Since you want song energy to either stay the same or increase as a song proceeds, it seems to be obvious that you’ll want verse melodies to sit, on average, lower in pitch than chorus melodies. This is because when pitches move upward listeners tend to interpret that as an increase in energy. But there […]
There are many reasons why a verse sounds like a verse and not a chorus. Decades (centuries, actually) of musical tradition shows us that verse melodies tend to be a bit lower in pitch than choruses. We also know that the tonic note and chord show up more often in a chorus than they do […]
Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-ebook bundle, and kick-start your songwriting career! _____________ The successful song is, quite simply, the one that entices the listener to keep listening. In other words, songs that work are ones that cause us to think that something great is about to happen: you don’t want to stop listening […]
Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-ebook bundle, and kick-start your songwriting career! _____________ The main purpose of a song intro is to set up the basic feel and mood of what’s about to happen. It’s during the intro that you establish the key, tempo, and rhythmic foundation of the song. There’s another use for […]
Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-ebook bundle, and kick-start your songwriting career! _____________ The Script’s hit single, “For the First Time,” has an interesting anomaly that’s worth studying. It involves the tonic note (i.e., the note representing the key of the song), and the fact that it almost never seems to disappear. The song […]
Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-ebook bundle, and get your songwriting career going! _____________ I’ve been listening to Foo Fighter’s fantastic new hit, “Rope“, from their newly released album “Wasting Light”, and it got me thinking about song energy, and specifically about the issue of tension and release. “Rope” is a relentlessly powerful tune, […]
