Opinion

Where to Get A Critique and What to Expect

Posted on by IJ

© I.Woloshen

First of all, let me say that I don’t privately critique lyrics anymore for several reasons. The most important one being that it takes a lot of time to do a proper critique of most lyrics, and I just don’t have that time anymore! Be happy for me, that’s a good thing 🙂

So what I want to do is give a list of places where you can post your lyrics for critique. There is no guarantee with any of them that you will get lots of critiques, or even good ones, but it’s really important to keep trying to get feedback on your songs, so these places are a good starting block. For most of them, you simply have to scan down to the “lyric critiques” section:

The Muse’s Muse forum is tops on my list because I know that Jodi keeps an eye out for what is going on there. I know how sensitive you all are to having your lyrics evaluated by people you don’t know 🙂

The Just Plain Folks forum is also a good one, and busy! You can also get feedback on your mp3 files if you have ’em!

If you do a search on any search engine using keywords “lyric critique” you’ll find a bunch more, I promise you, but the ones above are set up by people that I know and therefore recommend. Now, onto the “what to expect from a critique” part of our discussion 🙂



I’ve got other articles on critiques and how they work, etc., but I still find that many songwriters really don’t know how to judge a critique and what to take from it. The first thing you must realize is that many songwriters who will critique your songs on these boards are in the same position you are…they may not know all, but they are sincerely looking to improve their craft. You can expect some of them to pat you on the back…”great song!”…”wow, I really like this!”. This might make your head swell, but it isn’t much of a reality check 🙂 What you NEED from a critique can be broken down into several things:

1. Honesty. This doesn’t mean that the “wow, this is great” comments aren’t honest, but they really don’t help you much. There is no perfect song, and always something you can do to improve a song. Those who are willing to give you an honest assessment, are your best friends! Even if they don’t like something!

2. Meat & Potatoes. You need people to tell you, as much as they can, why something isn’t working for them. Do they misunderstand your lyric’s message? Do they get mixed up with your songs’ characters? What isn’t working and why? Don’t be afraid to ask questions, just remember not to sound too defensive 🙂

3. Suggestions. You can take them or leave them, but if someone suggests another way of writing something, give it a good look first before you decide to ignore it! You might not want to re-write exactly that way, but it might give you a better understanding of where they are coming from and what isn’t working.

4. Twice is Right. If you don’t agree with an assessment, that’s cool. But if you hear the SAME THING from more than one source, this is really something you should take a second look at! Don’t ignore it, don’t let your hurt feelings get in the way.

5. The Truth Hurts. Critiques are NOT easy to take in the beginning. But someone who takes the time to give you the hard facts, some real feedback, is worth thanking. So PLEASE remember your manners and thank them, even if they just mashed your song to pieces and flushed it down the loo.

Try doing a few critiques yourself on these boards so that you can feel what it’s like to be on the other side. Just because you don’t think you know enough, you can still offer some feedback, and that is a very valuable thing!

Okay, now take a deep breath, and put your lyrics out there!

[Oh, and p.s. – if you know of a great forum where you can post lyrics and songs for feedback, please let us know and add it in the comments below!]

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Rejection – Three Stages of Recovery

Posted on by IJ

© I.Woloshen

Oh, boy…how many of us have had to go through some kind of rejection in our lives? It would be pretty unusual to meet someone who hadn’t! As positive a person as you might be (and I am!), there is nothing that will get you through the pain of rejection other than simply going through it. In the business of music, you are going to face a lot of rejection. And you are probably going to take it pretty personally at first, especially being a creative type, because whatever you write literally feels like it is a part of you, and having someone reject your song, your music, feels like it is a rejection of YOU! A figurative slap in the face. But of course, it isn’t. The person rejecting your music doesn’t know you, and has probably had to reject a thousand other songs/artists in the past, so it becomes a very matter-of-fact process for them. This is the very first step you have to take in recovering from such a rejection: realizing that it isn’t personal.

I remember my first negative review of one of my CDs…while it wasn’t blatantly horrible, it said a few things that made me cringe…that I sounded like everyone else, that I had little originality. The reviewer wished I done more this and less that. At first I felt like someone had just slugged me in the stomach. My thinking got pretty defensive, and I ranted to anyone who would listen 🙂 Eventually I got past the emotional stuff and was able to remind myself that IT IS VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO PLEASE ALL OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME!! This is a major key, folks. That reviewer was listening for what HE wanted to hear, and didn’t get it. Oddly enough, all of the positive response I got had somehow been overshadowed in my head by that one review…isn’t that stupid? And yet there were lots of people who loved the CD! Once I had settled down, I also realized I had learned something really important. There’s a difference between someone simply not liking what you do, and actually having some problems that need fixing. You’ve got to learn the difference between these two things! If a publisher says your song doesn’t fit the genre they’re looking for…it doesn’t mean your song is bad, it means THE SONG DOESN’T FIT WHAT THEY’RE LOOKING FOR. It’s amazing what we ‘hear’ in a rejection, even if it really isn’t there!! In the beginning you’ll almost always confuse what you hear with what they’re actually saying 🙂

So let’s nail down a few things you are going to need to know. First of all, what you feel is what you feel and it is silly to try to suppress those feelings…so feel ’em. Let yourself be hurt, angry, depressed, whatever. If you deny them, you’ll be asking for trouble. Those feelings will show up unexpectedly in other ways that don’t have anything to do with your songs.

The next stage will be a little easier…the emotions will lessen to some extent. This is when you can start looking at what went wrong and distilling it down to the stuff you can’t do anything about, and the stuff you can. Ever heard the serenity prayer? It talks about having the wisdom to know the difference between what you can’t change and what you can. You can’t change someone else’s taste in music! Duh! They like what they like and that’s it! Later on, I talk about how to handle a critique…but let’s assume you send a song out to a bunch of publishers, and some of them send a kind of report back to you about the song. They all reject it, and have different things to say, but then you notice that several of them say the same thing. THIS is what you pay attention to! For instance, maybe they don’t like the lead vocal. HEY! You could find another vocalist! There’s an idea 🙂

The third stage has to do with taking the steps you need to try again. Some people never make it to this stage or the second. That’s because they’re still stuck in the first one…still ranting about some reviewer or some publisher’s rejection of their songs. If that’s where you want to be, well no one can change that. I have learned, however, that the more you go through the process of rejection, the faster you’ll go through the first stage. You’ll recover more quickly because you’ll KNOW HOW TO. In Nashville, it takes an average of 7 years for a songwriter to get anywhere near having a cut on an artists album. SEVEN YEARS of rejection. Could you handle that? One after another after another?

There is one more type of rejection I want to talk about. It’s called “indifference”. I almost hate that one more than outright rejection. An example of it might be when you’re sitting in a place playing your heart out and nobody’s listening. Nobody. Your head is full of thoughts like “what the hell am I doing this for?”. Or sending out your songs to people and never hearing a THING back. Indifference. It’s a kind of quiet type of rejection that sneaks up on you rather than hitting you suddenly.

My solution to this one is a little different. Keep moving…keep putting one foot in front of the other. Let go of an expected outcome to ANYTHING. The fact is that when you’ve worked long and hard enough at it, the little rewards will start to come from unexpected places. If you are too busy looking for the obvious rewards, you might miss those other ones! They are really important, because they are the little bits of fuel that will keep you going when times are tough!

And one very last thing…remember why you write songs in the first place, and you’ll survive anything! Guaranteed 🙂

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Success – What’s Standing In Your Way?

Posted on by IJ
A digital sound recorder
Image via Wikipedia

© I.Woloshen

“Success” is a relative word, and your idea of it can change as you inevitably do. For instance, in my teens and 20’s (ugh!) I measured success by my position, my income and the number of friends I had. Well, the part about friends hasn’t changed much 🙂 But everything else has!

These days I define my success much more simply…I ask myself, am I doing what I want and love to do? Most of the time, I’m happy to say, the answer is yes! But it took me a long time to get here…

I believe that the largest hurdles we have in front of us are the ones we put there ourselves. Never mind what the “others” say, what are the things you tell yourself? Have you ever listened to your own thoughts? I know, that sounds weird and new agey, but have you? What kinds of things do you tell yourself? Do you encourage yourself and keep a positive attitude, or do you tell yourself over and over “I’m a terrible writer, I can’t do this, I’m not going to make it”? Creative people, on the whole, tend to be extremely sensitive…it is that sensitive part of ourselves that gives us the insight to our own creative juices, but it can also be a burden. The downside to sensitivity is the old chip-on-the-shoulder syndrome when things aren’t going the way we’d like.

But knowing all of that, what can we do to get a little closer to our idea of success? Being songwriters, sometimes we lose our ability to come down to earth and establish some structure in our lives! But structure, organization, plans and work are all necessary ingredients! Here are a few steps you can take:

1. Identify – write out what your idea of success is! Sometimes we meander around the subject without really clearly identifying anything about it. What is success to you? You can give yourself a time line, if you like. “In five years I’d like to be…” Work your way backwards, all the way to what you can do today!

2. The Steps – what steps can you take to achieve your goals? Make two lists…one will be the more major steps (ie…I want to get a publishing deal, I want to record a CD…etc.), the other will be the little steps! I can tell you right now that the little steps will be the most important!! For instance, if you want a publishing deal, there are several things you need to do to make that happen. You need to identify the publishers who might be interested in your songs, you have to have a decent recording of your songs, you need to collect addresses, make a list of who you’ve sent to, etc., etc.

Perhaps your primary goal is to become a better writer. Well, that goal is never off my list! Again, you would benefit by sitting down and determining what it is that YOU NEED in order to begin achieving that. Do you need to improve your lyric skills? Do you need to be around other writers? A few visits to some open mics? Are a couple of piano lessons in order?

3. Be Prepared To Change – For heaven’s sake, if something isn’t working, let it go! It’s okay to move onto something else! Stubbornness and determination are admirable qualities, until they are just plain stupid!

4. Opportunity Meeting Preparedness – I’m sure you’ve heard that expression before. People who have achieved success weren’t just sitting around waiting for it to fall into their laps. Well, most of them anyway! They were able to recognize an opportunity when it hit them square in the face. You may think that is obvious…but you can never be sure exactly when it’s going to hit, or how. A little story, if I might: When I’m almost finished recording a song, I tend to make a DAT copy of it (digital audio tape) just so I can have it there to listen to for myself, and for whatever else I might need it for. A couple of months ago, my husband and I had a business meeting with an old friend in our home, not related to songwriting in anyway, just an investment opportunity. This friend brought his business partner with him, and we spent an hour or so discussing this new business. At the end of the talk, we started chit chatting about other things, and it so happened that this friend mentioned to his partner that I was a songwriter and had a studio downstairs. Lucky for me, I’d cleaned it that morning 🙂 So I invited them down to see the studio. I happened to have my DAT machine hooked up with the tape in it, and my friend wanted to hear the latest version of Catnip (a song he’d participated in recording). It JUST SO HAPPENED that his business partner was ALSO a songwriter and NOT ONLY THAT, but he had a line on a guy who was looking for material for an up and coming group, so I played him some of the songs…was that a coincidence? No, it was opportunity meeting preparedness 🙂 What comes of it doesn’t matter, but I was ready!

5. Critical Line – ever heard of this expression? It refers to the steps that have to be taken in order to achieve goals. Even at their jobs, most people spend a great deal of time doing the peripheral things that aren’t getting them any closer to getting the job done. Like sharpening pencils and tidying the desk, or getting distracted by something entirely un-job-related. Try to spend 1/2 an hour each day completely devoted to your critical line…doing something you need to do, even if it’s just a boring “little step”. Time is everything! So is discipline!

6. Discipline – is not one of my strong points. I consider myself a naturally lazy person, and have had to battle with myself most of my life to do what I need to do. This can be applied to just about anything in your life…but in order to succeed, you need discipline! Instead of throwing too much on yourself too quickly, take those “little steps”…see how important they are? But taking just one of those will make you feel better! And when you feel better, you’re likely to do more! It’s magic 🙂

7. More Irons in the Fire! – I know you’ve heard quite the opposite…that you can’t have too much on the go, but I’m here to tell you that when it comes to writing songs, the more your songs are “out there” the better it is for you! I don’t mean that you should be careless about it, BUT, if you’ve ever listened to some of the stories of how songwriters got their music heard, most of them had quite a long trail of opportunities. Someone just happened to hear a recording in the other room that someone’s cousin was playing that just happened to be sitting on the top of a pile…you know what I’m saying? Great songs aren’t just AUTOMATICALLY HEARD BY ALL THE “RIGHT” PEOPLE! It can take years for a great song to get the attention it deserves! So multiply your opportunities…let other people perform your song, play them at every chance, let people hear ’em!

8. Diversify – You’ve heard the saying “putting all of your eggs in one basket”. Having any kind of career in music means you have to diversify. The statistics are that less than 1% of songwriters make more than $5000 a year from their writing. That means that more than 99% of us have to have some other kind of income. I teach guitar, write music for television, write and perform…when some areas are not as profitable or emotionally satisfying, others are! As long as it is music-related, I’m happy. If it comes down to employment (and it inevitably does!), try to find work that is related somehow to your music, or at the very least, find work that allows you to BE a songwriter, go to open mics, or run off to the bathroom and record an idea when you have one 🙂 Then again, a job that is completely non-music related is sometimes perfectly satisfying! I’ve met writers who LOVE songwriting, but also love their jobs. Wouldn’t that be nice? 🙂

Okay, well there you have it…some ideas as to how you can achieve your idea of success. You know, half the time I write these articles as much for myself as I do for you 🙂

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How I Critique

Posted on by IJ
Song lyrics
Image by matsuyuki via Flickr

© I.Woloshen

Critiques can be brutal. Most of the time, the level of brutality is in direct relation to the thickness of your skin! I used to scoff and bristle at ANY suggestion that my songs might be less than perfect! How dare they!!??

More and more, I come across this scenario…people send me their lyrics for critique, I spend some time on them and send a reply, and never hear another word! Is it that I’m expecting you to love what I say? Not at all…you’re not likely going to agree with everything, in fact you may outright disagree with every word! I am not an insensitive boor who loves tearing other songwriter‘s work apart, but I DO tend to be quite upfront about the weaknesses and the strengths, whatever they may be. Therein lies the point…what do you expect of a critique?

The first and most important point…I can never emphasize this enough…is that it is nothing personal!! I can love you as a person and not like what you wrote! I can just as easily think you’re a twerp and LOVE your writing! Okay, I’ll admit that there are VERY few people in this world that I totally dislike 🙂

Secondly, I am at least equally as hard on myself when it comes to my own writing! I will never say anything to you that I wouldn’t say to myself…in fact, I’m probably easier on you than I am on me because I don’t know how for sure how sensitive you might be. The truth is that I want you to get better…and how can you improve unless you can identify your weaknesses? I want the same for myself.

I do not treat anyone differently…the only exception to this would be a very young songwriter (in age, not experience), in which case I try to be more encouraging. If a nine-year-old came up to you with her first serious effort at drawing a cat…you’d think twice before getting too critical.

Lastly, I compare ALL lyrics/songs with those on a professional level. If you want to be a carpenter, you have to set your goals in such a way that you can compare your work with the best darn carpenter you know. Even if you intend only to be an amateur songwriter, the very fact that you’ve sent your lyrics to someone for a critique shows that you want to be good at it, no? Otherwise, why bother?

In my experiences being a reviewer on Gods Of Music , I’ve noticed a number of things in the feedback artists/bands give reviewers when they get their reviews. This is a really common response…”you didn’t get my song/you didn’t understand my music”. Who’s responsibility is it to get the message across, the reviewer, or the songwriter/artist? If someone doesn’t understand your music…especially if a number of people don’t, you have to start looking at whether or not you are doing enough to communicate in your songs. You are putting yourself out there into the “big, bad world” of the music industry and they are not going to be nice. They are going to be brutally honest. So get used to it!

Another response…”I got a great review at (some other obscure reviewer or article)…”. This doesn’t mean anything…all it does is reflect the wide variation of responses you will inevitably get to your songs. Don’t expect everyone to feel the same about your song…you don’t feel the same about every song you hear!

There are also various other defensive responses you see from songwriters and artists who are pretty new to this idea of criticism. On the other hand, I see many who respond in a mature, gracious manner to whatever feedback they get. If you don’t get the “that’s a number one hit!!!” response the way you thought you would, take a long breath before you put your fist through the wall 🙂 It takes time, tremendous luck and a whole lotta talent to begin to compete with the rest of the music world.

I sincerely hope that EVERY SINGLE PERSON who asks me for a critique reads this very article first, in order that they understand what I’m going to do. To be painfully honest, if you are looking for a pat on the back ONLY…don’t ask for a critique. Instead, play your song to your friends and family. They will ALWAYS accept what you do because they love you!

(PS…Irene is no longer giving personal critiques other than her work with Gods Of Music, but you can request a critique on the Messageboard!!)

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Why I Write

Posted on by IJ
Cover of "Born to Run"
Cover of Born to Run

© I.Woloshen

This was a question posed to our newsgroup recently…some questions just get me thinking about the process or the motivation behind writing. I’ll tell you my story if you’ll tell me yours!…

Songwriting seemed to be a merging of two elements for me as a kid…the love of music and the desire to express something. I don’t think I made some conscious decision to be a “songwriter“, but it came quite naturally over a period of time. What it evolved into was a very conscious and thoughtful process of evaluating the events and the emotions of my life, always with an awareness of being able to effectively communicate them to someone else. Aren’t there times when we all have the desire to tell people how we feel? Don’t we all want to be listened to…REALLY listened to?

But there’s more to it than that for me. I’d say that over the many years I’ve been writing, I have “given it up” seriously maybe a half a dozen times. And what I’ve discovered is that I can’t NOT write…it is, as Mary Chapin Carpenter has expressed, the only way for me to make sense of the world around me. And if I don’t have that, then life becomes chaotic again…non-sensical, and difficult to deal with. Writing, for me, is as second nature as all of the basics.

I’ve recently had a serious personal upheaval that has built up over a couple of years…through every stage of it, I have had my writing, and when I look back at the many events I have experienced, both positive and negative, my writing has had an integral part in my ability to understand it. I’ve never had a therapist, even though I’ve had to face addictions and depression. Part of that, I think, is because songwriting becomes my therapist.

This all sounds like a self-centred meandering…but I’ve noticed something else more recently. I have a very accute desire to “entertain”, and many of my songs have taken on that aspect in the last few years, either through humour or “personality”. But songwriting is like that…if you stick with it long enough, it evolves in many ways. Of course, I’m also a performer, so I have this great advantage of being able to act out the song with my face and body…and sometimes I forget where I end and the song begins.

There was a time when I was much younger (!), when I had the idea in my head that unless a songwriter was just expressing a “pure” state of mind, it wasn’t sincere. I never question anyone’s reason for songwriting now, because I know that it comes from many places. There is no need in judging another songwriter’s motives…I wish them success no matter what those motives are. I would like to know what yours are…why do you write? What is your ultimate goal when it comes to your songwriting?

Here’s what Michael Barrett had to say:

“I just thought I’d give a little insight into why I started off songwriting. When I was about 6 (I’m 16 now), a little rhyme came into my head. The rhyme is very daft and I’m not going to print it here unless someone asks me to. Anyway, I forgot about it and pushed writing out of my head. Until I was 12, when I found an old Bruce Springsteen CD of my fathers. At first I only listened to track 1 (Born To Run), but then widened my knowledge by playing the whole CD, and eventuall became a big fan. I also started listening to Bob Dylan, Bob Seger-all the ‘oldies’ as they call them. One day I turned on the radio and it was tuned to Longwave 252-people in England may recognise it as the popular music station. They were playing dance music. I thought ‘eww'(never really liked that hip-hop stuff) and tuned it to BBC Radio 2 (because there was a Bruce Springsteen interview on).

“Eventually I heard a song by a band called Stardust, called ‘Music Sound Better With You’. As soon as the first few bars had been done, I knew I didn’t like it. But I kept on listening to the end. I thought ‘gee I bet that song doesn’t do well’. Then I discovered that it was on almost EVERY dance album. I mean, the song was so dead-the ryhtm had no alterations for chorus or bridge (because there was none), the only lyrics were ‘hey baby music sounds better with you’, I could carry on all night…..Sure there are quite a few good bands out there but this one song REALLY got on my nerves-I’ve even been known to leave shops and cafes when it comes on- so I decided to do something about it and immerse myself in rock, blues, folk. Then I started writing poetry, I can remember the first one I wrote was about Rememberence Day, still got it lying around somewhere. Then I picked up my first guitar and immediately fell in love with it. I began finding things out about myself through the passion I could evoke by certain chords, strumming patterns, slow or fast tempos, soft or hard strums. Soon I found myself thinking ‘wouldn’t it be good if I could bind poetry and music’, and I did-my first song was devoid of chorus, bridge, just 6 lines per verse, and a pretty simple chord pattern-as first songs usually are, this was just my way to cut my teeth in the methods. I found myself thinking deeper and deeper, writing for other people, and mostly myself (the reason why most of my songs are about love and rejection). I was hooked, felt as if I was delving into what I really am and finally actually enjoying the fellings I have, whether negative or positive.

“So going back to your main question, why did I start songwriting? Many reasons:

-So I could get profit (although this one faded eventually)
-So I could be like my heroes (to this day I want to meet Springsteen)
-To seperate myself from the masses
-To try to forget about Stardust

But I believe that my main reason, and maybe many other’s reason, is TO DISCOVER YOUR TRUE SELF.”

So what’s your motive, what made you begin this wonderful craft? If you’d like to express yourself about it, why not try my songwriting messageboard, sign up and participate!

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