Think of a song that you really like. What is it about the song that appeals to you? Is it the meaning behind the lyrics? Is it the cleverness of the rhyme-scheme? The groove? The chord progression? The incredible technique of the lead vocalist? The shredding guitar solo? The way the chorus gets stuck in your head? Or just an association with a good time, or with someone you love?
If you brainstorm this activity with a group of people, the responses generally fall into a set of broad categories.
The Lyrics
The Chords
The Melody
The Rhythm and Groove
The Structure
The Instrumentation and
The Production
There are lots of elements that make up a great song, and different aspects of song writing appeal to different people in different ways
Being able to identify what appeals to YOU is a really important step in becoming an expert song-writer.
Try the exercise above whilst listening to two different songs that you like.
What aspects of the two songs do you think are particularly effective? Try to identify three features of each song that you think are particularly effective. Is there any cross-over between your two lists? Is there an aspect to song-writing that you think is more important than another?
Here are two of my favourite pop tunes:
Three things that really appeal to me about this song are:
The groove and rhythm
The change of mood in the bridge
The 'mysterious' aspect of the lyrics; it feels like the song has deep meaning, but it's hard to say exactly what it's about
Three things that really appeal to me about this song are:
The unusual chord progression in the verses
The change in mood and tonality between the verses and the choruses - the verses are haunting while the choruses are uplifting
The 'mysterious' aspect of the lyrics; it feels like the song has deep meaning, but it's hard to say exactly what it's about
Once you're able to identify what you like about a particular song, it's simply a matter of working out HOW the composer creates these effects. Over the next few lessons we'll look at the techniques song writers use to create great, catchy songs.