It’s common with many songwriters to start the songwriting process by working out the chorus, if only because that’s the part that’s going to be most memorable to your audience. Once you’ve got a chorus that really works well, it acts as a kind of goal — a target, so to speak — for you to aim […]
These days, many or most songs that are produced for broad commercial appeal (i.e., hit songs in the pop genres) use melodies written by “topliners.” A typical scenario might be that a producer sends out a pre-made instrumental track to musicians who can create melodies over these tracks. Someone comes up with melodies and lyrics to […]
Let’s say that you’ve got a verse that consists of a short melody and chord progression that repeats several times before it reaches the chorus. That might start to sound boring to you, and I want to suggest a way to alleviate that boring sense of repetition. How much a short melody can or should repeat before moving […]
Take a listen to the following songs, and pay particular attention to the verse melodies: My Little Town (Paul Simon) Don’t Stop Believin’ (Jonathan Cain, Steve Perry, Neal Schon) Roxanne (Sting) Jam (Michael Jackson, René Moore, Bruce Swedien, Teddy Riley) Rumour Has It (Adele, Ryan Tedder) These songs were all hit songs in their own time, and […]
It’s common to come up with a chorus before you come up with a verse. That’s because the chorus is the section with the hook, the catchy bit that you hope brings your audience back time and time again. They’re repetitive and of relatively simple construction, so they’re often easier than other sections to write. It’s […]
If you’ve been writing songs for a while, you’ll know that lyrics change in character as a song progresses. To generalize, you’ll notice the following: VERSE LYRICS: Verse lyrics set the stage, recount details of a story, describe characters, etc. It lays out the narrative, the storyline or general song topic. “Hooks and Riffs: How They […]
