If you’ve been writing songs for a while, you’ll know that lyrics change in character as a song progresses. To generalize, you’ll notice the following: VERSE LYRICS: Verse lyrics set the stage, recount details of a story, describe characters, etc. It lays out the narrative, the storyline or general song topic. “Hooks and Riffs: How They […]
I tweeted earlier today about an excellent interview with Peter Gabriel, “Life Lessons From a Rock Star.” I highly recommend you give that video a watch, as Peter, interviewed by philosopher Alain de Botton, discusses, at least in part, the notion of meaning in music. One of the first questions from Alain de Botton: What is […]
It’s interesting that music in pop genres has mainly favoured the tenor male voice. Most songs will sit in either the high baritone or tenor range. I say interesting, because I was reading recently about a recently-completed study that has examined how much we like or are drawn to high or low-pitched speaking voices. You […]
Most songs, if they are one of several possible verse-chorus formats, usually start with a verse, and before the 1-minute mark will move on to the chorus. The timing involved with this — i.e., the fact that we usually hear the chorus at or before the 1-minute mark, as you hear in a song like […]
You might think that songwriters who create a lyric first are likely to be poets, but that’s not always the case. Some poetry works well as song lyrics, but only if: the poem has universal appeal: it speaks of issues and situations that most people would identify with on some level; the poem taps in to […]
A song is working well if the listener can put themselves in the shoes of the singer. Whether that means that you identify with the lyric, or simply love the way the guitar solo sounds, the listener needs to make a personal connection to some aspect of the song. It’s why air guitar is a […]
