In Article 1 of my Songwriter Starter Pack series we looked at creating your first verse. In this follow up article we will create a chorus and look at how songs are constructed.
The Chorus
The chorus usually involves a distinctive change in the melody and can have a different flow to the words as in:
My loving her meant nothing = 7
But it filled my soul with pride = 7shards of ice now fill the place = 7
Where love did once reside. = 7
The way we recite a lyric has a distinctive beat to it. Where do the pauses occur. How do you want to convey the lyric. Once you have written your verse and maybe a chorus, tap your finger as you recite it. It suggests a definite beat doesn't it? Go to your keyboard and find a rhythm that suits your verse and chorus. Don't play anything other than the drum. Is it 3/4 or 4/4? Find something to suit and see if you can recite your lyric to the regular beat of the drum. As you do this you will get a picture of which notes in your music are going to be the minims, crotchets and quavers and where there is going to be a pause in the melody. It may also suggest a change to a word or phrase to make it fit better.
Popular music has evolved into pre determined patterns that the listeners prefer to hear. The most popular structure is a verse followed by the second verse, followed by the chorus, followed by another verse. This is referred to a AABA. Other songs might have the ABAB structure - verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Or AABB - verse, verse, chorus, chorus. Having established the structure of your song you can extend it and much popular music today include a third element which is the bridge so you could end up with something like AABAABCBB.
listen to your favorite song and see if you can jot down the structure in terms of A, B and C.
The title is important and should grab interest. It could be the first line of the first verse. If not it should be the first or last words of the chorus. It should be repeated several times throughout the song.
Some words work better in titles than others so see if you can use colors, numbers, animals, birds. The word 'only' works well.
If you can incorporate two words that sound similar so much the better. As in 'Only The Lonely' or 'Nights In White Satin'.
Alliteration is the use of words beginning with the same letter in the same line as in 'Teach me to be true'. It just makes remembering the line easier for the listener and rolls off the tongue nicely.
Make sure your powerful notes in the melody fall on meaningful words such as 'you' and 'me'. Not on the secondary words such as 'but', 'and', 'the' or 'in'. Such as in 'but YOU and ME'. The powerful sounds are 'AYE', 'EEE', 'OH' and 'OOO'.
This is the second article in my Songwriters Starter Pack. To see the whole series you can join my website members area.
Steve Parry has been teaching keyboard on the internet for over 10 years. His downloadable eBooks cover basic tuition, chord finder software, how to play by ear and numerous articles covering such topics as home recording and song writing.
Visit his site at http://playkeyboards.com/ for more information.
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