Songwright

Song Formulas – The Stadium Rocker

Tom — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:47:01 +0000

Do you dream of playing to huge crowds in huge venues? As a life long rock and metal fan, I’ve always had those dreams and there’s a type of song that fits them, a type of song that only makes sense when a crowd of tens of thousands sings along. Bon Jovi, Iron Maiden, Bruce Springsteen, Metallica and many other rock bands have written them: songs with melodies that demand to be shouted out from the middle of a packed arena, every member of the crowd screaming in out-of-tune unison.

Of course there’s a formula that you could follow if you wanted to write a song like this.

Lyrics and Meaning

A common theme on this blog is that lyrics are not the primary means of expressing meaning in a song, they’re just one ingredient. So stadium rock songs as diverse as You Give Love A Bad Name, Born to Run, The Trooper and Creeping Death are all actually about the same thing. Lyrically they cover topics such as love affairs (good and bad) doomed soldiers in the charge of the light brigade and monsters in ancient egypt, but see them performed in front of an audience and you realise that isn’t what they’re really about. Actually, they’re about people coming together to feel part of the same group. They’re about friendship and fraternity.

That meaning doesn’t necessarily come from the lyrics, but rather the fact that ten thousand people can sing the same thing at the same time.

So, whatever your lyrics, you need to make space for the fact that everyone has to be able to sing along.

How do you write a melody that everyone can sing along to?

That’s a tricky question to answer.

The masters of the singalong stadium chorus are Iron Maiden: just take a look at this recording of Fear of the Dark in front of an audience of 250,000.

Pretty much every melody in this is designed for a quarter of a million people to singalong to.

There’s lots of the repetition – the opening guitar melody is the same as the opening vocal part; the chorus repeats the line ‘fear of the dark; the middle section repeats the same line, albeit with a different melody.

They all use simple scale patterns, in this case a minor scale mostly moving in step but with the occasional, emotive leap of perhaps a fourth or fifth. Sequences abound ‘fear of the dark’ repeated, slightly lower each time for example.

They use pretty simple rhythmic ideas with lots of long notes.

Call and response – lots of stadium rock songs use this, and building in is vital for your stadium rock song.
Call – ‘Oh, we’re half way there’
Response – ‘Oh-oh, living on a prayer’

Call – ‘Can I play with madness?’
Response – ‘The prophet stared at his crystal ball’

Chords

You’ve got lots of choices here. Bruce Springsteen in Born to Run uses standard pop song chords, including I IV V (E A B) and I VI IV V (E C#m A B) which you could find in rock and roll songs. But since the innovations of 1970s heavy rock bands, a kind of progression has come to be synonymous with epic singalong choruses.

Yes, it’s the aoelian I VI VII. For example Em C D or Am F G. This chord progression and variations on it have become ubiquitous to entire genres of music (heavy metal, hiphop) and especially to stadium rock songs.

What chord choices give you this epic mood?

Em C D

Em C G D

Em C Am Em C D

For the chorus you’ll need something like this. The verse is another matter. If you’re going to use the same kind of chords, which many people do there are several things you could do. It’s best to change chord less often, for example two bars of Eminor and two of C, an/or have something riff based. Bon Jovi song’s are a good example of both. Of course a heavy metal song is more likely to be rhythmic or riff based in the verse.

Arrangement and Sturcture

Big big bigger, that’s the key for stadium rock songs. In particular you need a big, loud chorus, a long drawn out intro, a long guitar solo (or similar) in the middle, a huge reprise of the chorus, maybe a coda centred around repeated chanting of singing of a three note refrain on the syllable ‘oh’. You certainly don’t want the song to be shorter than about five or six minutes.

The stadium rock song is a difficult thing to master, and most of us will never be playing stadiums anyway. But certain genres lend themselves to this kind of song, no matter the venue and the central ideas – the use of aeolian chord progressions to sound ‘epic’, the use of call and response phrasing, the sprawling structure and the huge volume – are applicable in all sorts of songwriting situations.

Any anyway, lots of us dream of playing to huge crowds. So why not write songs to match those dreams?

A new discovery – Songwritingscene.com

Tom — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:13:56 +0000

I’ve just stumbled across a new (to me) songwriting blog called Songwritingscene.com and a fun little post with a great songwriting idea:

‘The Random Song Generator’

Our assignment was based on a “Random Song Generator” — basically three columns of words…the first is the person, the second is the place and the third is the action. Choose one word/phrase randomly from each column and go forth to write! Hint: My assignment was “siblings, ages 9 and 11,” “in a coffee shop”, “stealing something.”

Is There Such A Thing As An Objectively ‘Good’ Song?

Tom — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:05:00 +0000

Earlier today I was twittering a few random thoughts on future blog posts. I floated the idea of writing ‘The Songwriting Crimes of Bob Dylan’, and ‘The Songwriting Crimes of Stock, Aitken and Waterman’.

A couple of twitterers (tweeters? Tweetmates? Twitees?) raised an interesting opinion or two

Marie Tueje said (I’ve paraphrased and edited a few tweets, purely to make it scan):

Surely the major crime of SAW was being too successful?

Their writing is formulaic, sure. Subjectively, a lot of it is bad, in the sense that I personally do not like it…but objectively I think it’s difficult to argue that they wrote bad songs…

Despite this I do believe that one must be able to say ‘x is bad’ and that there be a barometer below which there is bad music

Syniq said:

I agree with @MarieTueje on this, unless you’re talking about Richard Clayderman, in which case ERASE HIM FROM TIME!

I’m not sure I agree – the idea of a work of art being objectively good is difficult to sustain. For that to be true all good art would translate across barriers of time and culture, which it clearly doesn’t.

Something can be good within a context – Bob Dylan is good to by the standards that Bob Dylan fans consider relevant, but I could (and at some point will) give what I regard as objective reasons to see him as a talentless no-hoper who got lucky.

Objectively good music? I don’t think such a thing exists. What do you think?

Troubleshooting Your Pop Song

Tom — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:04:41 +0000

Writing a standard pop song? Something not quite right?

Let’s try going through some basic troubleshooting to see if we can find out what the problem is.

1. Have you used a pop song structure?

The standard pop song is an extension of the older 32 bar song structure. Or if you like, a compound AABA structure with each A containing a verse and a chorus.

What am I talking about? The pop song basically states the verse and chorus material, restates it, then contrasts this with a B section, then returns to the (verse and) chorus material.

Have you done that with your song? AABA? Have you forgotten one of the sections, or added too many? (you can use intro, pre-chorus or coda)

2. Do your chords work?

Lots of songwriters (myself included) start with a chord progression. What I mean by ‘do they work?’ depends on the key and harmonic ideas you’re using, but one of the most important ideas is that of tension and release. Are you asking musical questions in the right place?

For example, have you used chords to create musical tension at the end of your bridge, leading into your chorus. Say your blues song has a chorus that starts on the tonic chord F. If the bridge also ends on an F, there won’t be the same tension and release as there would be if your bridge ends on a C7 chord.

Do that and the move from C7 to F will be much more interesting for the listener.

Another important thing to look at is your harmonic rhythm: how foten you change chords. Are you changing chord once per bar for the entire song? Maybe that’s why it isn’t working. Try having sections where the chords change more or less frequently.

3. Have you got contrast in the right places?

As a very very general map, a pop song often has a verse with a lower pitched melody than the chorus. A chorus often has a more ‘lyrical’ melody while the verse is more rhythmic.

Gary Ewer has a great blog post on the difference between verse and chorus.

One of the most important places that contrast is needed is after the second chorus. If you’re really unsure, use the middle section to do the exact opposite of whatever the rest of the song does. Writing an up beat dance song? The middle section could be slow with no drum beat. Writing ballad? The middle is where you bring in the drums and pick up the pace.

None of this is gospel, but an effective song has to have contrast of some sort.

4. Does the song develop?

This one’s the biggie – it lets down a lot of songs, even commercial hits (because as we all know a song can be a commercial hit and an artistic ‘failure’).

If the last chorus is exactly the same as the first, is there any point in repeating it? If the song stays at the same level dynamically, if it doesn’t have enough contrast in harmony or instrumentation it will not work.

Common fixes, aside from the harmonic and dynamic ideas we spoke about in the middle section:

Change instrumentation in the second verse – a counter melody here, or even taking out the chord instruments to leave bass drums and vocals, can work wonders.
Add an extra part in the final chorus – vocal ad libs, a counter melody, or if you’re really brave save the drum kit until the final chorus
Change key – this needs to be handled with care, as you’re in danger of sounding very cheesy if you change key for the last chorus. Then again, you might want to sound cheesy.

The point is that, however you do it, a song needs to gain energy as it progresses. There are multiple ways of doing that, by having a quiet intro, by contrasting half term and full time sections, by drastically changing instrumentation for some sections, by bringing in an unexpected sax solo.

However you do it, a successful song develops.

Will this article help with every possible problem? No. In fact there are whole areas of songwriting I haven’t even touched on. Hopefully it should get you thinking about how to fix your songs.

If you’ve got some more ideas about common songwriting problems, please leave them in the comments.

Tension in Songwriting – A few thoughts on Rhythm

Tom — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:14:09 +0000

How can you create tension using the rhythmic ideas in your song?

Recently I wrote about Gary Ewer’s great post on tension in songwriting.

His post is a list of tension and release related elements in songwriting – you can find more detail on each of them elsewhere on his site (and on this one!) – but it got me thinking about how tension and release can be found in the rhythmic elements of your songs.

Gary talks about hooks in songwriting, and how you should “a melodic/rhythmic shape that ends in such a way that the restatement of the hook acts as a resolution for the end of it.”.

Kylie!

The song ‘Can’t get you out of my Head’ is a great eample of this, a call and answer phrase with the first half rising in pitch (tension) and the second half falling (release).

The rhythm of the hook is also interesting – it employs a very simple but effective piece of syncopation.

La La La La La La La La

The first three ‘la’s’ are on the beat, the next three off the beat, and the last two on the beat again. This gives us a simple layer of tension and release – notes on the beat are ‘at rest’, the syncopated, off beat notes add a hint of tension, before resolving straight away with the final two on-beat notes.

Any ideas?

I think there’s a much longer and interested blog post on the idea of rhythmic tension in sognwriting, which I’m not going to write at the moment. Instead I’ll end by asking for your input:

How can we add rhythmic tension and release to our songs?

My initial ideas:

Small hints of syncopation in your riffs/hooks
Unexpected phrase length eg. Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles
An extra bar – eg. 5 bars in the bridge where the rest of the song is based on 4 bar sections
A half-time section where the rest of the song is double time.

Any other ideas?

Candles and Flowers

Tom — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:31:07 +0000

Finally completed a first draft for the FAWM song I’m collaborating on. Later I’ll tell you all about it. For now, here it is

Candles and Flowers from Tom Slatter on Vimeo.

Gary Ewer on Tension and Release

Tom — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:25:09 +0000

Gary Ewer has a great post on tension and release in songwriting:

What keeps a listener listening? If you can’t answer that you’ll be relegated to the dust-heap of music history, along with all the other songs that listeners got bored with. The answer to the question? It’s tension, then release, that keep listeners listening.

It’s a great post and well worth reading. If I was going to add to it I would say, as I often do, that the whole V to I tension has been done to death and is best avoided, particularly in the major scale. My preference would be to try something modal fo example the tension between F and E minor in E phyrgian.

4 Reasons You Shouldn’t Write A Love Song this Valentines Day

Tom — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:31:10 +0000

1. Everyone else will be, you don’t want to follow the crowd do you?

2. Love is a cliché – songwriters have been writing about love for centuries

3. Love songs aren’t moving – the shallowest of songs are the ones that say ‘I Love You’. I don’t know why it is that so profound an emotion should be so unconvincing when put into words, but I’ve never heard a love song that convinced me of the singer’s sentiments

4. There are more interesting subjects to write about. Why not hate, or mystery? Why not a song about the sasquatch or the ancient Sumerians?

What makes a good melody?

Tom — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:07:00 +0000

What makes a good melody? It’s a difficult thing to pin down.

Easier to define is an effective melody. An effective melody will:

Mostly move in step (C to D) with only occasional leaps (C to G)
Be rhythmically coherent – not using too large a variety of note values
Have a well defined tonal character (major scale, minor scale, one of the modes)
Have a clear structure, divided into clear phrases, often related to multiples of 4 (four lines of four bar phrases for example)
Make use of call and answer phrasing (First half ends unresolved on D, Second half resolves on C)

Those sort of ideas will give you a melody that works, but we’ve all heard melodies that work without being outstanding.

What makes a good melody?

Gary Ewer has some good ideas here.

What would you say is the secret to a good melody?

FAWM Collaborations – Candles and Flowers

Tom — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:14:10 +0000

Moist breath meets the air
Temperature dips so low you’d swear
Tender lips beyond compare
Will freeze stone blue in seconds

Flurrious wind blows flaky showers
Forcing power out for hours
Burning candles and grocery shop flowers
Fail to thaw frosted spirits

Gusts continue as snow piles deep
Blankets bundled yet warmth won’t keep
Shivering hard, just can’t sleep
Only letters to confide in

Ferocious conditions kept her inside
Gradually begin to subside
Nature insists she was brave to hide
One can’t survive extreme elements

Warmth returns, land sun-kissed
Scenic romance in the river mist
She continues to ask, beg, insist
Come join me here next season

This year for FAWM I’m going to try something new: collaborations.

Fellow Fawmer Ellenpliss has very kindly agreed to let me set her piece ‘Candle and Flowers’ to music. I haven’t written a single note of music yet, but I thought I’d share my initial thoughts with you.

Why these lyrics?

Ellen offered any of her lyrics, but I chose ‘Candle and Flowers’ for specific reasons. For a start, I like them. They’re very different to anything I would write myself. I would rarely use so many long words (no, not because I don’t understand them) but because such words are sometimes hard to sing.

Also, they’re relatively abstract – there are hints of a story here, but it’s not spelt out and you have to read between the lines to take literal meaning from the piece. That’s very useful in music – if the words told the whole story why bother writing music? Because the words are subtle in their meaning, setting scenes and hinting at the story, there’s more scope for the music to add to them.

How will I write the music?

I’m not sure yet. First I’ll need to decide on the musical mood. The words are contemplative, so an up tempo heavy rock song probably isn’t going to convey the correct mood. I need something slow, melancholy, something that reflects the coldness of the imagery.

I’ll also need to reflect the changes in mood, particularly the mention of warmth, sun and potential hope in the last verse.

Harmony?

A very simple thing to do would be to write the majority of the song in a minor key, changing to a major key for the last verse to reflect the more hopeful mood. Those aren’t the only options though.

The coldness and loneliness makes me think a pentatonic scale might work well, whereas the whole tone scale might give a static, frozen feel.

Melody and structure?

The lyrics stick to a clear rhythm from verse to verse, so I could use a similar melody for each stanza. A strophic structure, where the melody stays the same from verse to verse, would work but I’m not sure that would be appropriate for the story told.

In conclusion

I’m not sure what this will sound like when I’m finished, but I’ve a few ideas and I’m really looking forward to getting stuck in. I’ll let it brew or a day or two and then sit down with a guitar or piano and see what turns up.

Of course, I’ll post here when I’ve got something to share.