Composing Arranging Songwriting
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Contents |
Composing
Arranging
Principles of Orchestration by Rimsky-Korsikov
Songwriting
Songwriting Tips
Songwriting is a craft, so don't expect to pen classics straight away. But if you never start you'll never arrive, so learn through practice - write and compose often, even if you don't end up with a complete song every time. If you're like me, you'll end up with a valuable folder of fragments and half-completed songs that you can go back to later if stuck for a verse, chorus or lyric.
I don't sight read music or write notation. I've learned all I know from experience and that's what I'm aiming to pass on here. Trained musicians should either tune out now or proceed if they want to find out some useful tips that formal musical training has not given them!
(1) Show - don't tell: Most important! Listeners will enjoy your music if your songs communicate feelings to them which they identify with. This happens best if the meanings are shown or hinted to them rather than told to them. If their imagination has to work a little they'll empathise more with what you're conveying. For example, don't say "The sun was setting" - which is merely a blunt fact with no other undertones. Instead, describe the scene in terms of colours, emotions, time, etc. so that the listener has the option of conjuring up their own feelings about such a scene, for example "Fading reds across the bay..". Or, "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone" instead of "I'm so lonely without her". This is the technique most used in poetry. Use simile, "Easy like Sunday morning" and metaphor, "We're just two ships passing in the night".
(2) Getting started: There are four usual ways of starting a new song; vary your approach, especially if you hit a 'dry' period:
- Chords: Noodling around with chords on the guitar or piano often reveals interesting patterns with potential.
- Melody: You think up a fragment of catchy melody and go to the piano or guitar and try out pleasing chords under it.
- Lyrics: You have an idea to convey and it suggests itself in words first. Get it down on paper before you forget!
- Rhythm: Going through the patterns on a drum machine/soft synth very often suggests a whole song.
(3) Let your ideas flow: Don't worry about getting stuck. Just go around the problem and work quickly - the muse when it comes upon you will not last too long! Getting your ideas down is more important than honing each one to perfection; you can always edit things later.
(4) Reverse a couplet that isn't working: If you have a couple of lyric lines which you're happy with but one half of it is stronger than the other, swap it around so that the stronger line comes second, for example: "We're making two hearts black and blue, And there's nothing I can do." will have more impact at the end of a verse if reversed to: "Now there's nothing I can do, We're making two hearts black and blue."
(5) Always have something changing: We all get bored quickly with music that drones on without changing. This is the reason songs have structures involving Verse, Chorus, Middle Eight, etc. as well as other common techniques designed to make you stick around and listen to the song all the way through. Some common arrangement moves are:
- Start very simple with just solo piano and voice
- Introduce tambourine halfway through to add excitement
- Introduce strings and/or brass at successive stages
- Use the dreaded key change (!) near the end of a ballad before the last chorus.
(5) Can't get started? Listen to some music: I often find that a good way to get started is to play some CD tracks in the style I'm looking to write a song in. This doesn't prompt copying, subconsciously or otherwise, but it fills my head with music patterns, chords, sounds, etc. puts me right in the mood and 'primes the pump'.
(6) Composing melody - the hard bit! A song's melody is at least as important as any other component of your song. In fact, your audience probably won't bother listening to your song at all if your melody is weak. Articles and books can't tell you precisely how write a melody because if there was a formula it would be too valuable to share! Here are some of my experiences though:
Noodling notes on a keyboard (even if you don't play properly, like me) can turn up interesting melodies. This doesn't work on a guitar, probably because of its bias towards chord playing, but playing chord changes on a guitar often enables you to 'hear' and then sing out a melody that's woven in those changes.
Beware monotony: vary the range (high and low notes) of the melody to make it interesting. Don't fall into the common beginner's trap of composing a melody largely following the root notes of the chords; try and use other notes of the chords, or even ones not in the chord but suggested by it. Experiment by playing different chords under the same melody to see if that's more harmonically appealing. By experimenting like this you sometimes find it's an iterative process whereby your original melody changes for the better and the chords also change as you try different combinations.
If you're stuck putting together a melody resist the urge to just change the chord - this won't substitute for lack of a clear melody line. Great songwriters seem to devise clever melodies using a few simple chords. Check out some of Brian Adams' big hits. He writes big, memorable rock songs around a handful of chords in what we guitarists call the first position, i.e. the easy chords like C, G, Ami, D, at the beginning of the fretboard. The most outstanding example of this is the Mavericks' 'Just Want to Dance the Night Away' whose verses, choruses and middle eight are all entirely different melodies sung over the same two alternating chords throughout the song - E and B7!
Keep it simple: you're not writing an eight minute classical piece. If the milkman could whistle it, then you've got a memorable and catchy melody. Pop music is a lot about repetition and a short, catchy melody can be made very effective by repetition, c.f. the Stones' '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction'.
Make a variation on the main melody in the middle eight, which is the portion of a song (usually eight bars long) that breaks things up just when it might become boring, e.g. the part in the Commodores' "Easy" that starts "I wanna be high, so high.."
(7) Hooks: Hit songs have one or more hooks. This is the industry term for the bit in the record that makes the listener want to play the record over and over again, i.e. buy it! It's important that you include at least one hook very early on in your song; you need to grab the audience's attention, and keep it. Making the first lines to your lyric interesting is one way of achieving this.
Hooks can take many forms from a clever title (The Beatles' 'Eight Days A Week'); a catchy intro; a key change; a 'funny' noise; interesting guitar tone (fuzz guitar intro to Ike and Tina Turner's 'Nutbush City Limits'); novel guitar riff (Roy Orbison's 'Pretty Woman'); catchy rhythm fragment; sweeping strings interlude; sax solo (Gerry Rafferty's 'Baker Street'); vocal oddity; technical effect (flanging on the Doobie Brothers' 'Listen To The Music'); 'ear candy', etc. I'm sure you can think of as many as I can. They're not compulsory of course, but if you can introduce one, either on purpose or otherwise (what I call 'a painter's accident'!) you can add that certain attractive something to your finished piece.
(8) Give the listener some structure: Don't make your song so 'interesting' that it's weird. The listener may feel so disoriented that they quickly lose all interest. They won't mind being challenged and will enjoy something new and imaginative, but on the other hand their minds will be attuned to pop music they've grown up with. They will feel more receptive if some of the 'norms' are present to enable them to mentally navigate through your song. Common architectures are as follows; use different ones to provide variety and to suit the song:
- Intro, Verse 1, Chorus, Verse 2, Chorus, Middle Eight, Chorus, Chorus, Outro
- Intro, Verse 1, Verse 2, Chorus, Verse 3, Chorus, Middle Eight, Chorus, Chorus
- Intro, Chorus, Verse 1, Chorus, Verse 2, Chorus, Middle Eight, Verse 3, Chorus, Chorus
- Verse 1, Verse 2, Verse 3, etc. (Narrative songs, e.g. Bob Dylan's 'Wesley Harding'.)
(9) Don't confuse the listener: Beginners do this by putting in too many ideas, asking too many questions and generally not giving the listener enough of a story to grab onto and be taken away with. You want the listener to hear your song once and immediately be attached to it. Songs need to have a simple central theme running throughout. The theme is generally encapsulated in the chorus, where it bursts out after the verses set the scene, however, sometimes the title of the song is the summary of the story. In writing terms this central idea is called the "through-line". It's the central idea that ties up all of the loose ends together. e.g. Bacharach and David's 'Walk On By' is about a lover asking her ex to walk past her if he should see her again in the future. The verses explain why. That's it. That's the song. For the listener a song with too many ideas running through it gets in the way of the power of immediacy that a song can produce. It gets in the way because it confuses the listener with too much choice and in doing that sends out mixed messages and the listener won't have anything to connect to. Convey your message, invoke the audience's emotions and paint your aural picture - one idea at a time.
(10) Keep it short: The average length of a pop song is about 3m:30s. Don't outstay your welcome. Above all, don't indulge in protracted guitar or other solos - you might think they're really cool but the listener won't hear most of it - they'll have switched off. Let a song breathe; a common beginner's problem is trying to fill all the spaces up. Great hooks can come from the contrast between sections and the spaces between.
(11) Always be prepared: Always carry a pocket dictaphone or special notebook. Inspiration for that next great song won't come into your head spontaneously. Sessions where you decide to sit down tonight with your guitar and write a great song always end in disappointment and the feeling you'll never manage it. Ever had a superb thought for a lyric phrase in the car only to completely forget it when you got home? Great writers, and comedians, know this. That's why most of them jot down things they hear and see during the day that amuses them, hoarding it for later use. Benny Hill, the famous comedian, always carried a large notebook with him and he'd often sit for hours in restaurants and pavement cafes watching and listening to people. He'd jot down the everyday funny or odd things people said or did and go through them later when he was writing shows, so that he had something to spark his inspiration rather then having to sit down with a pile of blank paper and nothing else. Some writers are inspired by the titles used in magazine articles. These are often snappy, and can make great starting points for songs.
Get into the habit of seeing at the world as an infinite ideas machine. As a songwriter all you have to do is to tap into this amazing resource and translate what you see into songwriting ideas. Of course doing this takes a lot of practice and a willingness to become much more observant and mindful of what's going on in your life.
(12) Break the rules (when it's better to do so): Don't forget, we're dealing with art here and not science. Human creativity is a wonderful but unpredictable thing and sometimes breaking the rules makes magic happen, and if it feels right and sounds right, it is right. The Beatles were the masters of this during their psychedelic creative period - deliberately breaking the rules to see what sparks would come off, e.g. stitching two different songs together in 'Day In The Life'. But learn the rules - your craft - first!
(13) Don't ask relatives and friends what they think of your songs unless you need some comforting, but perhaps misguided, feedback! Ask for honest, constructive opinions from other songwriters, or post your MP3s on forums for like-minded folks to give you comment and suggestions. Sonar has a songs section on their forums here and Studio Central forums have a song review section here. There are songwriting sites with similar forums also.
(14) Listen carefully to other music: With some of the above points in mind, now listen carefully to some of your CDs (and maybe those of some friends) and look out for the tricks and techniques that the artists and arrangers have used. For these purposes ignore whether you 'dig' the music or not; you're conducting a practical exercise here. Try and tease out why certain songs hold your interest and others don't. Why are some tracks simply great and others dull by comparison? What draws you in almost without you realising it? The lyrics? The steady layering of sounds? Where are the hooks?
Home Page * Getting Started * Workflow * Tips, Techniques and Tutorials * Errors and Workarounds * Making Music * Composing, Arranging & Songwriting * Optimizing Your DAW * Recording Gear * Included Components * Third-Party Effects * Third-Party Virtual Instruments * Computer Systems and Components * Free Downloads * External SONAR resources
