How To Accept Criticism & Revisions

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is David Jacket on behalf of Expert Village and I'm going to talk to you about critiquing and revising your songs. No one likes critiques, nobody. Nobody wants to hear criticism, even constructive criticism as nicely as it can be put, everybody hates it. So my advice to you is if you're particularly sensitive as I am, don't throw your songs out there for other people to critique right away. Rather what you should do is let yourself be the critic, but do it by putting a song away for a while and coming back to it. You may not always have this luxury, but if you can write a song, record it, put away the tape for a week or so and then come back and take a listen with a clear ear once you're not too concerned about the feeling you were in as you were writing the song. Get your tape recorder out, playback the song. As many things that are in there that annoy you, where you think ooh that was a mistake. You're going to hear things that you remember that were actually quiet good and then you can sit down and you can say well I'm going to cut out this line here because it's a little weak or this melody could be a little sharper if I pull that one note, little things like that. Do a couple of rewrites like that. Don't be afraid to get the ball rolling right in the beginning by putting down something that doesn't feel like it's finished. Because a lot of times what happens is a lot of people don't write because they're so scared about the critique. So write with a knowledge that you can destroy most of what you've written afterwards and that way you'll come up with some great ideas. If you're feeling bold or if you work in a band you have to do this, bring your song out to other people. When you do this there's two things you have to keep in mind. First of all you have to be thick skinned, you can't take anything to heart unless your friends are complete jerks, in which case they really shouldn't be your friends. They're going to be as nice as they can so people aren't aiming to hurt you, when they talk to you they're going give their honest opinion. Listen to what they have to say and consider it. Now on the other hand and this is the other thing you have to remember, just because someone else has a suggestion it doesn't mean you have to follow it and just because someone else thinks something doesn't work, it doesn't mean that they're right. This is very subjective stuff, songwriting. If you really like what you did you should be satisfied, but listen to what people are saying. If someone says, well I don't like the chorus because it's too obvious. Maybe it is too obvious, maybe you can spice it up a little bit. One thing that I've found working in my band is that we listen to everybody's ideas and we're quick to dismiss our own ideas and other peoples ideas, if they don't follow through, that's fine but you have to keep your ears open, listen to critiques. So really a critique is so valuable in so many ways because what you're doing is getting the ball rolling and again in songwriting the most important thing is to keep on having new ideas constantly coming in."