Here’s a quick tip for writing a lyric that helps to ensure that your verses are descriptive in nature, while your choruses mainly express an emotional response to those descriptions: Choose a topic for your song. Make a list of words that pertain to your song’s topic. Circle the words that seem to be mainly […]
As you likely know, it’s not unusual for songwriters to create songs where the verse is in a minor key or mode (often aeolian mode), and then switch to a major key (usually the relative major) for the chorus. A classic example is Carol King’s “You’ve Got a Friend“, the verse of which is in […]
Most songs, if they are one of several possible verse-chorus formats, usually start with a verse, and before the 1-minute mark will move on to the chorus. The timing involved with this — i.e., the fact that we usually hear the chorus at or before the 1-minute mark, as you hear in a song like […]
The great thing about various possible song designs is that they usually work for any genre. It shouldn’t matter if you’re writing pop, rock, country, folk… the principles that make a formal design (verse-chorus-bridge, for example) work apply to any and all genres. And not just genres… you find them used in practically any era as well. That means that […]
Most songs are said to be “in a key.” If the key is C major, that C major chord is said to be the tonic chord. A dominant chord is one that is built on the 5th degree of a scale. Dominant chords like to move to tonic chords. That’s why G7-C (V7-I) is so […]
There are moments in music history that can be described as game-changers. Whether that moment is a song (“Like a Rolling Stone”), an album (“Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”), or even an event (Woodstock Festival), most things that present as a game-changer in the arts happen almost by accident. No one can predict, it […]
