If you can’t express or sum up the main concept of your song — what the song’s all about — in one sentence or less, you’re going to have trouble connecting to your audience. Lyrics may take the listener on a journey, but there needs to be one concise way of describing that journey. It’s like […]
A few listener reviews of some of pop/rock music’s big names: Regarding Neil Young: “For as far back as I can remember I’ve disliked this guy. His whiney voice is like nails on a chalkboard.” Regarding Bob Dylan: “Like if a wistful Lee Marvin swallowed a kazoo.” (by Ted Pillow.) Regarding Lucinda Williams: “Out of […]
Repetition in music of any genre is vital to its success. That wasn’t always the case. If you go back a few centuries, much music was “through-composed”, a term that refers to music that was one new idea after another, with very little repetition. Through-composed music has the benefit of establishing a mood, and then keeping that mood. […]
One way to make a song stand out and grab attention is to create an instrumental hook, one that may or may not have much to do with the song itself. One of my favourite examples of how this can work is Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition“. The sung part of the song doesn’t really have a […]
Most songs consist of several sections that are all woven together to produce one coherent piece of music. The trick is to get all those sections to move seamlessly one to the next. Seamlessly, in this context, doesn’t mean that you move from section to section without realizing it, of course. In that sense, it’s […]
There are very few songs on the Rolling Stones List of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time that made it to the list because of their stunning chord progressions. Chord progressions, when they work well, should almost disappear into the background of your song. Occasionally it’s nice to throw a chord in there that grabs attention, but […]
