Having a song baby, a free songwriting mini course, part 1

The Hook


Fist off let me be clear about a few things here.  Not all songs have the same format but most popular music follows a similar format. This rings true from classical music to metal, and country to hip hop.

Secondly, if this is something you do not want to follow because it gets in the way of your artistic expression, don’t.  Don’t let this guideline stop you from being the most authentic version of YOU when you are doing your thing.

That being said,  popular music songwriting all tends to follow the same sequence and rules.  An intro, verse 1, chorus, verse 2, chorus, (bridge, chorus) or (bridge, verse 3) chorus, outtro.  And the chorus can also have a pre-chorus but lets keep this simple for now.

Today we will focus on writing a great chorus.  If you have a melody already chosen, great! If not, I often find it easiest to come up with the song idea first, then write the melody for the chorus, then write the words.  I take the emotion I want to convey and think about what that emotion would sound like.  If it is a happy song I might write something in a major key around 120bpm.  If it is an angry song, I would write it in an ascending minor and speed it up a bit.  Sad, a minor with a slower tempo.  Those are just me though! Everyone experiences and interprets emotions differently.

After I have the idea, I write down the basic, most important concept from the song idea.  As an example, if I were writing a song about my current state of life right now, which is rather chaotic, my song might be about being in a ship on stormy seas.

Now the object here is to keep this line as simple and easy to sing along with as possible.  Your audience should be able to sing along with the chorus after the first time they hear it.

(please don’t judge this song Idea, I am literally writing it on my lunch break at work and I wanted to really make up an example for this course and not use something I have already written)

My chorus would be something like:

And the north wind tears at the rigging

And the north wind tears at my soul

Repeat if you want

That is basically how almost all of my songs start, and using this method I am able to write a pretty solid song once a week.  We will take it slower here, I will finish this course over the period of the next four weeks  Here is the challenge, Write a chorus this week, follow my blog by using the instructions below, I have a really cool idea I am working on for this and I want to share it with you when I have it up and running
Now,
Get to work!  Ha!

Thank you for reading.  If you haven’t already, please subscribe by clicking the subscribe button above, and if you click on the tab at the top left of the page, you can follow my blog too.  Ad, Please help me reach other people by clicking the share button and sharing my article on as many social media platforms as you can. Thank you so much!

Ryan




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