We often speak of 'tweaking' a lyric, refining lines, how we say them, what we say, how many words, how many syllables we employ to say it, the time tense, present, past, first-person, third-person, male/female point of view, changing words, moving lines around within a stanza, moving stanzas around, exchanging what we thought was a verse if it makes a better chorus.

But tweaking melody is seldom spoken of, and it is fairly flexible too. You can alter the pitch up or down, the duration shorter or longer, inserting rests or deleting them, all to fit the beat, tempo, and general prosody, the 'marriage' of the vocal to the arrangement.

Tweaking lyric and melody can challenge you but you can be up to the task. Success demands lyricists write with the comprehension that their words have to be singable, hitting the beat, matching the melody employed in Verse 1 with words singable to that same melody in Verse two, three.

Melodists are under the same strictures, demanding comprehension that their melody must be able to be sung without distorting the words so that listeners can't understand them, that the melody must be memorable, memorizable, constructed so the listener can 'get' it, can be singing along, if not the first time they hear it, certainly the second time.

During the writing process each co-writer should have clearly logical reasons they can communicate to the other about why their suggestion for a change is necessary, or why it would be better. And each should be open to exploring the changes to see if they concur that the change is indeed an improvement, or if the experiment proves the change was not a good idea.

Explore. Try the differences. Changing the key sometimes reveals a melodic difference which offers nuances of interest. Changing the tempo can reveal dynamics and even genre possibilities the original inspiration didn't have. Explore. You may discover new worlds of songwriting, new lyrical ideas, new melodic phrasings, a gold mine of possibilities.

The whole work should remain malleable, flexible, as water, filling the shape as the shape changes, adapting to the new influences, bending to the wills of the co-writers. When any co-writer becomes inflexible to the others' inspirations they may be denying themselves the opportunity to create some of the truly great works of their career. Explore the possibilities until you both, or all, agree that you have refined the raw ore of the original inspirations of lyric and melody and the prosody of the two to a point where no party to the work feels something remains to be 'fixed' or tweaked.

If there is frustration you have to rethink your attitude toward the work. Loosen up. Keep it malleable. Be malleable.

There will always be another song to be written. Someone will write it. Why not you? www.garyeandrews.com