Lesson 6: A Closer Look at Writing Intro's

Different methods, different intro’s...

There are various methods of writing/composing intro’s, which can also be combined in many ways. This results in various types of intro’s. Let’s take a closer look at some of these types. Please keep in mind there are as many methods and types as you can come up with. There are no strickt rules, so just use the methods you like best.

The Preview Method

As we could see in the previous lesson, it’s a good idea to build your song’s intro with parts taken from the rest of the song. Some advantages of this approach are:

The intro will be easier to write

Because you use parts of the song, you don’t have to compose a totally different piece of music.

The intro will help enhancing the song’s overall structure

Because your intro will be kind of a preview of the rest of your song, the song will be easier to interpret by the listener.

Please remember the fact that one of the characteristics of a good intro is the fact itself that it’s a preview of the song, as stated in the previous lesson. However, though this method is easier because you don’t have to come up with a new musical idea for your intro, it will definetly test your arranging-skills!
Arranging in fact is not much more than ordering all those great ideas you have for that particular song you are working on into a hitsong. This sounds easier than it is! Arranging is a skill which is lacked by many musicians who are great improvisers. Not having the ability to arrange will be one of the major reasons why such musicians will never be good composers. To put it simple: having great ideas doesn’t mean you are a great songwriter...
Building your intro out of parts of the rest of your song is a good way to practise arranging your entire song; in fact it’s the same job, only on a smaller scale. Some will find this is easier, others will prefer arranging a whole song prior to arranging an intro. Fact is arranging an intro will give you far less room for improvising.
Don’t make the mistake of just picking some pieces and putting them together into the intro. This intuïtional approach works fine on many other aspects of songwriting, but it will often result in rubbish when writing an intro. Better is it to evaluate the parts of music you have already to see what part is catchy enough to be the intro yet not too stunning it will make the rest of the song an anti-climax. Considering these remarks it seems a good idea to save writing your intro for last, odd as it may seem!
This brings us to a totally different method of writing intro’s which will be discussed next.

The “First Things First” Method

This is a totally different approach to writing your intro’s. Although you will see it’s the opposite of the previous discussed method in almost every way, this method might be very usefull. Maybe this approach is most often used, because of the fact it’s a totally intuïtional way of writing intro’s. Using this method, you'd usually start writing your song with the intro itself. Many songwriters that prefer writing intuïtional use the same method for writing their intro’s. Two major advantages of this way of working are:

Familiair way of working

Because you “just write what you feel”, this way of writing your intro’s feels vary natural. After all, every real musician should know how to play (and/or write) what he feels...

Short, catchy intro’s

Because the intro will be written more or less on an improvising base, most of the time it will be a riff-like piece of music, setting the tone for the rest of the song.

 

Intro’s written using this method will never be complicated, unless you’re a genius, but often that’s the strong part of intro’s written this way. They will be simple, short and to the point, the ideal intro for certain types of songs. AC/DC for instance are masters in writing intro’s like these, which became very clear already when they released their first hit Whole Lotta Rosie.
Of course this method has disadvantages as well... Used improperly you will write nothing but predictable intro’s, leaving little or no room for the rest of the song. Remember, an intro should make people curious, not tell them everything about the things to come! Avoiding this you will find this method very convenient to use, especially if you are not too good an arranger and/or if you are just starting songwriting.

The “Showcase” Method

This method is very dangerous to use because of various reasons. But if you take good care, using it may result in very interesting masterpieces of music, almost little songs on their own. They can be compared to those beautiful, painted capitols in those medieval bibles: those pictures often were nothing more than illustrations, but just because of their sheer beauty they enhanced the message in the text that followed.
This method will only work in certain types of music, like for instance HardRock and Symphonic Rock. They won’t work in music like HipHop or Funk. Of course, intro’s written using this method will still be judged according to the general rules discussed in the previous lesson, and as you can imagine, they can easily be condemned to hell for not obeying to these rules. But if the composer did his job right he will gladly be granted grace because of the exceptional beauty of the crime!
The showcase-method itself can be used in different ways, resulting generally in two different types of intro’s:

“Freaky”, virtuosic intro’s

This type of intro’s are usually built on a virtuosic instrumental riff (i.g. Malmsteen) or unconventional, complex rhythmic patterns. They are especially interesting to musicians.

Long, “narrating” intro’s

These intro’s are usually intended to create a certain atmosphere. Synthesizers and/or sound-effects are often used in intro’s like these.

For both types counts they will NOT work on A&R-managers looking for the Next Sensation On the Block, but songwriters writing stuff like this wouldn’t care too much about that. They are more interested in writing a Concept-album like in the good old 70-ies or blasting away the front-lines of the audience with arpeggio’s at full throttle! Now this might sound like I’m mocking writing intro's like these, but the opposite is true: I’m a great fan of intro’s like these and I believe some of the best intro’s ever are written like this. But on the other hand, writing intro’s using this method is full of risks.
Keep in mind the following remarks before attempting to write intro’s using this method:

Be sure you are at the right place

Be aware of the fact intro’s like these simply don’t belong in certain kinds of music. Any attempt to introduce an intro like this in a different type of music will fail, unless you are lucky; you may then call yourself the New Beethoven...

Be sure you have the requiered technical skills

Writing intro’s like these is impossible if you lack certain skills like virtuosity and arranging skills. If you lack any of these skills yourself, be sure the people who are going to perform your work do have them.

To put it short, don’t try this at home!
So far for the methods. Remember, there are lots of them so feel free to experiment!