I watched a video of a song producer a while ago (I can’t remember who it was) but something he said got me thinking. To paraphrase: “If a song has a great chorus hook, I don’t care what the verse sounds like. Nobody remembers verses anyway.” That’s a surprising observation, and I wondered if it […]
Whenever anyone asks me how long it takes for the average song to be written, I usually tell them that it takes as long as it takes. That’s my way of saying that there is no norm. A song might come together in fifteen minutes, and it might take weeks or even months or more. […]
If you’re ready to take your songwriting to its highest level possible, you need “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle.” Get the manuals that thousands of songwriters are using. You might think that most of the time, songwriters work forward through a song as they’re writing it, but in fact, there’s a case to be […]
We associate the concept of the hook with pop music, though many genres, even classical music, have them. And when we say hook, we usually mean the chorus hook — that bit of the chorus (or sometimes the entire chorus) that listeners can’t get enough of, and hum it (hopefully) all day long. There are other kinds of […]
All songs are a mixture of things that we find familiar and predictable, with a touch of innovation and newness tossed in. The familiar things, as far as a listener is concerned, start with the very sound of the music: the sound is often what gives the genre away. “Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting […]
For most of the songs you’ll write, you’ll likely use the same key throughout. If you do happen to change key, the mostly common scenario is to put the verse in a minor key and then switch to the relative major for the chorus, like Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend.” That’s pretty standard, and […]
