It’s interesting that music in pop genres has mainly favoured the tenor male voice. Most songs will sit in either the high baritone or tenor range. I say interesting, because I was reading recently about a recently-completed study that has examined how much we like or are drawn to high or low-pitched speaking voices. You […]
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 […]
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 […]
Constructing songs so that we hear verses, choruses, bridges, and so on, is a good and easy way to ensure that your music incorporates contrast. Even before hearing a particular song, we know that the chorus is likely to be higher in pitch, that the chorus chords will probably be stronger and shorter than the verse, […]
A song is working well if the listener can put themselves in the shoes of the singer. Whether that means that you identify with the lyric, or simply love the way the guitar solo sounds, the listener needs to make a personal connection to some aspect of the song. It’s why air guitar is a […]
For those of you who find setting lyrics to be the easy part, you can more or less ignore this post and go on with your regularly scheduled life. But if you find the whole issue of setting lyrics to music — especially with regard to rhythm and timing — to be one of the trickiest parts […]
