In my non-singer-songwriter daily life, I work as a writer and an editor, as I have for the past fifteen years. Whenever I write an article or a blog post, there’s always that time of “letting go” — knowing the piece is ready to be put out into the world. Over the years, it’s become increasingly clear when that something is actually finished and when it needs more thought and/or tweaking. And the good news is, I typically have a deadline that I’m facing, so the decision is sometimes taken out of my hands. When it needs to be done, suddenly it’s finished.
With songs, it’s more or less the same, although I’m often more personally invested and attached to songs I’ve written, so it can be harder to let go. Also, even though I may have deadlines in terms of showing a song to my feedback group, the Manhattan Songwriters Circle, I usually don’t have any when it comes to performing or recording the song. It has to be my decision — either I’m ready to sing it publicly or record it for posterity, or I’m not. That can be hard.
My personal opinion has become that songs are never really completely “finished.” There have been occasions that I’ve swapped a word here and there even months after I started performing a song; and songs that I’ve been singing for years have had chord and arrangement changes during the recording process.
On the other hand, I do get a strong feeling when a song is “done” — when I’m confident about it, when I’m not cringing waiting for a response from an audience, when I just dig it, that’s all.
I asked members of Songwriting Scene’s Facebook and Twitter communities to weigh in on the “When is a song finished?” quesiton:
Paul Satterlee: “When you feel nothing should either be added to it, or taken away from it. Simple but true!”
Jamon White: “Depends on the writer, everyone will be different. Personally I wait until “me belly smile.”
Brian Kendig: “I’ve had some changes occur long after I thought it was done. But they were improvements that made the song better. Generally, if the song flows and make sense it’s done. Next.”
Greg Troll: “I don’t think I ever know. Sometimes years after I’ve written a song, I realize I want to change it.”
What do you think? Can you tell when your song is really, truly finito?
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If I'm writing prose, even just a blog post, it's often difficult for me to let the piece be finished. There's always something more to tweak. With songs, though, it's more obvious when they're done. There might be a specific line or two I'm not sure of toward the end, but I'm not constantly rewriting bits and pieces of everything.
That's interesting! For me it's often the opposite…i'll be drawn to tweak particular words and little bits of my songs…but with my blog posts I'm not quite as deep…as you can tell, I'm sure!