In preparing for a recent gig I was, as usual before a show, singing my songs over and over again.  The main reasons I do this are to try to get the lyrics burned into my brain so I won’t forget them on stage, and also to get so familiar with singing the song that I can concentrate on what I’m singing… not just on getting the words and notes right.

But there’s also an unexpected (by me) byproduct of singing the songs over and over: I become more aware of words and phrases of lyrics that just don’t ‘sing’ well.  They may be more difficult than expected to get out of my mouth for some reason, or they just don’t feel right.  Sometimes this has to do with the content – I belatedly realize that I’m missing the point I thought I was making.  But more often it just has to do with singability.

As an example, here are two lines from a song of mine called ‘Last Train To Brooklyn’:

Where buses don’t go
And taxis don’t run

The melodic high point of this phrase is where ‘taxis’ lands.  After singing this song scores of times, something simple occurred to me… I could switch the words ‘buses’ and ‘taxis’.  For an accented higher note, the ‘uh’ sound in ‘buses’ is much better than the hard ‘a’ sound in ‘taxis’.  Not only that, most people, including me, are more likely to talk about where buses ‘run’ than where taxis ‘run’.  So it’s better idiomatically too.

Now the lyric is:

Where taxis don’t go
And buses don’t run

Sings better, makes more sense… I think it’s an improvement.  I’m writing this post to remind myself to do more full-out singing when I write the song… not only when I prepare to sing it in public or record it.  To sing it strong while I’m writing it, so I can really feel the words coming out of my mouth, feel where they’re right and where they’re not, or where they could be better.  It’s seductive but deceptive to just look at words on a page.

Even if, like me, you’re not the greatest singer in the world, some things only become clear by singing… because songs are written to be sung.

I always tell singers they have a running start as songwriters, even if they don’t play an instrument, or don’t play well.  Not only can they sing what they write but, if they’re paying attention, they already have a sense of what’s comfortable to sing.  And, singer or not, having and/or developing a feel for how songs sing is one of the greatest skills a songwriter can have.

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