A Guideline for Song Form and Design

No two songs are the same, but here are the basic design elements that show up in most hit songs.

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Songwriting, especially in the pop song world, is a tricky tightrope act. On the one hand, every song you write needs to be a unique musical experience. On the other hand, it needs to be similar enough to what’s been written before that it grabs people’s attention and makes them want to keep listening to it. If it’s too similar, it’s boring. If it’s too different, it fails to make a connection. Whether you think about this consciously or not, it’s one of the major challenges in songwriting.

The best way for you to make sure that you’re writing something unique, while delivering it in a way that’s going to sit well with listeners, is to use a design that listeners understand. It’s why verse-chorus formats are still the number 1 song design being used by songwriters in country, pop, rock, folk – pretty much every genre out there.

But it’s not enough to simply structure your song into a verse-chorus design. Listeners have expectations for how that design should work, even if they can’t express it in words.

Take a look at the following list. Not every song you write will follow everything on it, but most songs will. And if you’re struggling to figure out why the song you’re currently working on is falling flat, you may find the reason here:

1. Song Intro:
   1. Quickly establish a mood, and try to do so in the first 10 – 15 seconds.
   2. Establish an interesting/unique instrumentation and rhythmic ideas.
   3. A strumming, plain sort of intro can work for ballads, but uptempo or other energetic songs will need something distinctive.
2. Verse:
   1. A verse melody should be lower in pitch relative to the chorus.
   2. Verse rhythms are generally more active than chorus rhythms.
   3. Lyrics should describe situations and people, and not try to overtly draw out an emotional response.
   4. Verse chord progressions can be “fragile” (i.e., they can be a little bit tonally ambiguous).
   5. Verse instrumentations should be lighter than chorus ones. Try using implied chords, which are chords that may only include the bass note and one other chord tone.
   6. It’s common to feel energy build through a verse as it meets the chorus.
3. Pre-chorus(optional):
   1. Use a pre-chorus if your verse melody is too short and you feel that you’re reaching the chorus too quickly.
   2. Use a pre-chorus if the end of your verse melody is too low to join onto the chorus well. (Katy Perry’s “Firework” is a good model for a successful pre-chorus, as is Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish“, which uses an interesting verse/pre-chorus/verse/pre-chorus design before hitting the chorus.
   3. The pre-chorus needs to build energy to join successfully to the chorus, either by building instrumentation or moving the melody upward, or a combination of both.
4. Chorus:
   1. The tonic note and chord should feature more predominantly here than in the verse.
   2. Chord progressions should be stronger, moving away from and back to the tonic chord in rather unambiguous progressions.
   3. Lyrics should draw out an emotional response from the listener, making a kind of commentary on what’s been described in the verse.
   4. Choruses for hit songs tend be quite “hooky”, and can be repeated easily.
   5. The climactic moment for a song should be in the chorus, usually in the second half of it.
5. Bridge (Middle-8):
   1. The bridge happens after the second chorus, and allows you move in a new direction, so your melody needs to be unique.
   2. Bridges come in two flavours: 1) Increase energy by building on the energy level of the chorus. Usually followed by an energetic version of the chorus; or 2) allow the energy to dissipate, followed by a quiet rendition of the chorus before the final build.
   3. Bridge chord progressions can wander a bit, providing a good contrast for the strong progressions of the chorus.

As mentioned before, no two songs can be the same, so not every song will exhibit the characteristics above. But if you find that your latest efforts are missing the mark, that list can at least give you something to think about, and a starting point to solve any problems.

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Written by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website.
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