It might be over simplistic to say, but one of the main jobs of a song verse, particularly in the pop genres, is to get the listener to the chorus. That’s certainly not to say that a verse is unimportant. A good verse does several important things: Through the lyric, it sets the scene and describes […]
A verse-chorus chord progression pair refers to two progressions that move seamlessly one to the other, where one has those characteristics of a good verse progression and the other acts as a good chorus one. Before giving examples of these types of pairs, keep in mind that the easiest way is to create one progression that will […]
When you play through chord progressions for songs you know, you’ll occasionally come across ones that involve a slash: F/A, C/G, Dm7/F, etc. These kinds of chords are called inversions, known colloquially as “slash chords” because of that slash. As you probably know, the letter name before the slash is the actual chord that you should […]
Do you ever feel that your chorus has problems, but no matter what you do you can’t seem to get it to work? When that happens, the problem often seems to be that the chorus doesn’t sound like a chorus. You expect a certain kind of musical punch to come from a chorus, but figuring out […]
I’ve aterritten a fair bit lately about making a verse more effective, either by creating an interesting key change, or by paying closer attention to how the verse connects to the chorus. In this post, I want to look more closely at the chorus itself, and address an issue when the chorus itself just doesn’t […]
There are a few important spots during a song, moments that serve as connectors between one section and the next. What happens during those connecting moments will either enticingly pull the listener along and make them want to keep listening, or that moment will fail to do its job, and we feel a temporary “lull” in […]
