[MUSIC PLAYING]
So there's a few polishing techniques that can be really helpful as lyricists
to express the song lyric in a way where it's received without the listener
having to play detective.
One of the things we notice in really concrete literal lyrics,
or lyrics that use a lot of imagery, is sentences are completed.
So when we begin a thought in line one, we
complete that thought usually at least by line three.
So it's not a litany of fragments that the listener then has to put together.
A way to determine whether your lyric is reading
with good conversational quality is to read it out loud,
and make sure that there's an agreement between where your harmonic
progression, your chord progressions, cadence,
and the ends of your sentences.
Make sure that you're also adding in words that we use in natural speech
to connect ideas.
Pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions--
you're using and, but, as, with, for, yet, still--
words like that help to clarify our meaning.
And if you think about it, they really don't
take away or add much real estate, in terms
of the stress pattern of our lyric.
But they make it really easy for the listener to take in our message.
When you're using imagery, allow your lyric
to contain those bits and pieces that help the listener to simply stay
in the feeling of the song rather than pull out
and have to do the work of understanding the message before feeling the message.
Another easy polishing technique is to try changing
the point of view of your song.
So if you wrote the song in "I", where the singer is the main character,
try writing the song as directed address.
You-- you know when, or you do this, you feel that.
Sometimes in direct address, we can flip over to "we" in the chorus
so that the message becomes universal and it's
implied that it pertains to all of us.
Sometimes we can take a lyric that's in "I" or "you" and exchange
that for "he" or "she".
Then suddenly, the lyric takes on a quality that just feels right.
Exchanging the point of view from "I" to "you",
or "you" to "I", or to "he" or "she" or "we" in different sections of the song,
too, can be a wonderful polishing technique that
can save a song from instant death.
We thought it wasn't working.
And suddenly it is.
Or just simply allow you some insight into how
the song seems to connect and engage best with the listener.
Another polishing tool we can easily apply is tense.
Tense helps us determine when each section of the song is happening.
It can also help us to iron-out a melodic motif.
When we add "ed" at the end of a verb, or we take it away,
it changes sometimes the number of syllables that we need--
I'm walking.
I walked.
It changes the melody itself, too.
So sometimes, we can just simply overlook the tense of the lyric
and notice how we can use it to express our melody better--
a tighter, cleaner, melody, and also, to keep that tense consistent.
Just like we do in natural speech, we don't suddenly
change from "I'm walking", and then, "I'll see".
Doesn't make any sense.
So don't allow those issues to make it into your lyric
where you're changing tense and the listener is then
focused more on the structure of your lyric
instead of really feeling and being in what you're saying.
So those are some simple polishing tools of tense and point of view,
and not allowing your lyric to be fragmented, but help the lyric
to keep the listener in the moment instead
of on the outside of the experience.