Working on your song’s hook first gives it a focus that can greatly strengthen its structure.
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Starting your next song by working out something “hooky” for the chorus is a great way to begin. By beginning your song that way, you use an approach similar to planning a trip by establishing what you want to be the most exciting moment first. Once you know that, it is a lot easier to plan everything else.
A chorus hook is that part of the song that typically includes the song’s title, and acts as an important moment for the song. It helps to define the song in a listener’s mind, and in that sense, a hook is what the song is all about. Here are some tips to keep in mind.
1. Chorus hooks should be short. Create 1 or 2 bars of music that are memorable. Keep in mind that it is usually the rhythm of the hook that makes it most memorable. In a way, you can think of the length of a hook to be like the length of a typical telephone number. There is a rhythm that we use to say a phone number, and that rhythm is possible because of its relatively short length. Long phone numbers, like 800 numbers, are still easy to remember because the internal rhythm is still there. But if phone numbers were 14 or 15 digits, or longer, they’d be almost impossible to remember, as the rhythm either disappears or becomes too long and complex.
2. Chorus hooks should be fun to sing. P!nk’s “Raise Your Glass” is a great example. For a hook to be fun, it needs to be easy, energetic, and elicit happiness or joyousness.
3. Chorus hooks should use simple, strong chord progressions of 2 or 3 chords. Longer than that, a hook starts to lose its main purpose, which is to attach itself to the musical brain of the listener. It can only effectively to that if it can be thought of as a short, catchy entity. Longer chord progressions may be lovely, but they become more of a musical journey, and you’ll start to lose the “hooky” quality.
4. Chorus hooks should be easy to sing. The fact that it’s short will help, but work on developing a hook that uses mainly stepwise motion with one exciting leap.
5. Chorus hooks should be placed mostly high in the vocal range. That keeps the energy from flagging.
When you’re writing songs, if you like starting with a chord progression, try starting with a chorus hook first, and then use that as an idea around which you can build the rest of the song. Always keeping that hook front and centre gives the song a strong sense of cohesion and purpose.
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Written by Gary Ewer. Follow on Twitter.
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