A couple of work colleagues asked me to join their band recently on bass and backing vocals.
Having played a short notice gig with them a while back, I was more than happy to oblige.
Musically it’s a real change for me – if you’ve heard my music you’ll know I like weird time signatures, lots of layers and several changes in key every song.
In this new band, having a third chord is showing off. As the front man put it, “with this sort of music, any suggestion of cleverness and the audience will walk out”.
As a songwriter this is a great challenge:
a. Because it means we have to find ways of making the songs interesting without being too ‘clever’ – we have to stay simple.
b. It’s collaborative, and very much the front man’s project. I’m used to working as a solo artist, but this is very much someone else’s thing that I’m helping out with.
So how do you make a song interesting if you’re only going to use two chords.
1. Think about groove and layers
One song we have is literally two chords – A and G. How on earth can that be interesting? There are two basic tactics we’ve used. First, we made sure there was a killer basic groove. This is glam rock, the whole idea is to get people dancing. That’ll happen with this if we put it in front of the right audience because of a simple, infectious 4.4 groove.
We’ve combined that with simple layering techniques – the first verse for example is just bass and drums, the chorus big loud guitars and the midle 8 bass and drums, much quieter and in half time.
Choosing a half time groove (Snare on the 3rd beat rather than normal time – 2 and 4) creates an effective contrast, and allows us to crash back into a sudden normal time repeat of the chorus for the outro.
It’s all primary colour, big loud slabs of contrast rather than subtlety, but it works really well.
2. Pace and key between songs
If you’re not being clever within songs you need to make sure that songs next to each other don;t sound too similar. Don’t have everything in A in a row, don;t have everything a mid-paced rocker. Break it up with contrast from song to song. After all, we’re putting together a set, so each song is only part of the live show.
3. Structure FUndamentals
Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Middle Chorus. That’s basically it and straying too far won#t go down well, so we’re making sure each song has a really clearly defined structure.
4. It’s all about the hook
Lots of ‘hey’ or ‘ooh’ based vocal hooks – everyone’s a sucker for a pop hook right? If you haven’t got the subtle interplay of cross rhythms or other muso tricks, a good simple infectious hook will do just as nicely.
They’re arguably harder to write as well, but we’ve been doing well by sticking to the pentatonic scale and question and answer phrasing.
5. Performance
The front man, Paul, is a joy to watch. Even in a rehearsal studio he gives a fantastic performance – everything you need in a song is there in his body language.
I’ll share more about the project as it becomes available.
How do you make things interesting and still retain simplicity and accessibility?
