Reid Rosefelt
Well-known member
Two years ago I decided I wanted to make an album. While I have notebooks with dozens of songs, I didn’t want to record songs that were written in my teens, twenties, thirties, etc., no matter how much I liked them. I wanted to do a better job than I had done on the old songs.
So, for the first time, I started reading songwriting books. I read over 20 of them. But one book became my bible—Sheila Davis’s “The Craft of Lyric Writing.” Davis had taught a course at the New School in New York and elsewhere about songwriting. It was a very tough course. She would give people a song title and assign them to write a song with that title. So a lot of the book takes these songs, some very good, and demonstrates what’s wrong with them and how they could be better. You see how the rewrites improve something that was pretty decent, and make it into something great. One rewritten song got the student a publishing deal. The message was clear. Never give up. No matter how satisfied you are with what you wrote, you have to be willing to rip it up and try to make it better.
I was very satisfied with a song I wrote recently. I’ve heard it over a hundred times while I was working on the arrangement. I was 100% confident my song was completed. I had used so many ideas she and other writers had taught me. But I had been having a lot of trouble recording my own vocal. The first verse especially didn’t work. Some of this had to do with me having a pretty serious injury lately. It hurts so bad that it’s difficult to type this, let alone play my guitar or piano or sing. Chronic pain is no joke.
The only thing I’ve easily been able to do is keep reading Sheila Davis’s book. Another strand in the book is where she does in-depth studies of songs by the greatest writers of all time, from Sondheim to Sting. Her detailed description of Joni Mitchell’s “Marcie” knocked me out. I’ve read it many times. She shows you all the possibilities that a song can have if it’s written by a genius. I found it very moving and inspiring.
At the end of the book there’s a chapter on fine-tuning. If you didn’t do everything on that list, you had to go back and rewrite. In this checklist she asked, “Have I grabbed my listener on the first line and interested him or her enough to want to hear more?” Well, that was a big fat no. My song is about a real person and I had filled the first verse with research. The town she was born in was a marriage mill—people went there when they wanted to get married in a single day. I wrote a lyric that said people got married there, but she wanted more out of life than that. It’s true, but it would only make sense to people who like to read random Wikipedia entries about midwestern towns.
I knew I had to go back and try again. I had to paint a picture of what her town was like, what she did there, and why she needed to get out. That would set up the chorus. A lot to do in four lines. And of course, it had to be interesting and rhyme and work with my existing melody. And after a few days and dozens of tries, I did make that first verse much better. I’m still fiddling.
But then, it was like I pulled a string out of a sweater. Suddenly I could see all kinds of problems with the rest of the song. I needed to stop relying on the facts I’d found out in my research and free up my imagination to tell this story in a more vivid way. What did it matter if she joined a tumbling act called The Comets? I had to imagine what her tumbling act was like. I think she got thrown really high. She did somersaults in the air at great speeds. How can I guess this? Because she got discovered through this act and became a solo trapeze act in the circus. (Likewise, I have no idea what she did when she was a girl, but I described her doing things like riding bikes and dancing) And she was radiant and very beautiful. I didn't have to guess she looked like this as a teen--I've seen photos of her in her twenties.
I was learning what this song was supposed to be and how I was supposed to write it. I had only written journalism. I needed to write lyrics. I needed to tell her story in a more poetic way.
I’ve already spent much more time rewriting the lyrics than it took me to write them in the first place. And I’m not done. But I believe it will be a much better song.
So, for the first time, I started reading songwriting books. I read over 20 of them. But one book became my bible—Sheila Davis’s “The Craft of Lyric Writing.” Davis had taught a course at the New School in New York and elsewhere about songwriting. It was a very tough course. She would give people a song title and assign them to write a song with that title. So a lot of the book takes these songs, some very good, and demonstrates what’s wrong with them and how they could be better. You see how the rewrites improve something that was pretty decent, and make it into something great. One rewritten song got the student a publishing deal. The message was clear. Never give up. No matter how satisfied you are with what you wrote, you have to be willing to rip it up and try to make it better.
I was very satisfied with a song I wrote recently. I’ve heard it over a hundred times while I was working on the arrangement. I was 100% confident my song was completed. I had used so many ideas she and other writers had taught me. But I had been having a lot of trouble recording my own vocal. The first verse especially didn’t work. Some of this had to do with me having a pretty serious injury lately. It hurts so bad that it’s difficult to type this, let alone play my guitar or piano or sing. Chronic pain is no joke.
The only thing I’ve easily been able to do is keep reading Sheila Davis’s book. Another strand in the book is where she does in-depth studies of songs by the greatest writers of all time, from Sondheim to Sting. Her detailed description of Joni Mitchell’s “Marcie” knocked me out. I’ve read it many times. She shows you all the possibilities that a song can have if it’s written by a genius. I found it very moving and inspiring.
At the end of the book there’s a chapter on fine-tuning. If you didn’t do everything on that list, you had to go back and rewrite. In this checklist she asked, “Have I grabbed my listener on the first line and interested him or her enough to want to hear more?” Well, that was a big fat no. My song is about a real person and I had filled the first verse with research. The town she was born in was a marriage mill—people went there when they wanted to get married in a single day. I wrote a lyric that said people got married there, but she wanted more out of life than that. It’s true, but it would only make sense to people who like to read random Wikipedia entries about midwestern towns.
I knew I had to go back and try again. I had to paint a picture of what her town was like, what she did there, and why she needed to get out. That would set up the chorus. A lot to do in four lines. And of course, it had to be interesting and rhyme and work with my existing melody. And after a few days and dozens of tries, I did make that first verse much better. I’m still fiddling.
But then, it was like I pulled a string out of a sweater. Suddenly I could see all kinds of problems with the rest of the song. I needed to stop relying on the facts I’d found out in my research and free up my imagination to tell this story in a more vivid way. What did it matter if she joined a tumbling act called The Comets? I had to imagine what her tumbling act was like. I think she got thrown really high. She did somersaults in the air at great speeds. How can I guess this? Because she got discovered through this act and became a solo trapeze act in the circus. (Likewise, I have no idea what she did when she was a girl, but I described her doing things like riding bikes and dancing) And she was radiant and very beautiful. I didn't have to guess she looked like this as a teen--I've seen photos of her in her twenties.
I was learning what this song was supposed to be and how I was supposed to write it. I had only written journalism. I needed to write lyrics. I needed to tell her story in a more poetic way.
I’ve already spent much more time rewriting the lyrics than it took me to write them in the first place. And I’m not done. But I believe it will be a much better song.
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