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Lesson 5: The Structure
- A Global View
Verse
If there’s one element that you can’t avoid to use
then it’s the verse. Every song has at least one verse. The reason why
this statement’s true is the fact that a verse can have any shape you want
it to have; long, short, monotone, irregular etc. etc.
The main purpose of the verse is to make the
song’s structure more clearly. Therefor it’s better to write the verse
in such a way that it’s recognizable as a verse; give it at least some
structure and let it come back later in the song.
The verse is the part of the song that “tells
the story”. It’s one part with the lyrics. The verse is definitly NOT the
part of the song where it all happens musically. So save the fireworks
for later! When writing the music for your verses consider the following:
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Let the music “step back” a little
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Keep it down a little during the verse. This way
you give the lyrics more room to tell their story. Another advantage of
this is that it’s easier to make the chorus stand out and built a climax
in the song. You can hear this effect in the soundsample which goes with
the part about the intro.
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Keep the music simple in the verse
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This is more or less in addition to the previous
point; The music is supposed to make more room during the verse. This can
be achieved even more easily by using simple, repetetive patterns for the
music. That’s why all the big songwriters in rock are good at writing catchy
riffs! Or is it the other way around???
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Don’t make the verses too long
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Lenghty verses with lots of lyrics are okay ONLY
if you are a great poet who has something interesting to say. Dylan used
to be one of those. Strangely enough some modern music styles like Hip-Hop
for example are totally based on lenghty verses. Maybe I’m just getting
old or oldfashioned...
As you can see, writing a verse isn’t the hardest
part of writing a song. The only difficult thing about it is making it
not too difficult!
Chorus
Writing a good chorus on the other hand is very difficult!
(Who ever told you writing song’s is easy?). The chorus is the part of
the song that’s supposed to stick in people’s heads and never to get out
of it again. To accomplish this you don’t necessarily have to bear a name
like Jagger/Richards, Lennon/McCarthy or Adams. But it wouldn’t hurt you
if you’d listen to some songs written by these guys. They are/were capable
to write choruses who are remembered by millions of people for many years.
You don’t have to like their songs to admit they indeed can write
songs and especially choruses...
Choruses generally follow these rules:
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They’re short and catchy
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Most choruses are no longer than 4 to 6 lines. The
shorter a chorus is, the less disturbing is it when it comes back often
in a song, which choruses tend to do.
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They’re melodic
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Even in monotone music-forms the chorus is more melodic
than the rest of the song. Since the majority of music-lovers do like melody
(otherwise they wouldn’t like music) making the chorus the most melodic
part of the song helps in focusing the attention to the chorus and thus
remembering the song.
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They stand out in the song
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A good chorus is easy to recognize. As soon as you
can’t distinguish the chorus in the rest of the song there’s something
wrong. Making the final climax happen in the chorus is a good trick to
enhnce the effect of the chorus as well as the climax itself.
By the way, the picture (you should see the original...)
is made by Henny Witkamp, a great artist from Nieuwegein, the Netherlands.
He also paints on order, so if you need a logo, decor-painting or whatever,
please let me know by email and I'll bring you into contact with him.
Additional elements
Like stated above there are a few elements to help
avoid your songs to become predictable. These are instrumental breaks,
bridges, hooks en outro’s. In fact all these elements have the same purposes,
like:
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Refreshing the song
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They differ from the rest of the song and thus are
helpful tools to prevent the song from becoming dull.
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Letting loose the animal
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These elements are parts in the song where the musicians
are “licensed” to show their skills. Instrumental “freaking” can be disturbing
during a verse or chorus, but it might be useful during a break, because
it can really help to get the attention back. The thought behind this is
that as long as instrumental highlights don’t interfere with other parts
of the song it’s generally okay. Listen for example to all those old rock-hits
where you even can hear the bass-player freak out during the fade out.
Reason why I used to call the faders on the mixer freaks.
Be careful while using these elements not to make
them become the major part of your song. Just use them to spice things
up. Overdoing might change your song into a blurr of musical fragments.
These elements will be discussed more thoroughly in an upcoming lesson.
Tales and Tricks from the past...
The most ordinary elements of a song’s structure
were part of the big success of all those 50’s, 60’s and 70’s songs. In
those days it seemed as it was almost impossible to get a record-deal without
writing a repertoire that contained only well built songs. Take the Beatles
for instance, masters in defining a song’s structure.
Maybe the strict rules about a song’s structure
in those early days of rock&roll were part of the upraise of the so
called Guitar Hero’s; guys (no girls in those days, sorry...) who couldn’t
hardly wait to get on stage to do their thing... As kind of a backwards
effect on this you see nowadays people are getting back to the basics and
dropping all those lenghty guitar-solo’s, so we’re right back at the beginning
as far as this is concerned... But more of this story in an upcoming lesson!
Classics in pophistory have (almost always)
one thing in common: they are built around a distinct songskeleton based
on the 3 main elements of a song: intro, verse and chorus. This resulted
in short, clear and easy to remember songs. Songwriters in those days used
some tricks to avoid their songs to become predictable. One very popular
trick was transforming the key (oops, technical term...) of the song in
the last verse and/or chorus. This was done so many times that nowadays
it often sounds outdated. But of course feel free to experiment with it!
Another trick from the past is the use of
a so called bridge. We already discussed the bridge in one of the lessons
about the lyrics, but of course there’s no bridge without something to
flow beneath it, in this case the music!
Many classics have a built-in bridge to give
the audience kind of an injection; it attracts the attention and refreshens
the song. The bridge is still a good thing to use in a song; because in
fact it’s a (very small) second theme in a song you can make it sound the
way you want it. Therefor the danger of sounding outdated isn’t there.
There is a lot more to say about bridges in a
song: we’ll get back to this in another lesson. But be sure to write your
bridges in a matter that they still fit in the general structure of the
song.
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