Musical Onomatopoeia – The Secret to Writing Amazing Hooks
If you’ve ever heard a catchy, relatable hook from a songwriter you like and wondered how you can write like them, know that you’re not alone. This is a common question asked by many songwriters. Fortunately, we can study these techniques, and emulate them to create a similar effect.
The technique we’ll be covering here is known as musical onomatopoeia. In this article, we’ll discuss what it is, examples of its usage in famous songs, and how you can use it in your songs.
This article is a summarised transcript of our video “Hook Writing Magic: The Secret Melody Writing Technique that Pro Songwriters Use”. Click here to watch the video for more details, explanations and examples.
What is Musical Onomatopoeia?
To understand this technique, we must first understand the meaning of onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia refers to when a word sounds like the thing it is describing. Examples of such words are “Buzz”, “Crash”, and “Bubble”. Another way of describing it is words whose sonic characteristics have a physical relationship to the thing they’re describing.
In relation to this, musical onomatopoeia refers to how the melody we use could reflect the image, movement, or idea inside the lyric itself. This technique works particularly well when you have a hook or title that you really want to spotlight.
If you’d like to learn more techniques to help you write catchy, memorable melodies for your hooks, check out our free 30-min masterclass here:
Examples of Musical Onomatopoeia
A famous example of musical onomatopoeia in action is Sia’s song, “Chandelier”. In the chorus, the line “I’m going to swing from the chandelier” has a melody that swings from high to low, and back again. The melody itself has a swinging motion to it, further accentuating the hook of the song. In turn, the emotion of the song is intensified.
Another song that uses musical onomatopoeia is John Legend’s tune, “You Move, I Move”. The pre-chorus to chorus has the lines “You control me, fast and slow/ When you move, I move”.
When he hits the word “move” inside the chorus, the melody becomes what we call a melisma. This is a fancy way to describe the phenomenon of notes moving around over one syllable. So, his melody is moving around to also emphasise the word “move” in his hook.
We can also notice that the pre-chorus of “You control me, fast and slow” has lots of static notes, happening in a stepwise motion. The notes are short, and he slows down the speed on the word “slow”. Through this, he matches the movement of his notes with the meaning of his lyrics – further reinforcing his song’s central message.
How to Use Musical Onomatopoeia
Let’s study how we can use this technique in our own songs using the song title “You’re the best mistake I’ll never make”.
- The first step is to write a basic melody for your hook. You don’t have to apply musical onomatopoeia at this stage. Just focus on creating a foundation for you to use the technique on.
- Next, pick a word in your hook to highlight. In this case, we’re going to focus on the word “mistake”.
- Now that we’ve chosen our word, we’ll try to come up with a rhythmic melodic change that will mimic the word “mistake”.
- A great example would be to change the line to “You’re the best mistake, mistake/ You’re the best mistake, mistake I’ll never make”. The repetition of the word “mistake” not only displaces the melodic rhythm, but also mimics the sound of a record scratching. Therefore, it sounds like a mistake but since it’s done with intention, it doesn’t feel like a mistake.
Conclusion: Musical Onomatopoeia – The Secret to Writing Amazing Hooks
In conclusion, musical onomatopoeia is a great technique that we can use to strengthen the central idea in our title or hook. Through experimenting with different combinations of approaches, you too will be able to write songs with memorable and catchy hooks.
If you would like more details, explanations and examples, then be sure to check out the video now.
