these songs as I'm not a musician, just a songwriter. I started fooling around with Band In a Box, and this is helping me lately. I'm learning how to make rough demoes so that I can have my songs critiqued. I'd suggest getting your rough demoes evaluated. This will help you with those rewrites, and if you do have them critiqued by a professional such as TAXI, then it might result in less frustration and less rewriting of the song....you'll know where to go with it. Rewrites will be easy to do since you haven't committed a lot of money to the song yet.That being said, sometimes you can over analyze a song to death, and then you're back to square one. I'm facing a really tough situation with one of my songs which has already been professionally demoed......it's been getting all kinds of interest by folks, but rewrites and re-demoing is very expensive. It's competing with the money I want to use to demo my new songs.....so I just can't decide.....should I demo some new songs which I feel are even better than this song which is getting interest, or should I go ahead and make those rewrites and changes and spend my funds for a song that 'is almost there.' Ah, decisions, decisions.

[hummingbird]

Quote:How many times do you guys think someone should write and rewrite a song before they think it complete?As many times as it takes There is no magic number. Seriously. IF it has good potential. Some songs just don't and you write them because you write them, but they don't have the right stuff. So you put them in your bottom drawer for later when a word or phrase might inspire something.

[horacejesse]

How much does it cost you to have a song demoed, chits? About $300?

[jsaras]

I usually make small changes to my lyrics over time until I record the song and even then I have done remixes. There are some lines I'm very happy with and others that are just OK. I'll mull over the just OK lines until I come up with lines to replace them that I'm very happy with. When I'm happy with all the lines I know I'm done. I tend to work on one song at a time which results in very few songs written so I'm trying to change that. There are times when the whole song was going nowhere so I'll stuff it into a long term folder and have a look at it when I'm searching for ideas for starting a new song. Sometimes that old junk can spark something I'm very happy with and I start the whole process of weeding out the just OK stuff again. So just ask yourself, "Am I very happy with all the lines of the lyrics? The same goes for melody and hooks.John

[ej]

Re-write until you are happy with your song but one thing I learned was sometimes a producer wants substantial changes to the arrangements you come up with so don't get too attached is my advice, even after you consider it finished, unless you are producing yourself, he/she may want to change something.