I’ve been attending songwriter critiquing sessions about twice a month now, to go through new songs I’ve been working on, in addition to continuing to work on my upcoming album. Yes, I am extremely excited about that! Patience is a virtue.
As I’ve spoken about this before, writing a song is the first part of the songwriting process. Re-writing it, now that’s where the true genius comes in. As an artist, inspiration grabs hold of me when it has something important to say. The easy part is listening to that voice and documenting it. The challenge is being willing to take feedback from professionals and my peers and continue re-working the song until it’s ready to be recorded, to either be pitched to another artist, for tv/film placement or to be used for an upcoming album or single which I’m releasing. The key’s to know when the song works, and when it’s time to say goodbye to an idea that isn’t working to let a brand new concept in.
I’ll give you a perfect example of this.
Remember the song “Gold”? I shared it with you during “Help Jen Reach GOLD” RocketHub Campaign.
Thank you again, to all of you RocketHub Fuelers who so
generously partnered with me around this upcoming album.
You are gonna be so thrilled with the final product!
* Click on photo to check out “Gold” now*
Well, I thought it was done. And then a few weeks back, I shared it at two separate songwriting critique sessions and received very similar feedback. Both groups of songwriters agreed that the music and the melody for “Gold” worked perfectly together! The lyrics, however, needed to be re-worked.
Ya, I’ll admit the ego tried to sway me by saying, “You don’t need to change a thing. It works just fine.” But then, thank goodness, humility set in. I went back home to re-work the song. After attempting to keep the lyrical content the same and work around the problem areas, I realized it just wasn’t working. Frustration did set in and then inspiration arrived, just in the nick of time.
I chose to dump all the lyrics and start from scratch. Why? It’s the SONG that’s KING, not me. Ironically, the song is still called “Gold” but it’s a completely different story. I believe the new verison of “Gold” is now much stronger and will touch and move you and others. I’m excited to tweak it a bit more before recording it for the new album!
