Here is a rarely discussed songwriting tip. The craft you develop in songwriting expands and moves with you from the song you are writing to the next song you are going to write.
As an example: Say you are writing a song that contains a particular rhyme scheme, and no matter how much you try to make that rhyme scheme work, the thought you are trying to express doesn’t translate from the lyric to the listener. By the way, this is something that happens to songwriters all the time. Basically, you are being locked in by the rhymes and this is forcing the thought to emerge as something other than what you are trying to say. A solution to this problem is to change or simply ignore the existing rhyme scheme and focus on what you are trying to say, opening the door to a making the lyric make sense. Now, if this is the lesson you have learned from this song, it will be this lesson that you will take with you to the next song you write.
The real joy of songwriting is that it is a cumulative learning experience that never ends. While you are writing the next song, if you get caught in a rhyme scheme that has you locked in, you have already experienced this problem, and you will have developed one or many solutions to solving the problem to get the thought out in a poetic way. Food for thought!
My name is Randy (substitute your name). I am a songaholic. (quote from Maja – member of You Can Write A Song Songwriting Workshop)
The art of writing is rewriting. Randy Klein
