The media often portrays great songwriters as simply having inspiration strike them, then magically writing inspiring songs on their first try. In reality, a lot of revision is done between the song’s first draft and the version that the listener hears. Here, we’ll discuss how revising your songs is a necessary habit for great songwriters.
A famous quote often repeated by many artists which was originally said by RC Bannon, is “Great songs aren’t written, they’re rewritten.”
Amazing songwriters understand that the majority of songwriting doesn’t happen from flashes of inspiration. They don’t assume that the way the song came out first is the best way. In fact, they realise that the best version of the song can only be reached through various changes and iterations.
Revising your songs gives you the chance to take them through a process of development and refinement to get them to the finish point.
If you’d like to discover more ways you could improve your songwriting, download this free PDF eBook entitled “14-Day Songwriting Challenge”:
Examples of Artists Who Revise Their Songs
Neil Finn:
This genius behind Crowded House champions this concept and talks about revising his own work. He says “I’ll try as many times as they can possibly be improved on. Occasionally, that does mean that things get over-polished or overworked, but I actually think that most of the time when I’ve gone the extra mile to refashion something or re-edit or change words, it’s almost always ended up better.”
Paul McCartney:
A great example of how revisions can make or break a song is Yesterday by Paul McCartney. Contrary to popular belief, the song did not come to him in a dream. The song actually came out with a jumble of lyrics such as “Scrambled eggs, oh my darling, how I love your legs”.
Only after spending a year on revising the song did he manage to create the version that we know and love today.
Conclusion: Songwriter Habit #2 – Revise Your Songs
In conclusion, great songs don’t just appear on the page magically. We don’t wake up one day, have inspiration strike us and write the next great hit of the century. Instead, disciplined songwriters take the time to revise their songs. This way, they manage to turn them into the best songs they can possibly be.
A common issue that songwriters often struggle with, is how to determine the length of their song. In this blog post, we’ll learn the importance of song length, by studying Queen’s famous rock anthem, “We Will Rock You”.
The original recorded version of “We Will Rock You” is two minutes and two seconds. It’s straight to the point, with absolutely no fluff or filler. In order to understand why the song is this short, we have to first understand the purpose the song was written to fulfill in the first place.
Queen created this anthem to encourage people to sing and clap along. To this end, the song has three refrains which in turn provides the audience three opportunities to join in. However, once that’s been done, the song would have served its purpose.
Imagine, if the song had been even 30 or 40 seconds longer, we may have felt that it was dragging and thus, the punchiness and impact that the refrain currently has might have been entirely lost.
If you’d like to learn more about how you could plan your song sections out, click here to download a free “Song Map Template” PDF now:
Questions to Ask Ourselves
Based on what we know about the length of “We Will Rock You”, we can surmise that it’s important for us as songwriters to ask ourselves the following questions when determining the length of our songs:
What is the purpose of our song?
Does the length of our song currently support its purpose?
Have we given enough time so as not to detract from the punchiness of our refrain/ chorus?
Remember that there isn’t a fixed answer to how long a song should be. Some songs might even need as long as six and a half minutes to tell the full story. Instead of trying to follow a specific songwriting formula, what’s important is that we tailor our song lengths to suit the purpose of our songs.
In the case of “We Will Rock You”, Queen felt that it needed to be short and sweet, with three verses and three refrains. This keeps the song punchy, and successfully carries its point across.
Conclusion: Songwriting Tip #6 – Keep It Short
As an overall, it’s important to remember that every song is unique and the appropriate length will vary. However, embracing the concept of keeping it short and sweet, as exemplified by “We Will Rock You,” can lead to powerful and memorable compositions that leave a lasting impression on our listeners.
Turn your inspiration into beautiful songs with step-by-step guidance through two professional songwriting methods. By the end of this course, not only will your tool belt be stocked; you’ll have a plan and a method for finishing your songs – all of them:
We’ve all been there before: You get a sudden idea for a song, and you tell yourself that it’s alright, you’ll remember it later. But let’s be honest, most of the time, we won’t be able to accurately recall what it is later. In this article, we’ll teach you how you can collect everything and ensure that you’ll never lose an idea again.
Collecting everything doesn’t so much mean that we have to record everything we see or hear. It means ensuring that we have a system in place that easily allows us to record any songwriting ideas that come to mind. Whether that’s through carrying a notepad around, recording voice notes or typing in your phone, you need to ensure that you can keep track of your inspiration somehow.
If you’d like to discover more ways you could improve your songwriting, download this free PDF eBook entitled “14-Day Songwriting Challenge”:
Examples of Artists Collecting Everything
Bela Fleck:
Grammy award-winning banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck has spoken about how he used to have to tour around the world at a time where handphones didn’t exist. When he got an idea for a song, he would call his house and leave a voicemail, singing whatever idea he had in his head. Then, when he got back from tour, he’d listen to all the voicemails and jot down the ones that he liked.
This story sums up really well the sense of desperation to capture an idea that a great songwriter should have.
Taylor Swift:
When you watch documentaries of Taylor Swift, you’ll notice that she always has her phone with her. In Thiago Forte’s book “Second Brain”, he talks about how she makes a habit of capturing every single idea that she has as it’s happening.
Then, she uses that as an archive that she can return to during the songwriting process. This is reminiscent of the cliché where songwriters are seen to have stacks of journals, lists of voice recordings and voice memos in their phones. The point here is that you should collect your ideas however you can, using a variety of different formats.
Max Martin:
Sometimes, ideas strike you at the most inconvenient moments. However, that doesn’t mean that you should just give up on recording them. Max Martin talks about this in the making of the popular Britney Spears song, “Hit Me Baby One More Time”.
The idea for the song came to him at 1 AM, when he was already fast asleep. Instead of telling himself that he’ll do it when he wakes up, he forced himself to roll over and mumble the melodic idea into his phone. After that, he had another idea and couldn’t quite go back to sleep. So, he rolled over and recorded another voice note into his phone.
This whole situation sounds inconvenient to us, but it shows just how determined songwriters have to be when collecting ideas.
Relating this Back to Stepping Away
All of this relates back to when we talked about stepping away as being part of the songwriting process. If you haven’t read that article, you can check it out here.
It’s important to understand that stepping away is part of the songwriting process. You’re not taking a break from songwriting, you’re just moving into a different mode of the creative process. So, even when you’re out taking a walk, having a long drive or jogging, be sure that you bring with you some method to collect ideas.
We shouldremember that inspiration could strike us at any time. In order to capture that inspiration, it’s imperative that we prepare methods to record ideas no matter where we are. In this way, we can be sure that we won’t lose any of our songwriting ideas and will always have a creative archive to draw from.
Do you have folders full of half-finished songs? This is a common problem and you’re definitely not alone. In this article, we’ll go through a songwriting formula I’ve learnt that has allowed me to know whether a song idea will work, and write better songs faster.
This formula is all about finding a writable idea. A writable idea is the combination of a concept, a title and a song map. We’ll go into each of these individual components in the later sections of this article.
For now, click here to download a free PDF song map template that will help you finish every song you start:
When you have these 3 components together, it gives your song structure and a plan. This ensures that you don’t feel as if you’re just groping around in the dark during the songwriting process.
Part 1 – The Concept
In this case, having a concept means having a general idea of what you want to write about. Jimmy Webb provides the following as an example of a song concept in his book “Tune Smith”:
“I want to write a song about someone who goes through acute mood swings from euphoria to emotional exhaustion. I love this person and want to address the song to him.”
It’s important to note that just having a song concept is not enough to make a song idea. In order to have a song idea, you must have a song title.
Part 2 – The Title
Having a song title does two important things. Firstly, it provides your song an anchor – otherwise popularly known as a hook. This is important because coming up with a song idea is all about limiting your options and possibilities. Aside from that, a title also ensures that you have a target for all of your lyrics.
For example, the song “First Times” by Ed Sheeran is a song about him celebrating all of the daily first times he gets with his partner. In the first line of the song, he describes the first time he played Wembley Stadium. This creates contrast to all of the first times he talks about in the song with the love of his life.
A title gives you destination, which in turn gives you direction. That being said, this doesn’t mean that you have to stick with the same title throughout the songwriting process. What’s important is that choosing a title gives you momentum and it’s that momentum that will help push you forward to further develop your song.
Part 3 – The Song Map
A song map is having an idea in your mind about how you could approach this title from at least two different angles, where the meaning and emotion will grow as the verses progress. The concept plus the title need to contain a clear way in which your song idea will develop.
As an example, let’s look at the song “Happy” by Pharrell Williams. Below is the song map we’re able to extract when we examine the lyrics:
Verse 1: How happiness feels
Verse 2: The idea of obstacles to happiness is introduced
This is actually a really useful song map for writing songs to convey a clear mood or emotion – which is very common in film and TV songs. We can even replace the emotion “Happy” with any other emotion to create a different song.
Below are two examples of universal song maps which you could use:
Problem -> Intensification -> Escalation: A great example of a song that uses this song map, is “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” by John Mayer. The concept of this song is “A relationship that is on the brink of collapse”, and the title is “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”. The song starts with the narrator sensing that there’s a problem between the two of them.
This then turns into them starting to pick fights with each other, followed by the two of them trying to hurt each other. We can see from the progression of this song’s story that it clearly follows the song map Problem -> Intensification -> Escalation.
Situation -> Context -> Consequence: For this song map, we tend to start in the present moment. This is followed by us trying to zoom out from the situation to provide some context on the present moment. The final part is where we introduce the consequences of the situation that was introduced. Often, the introduction of the consequences is the emotional heart of the song.
A great example is “The House That Built Me” by Miranda Lambert. In this song, the situation that’s presented is Miranda knocking on her childhood home door. Then, we’re given some context as to why this action matters to her. Lastly, the emotional consequence of leaving her childhood home is made clear in bridge.
Conclusion: An Easy 3-Part Songwriting Formula
Although this songwriting formula is useful, it’s important to remember that by no means is it the be-all-end-all of songwriting. There’s no one right way to write songs. However, knowing this formula will provide you with something to go on when you feel stuck during the songwriting process. This way, you can put an end to unfinished songs for good.
If you would like more details, explanations and examples, then be sure to check out the video now
Turn your inspiration into beautiful songs with step-by-step guidance through two professional songwriting methods. By the end of this course, not only will your tool belt be stocked; you’ll have a plan and a method for finishing your songs – all of them:
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using basic chords. After all, they’re safe, reliable and well-known. However, to truly make the most out of your basic chords, you have to learn how to make them interesting. In this article, we’ll take some of the most common chords on guitar and transform them into beautiful and versatile voicings for your next song.
This is a really simple open chord that is often one of the first that beginners learn. The great thing about this chord shape is that you can do a lot simply by moving some fingers around.
For example, by moving your first finger off, you introduce the major 7 note, which turns it into a Cmaj7. Furthermore, dropping your little finger allows you to add the nine note which turns it into a Cadd9. Observe the images below, where from left to right, we have C Maj, C Maj7 and C Add9:
To learn more, click here to download a free chords PDF with 10 pages of detailed diagrams and photo demonstrations to help you make basic chords more beautiful:
The 6/9 Chord
The concept of adding little melodic lines on top of your chords helps take a static chord and introduce some movement to it. However, you can take it a step further and introduce a new chord called the 6/9 Chord.
A 6/9 Chord consists of notes 1 – 3 – 6 – 9. You can optionally add in the 5 on top if you’d like as well. The image below shows a C 6/9 chord, with the optional 5 on top:
The great thing about this shape is that it’s movable. For example, you could move the C 6/9 shown earlier up two frets to create a D 6/9 instead. If you wanted to get even more complex, you could lift your little finger to the #4 or #11 note. Observe in the image below a C 6/9#11:
The G Major Chord
G Major is another common open chord that beginners learn. It sounds great because it relies largely on open strings to create it’s sound. You can enhance that openness by removing all of your fingers and focusing only on the root note, like so:
This is useful because it allows us to hammer-on and pull-off certain notes as we play the chord. Country and folk music often use this technique. You can hear it in John Mayer’s song “Why Georgia” in which he uses a little riff with a hammer-on to set up the whole tune.
E Major and E Minor
The E Major chord on guitar in it’s original form uses all 6 strings, particularly the lowest one. We can augment this shape to create an E add9 instead, which has a really beautiful, and warm effect – especially if you use a backwards rake to help those open strings shine. Below, you can see E Major on the left and E add9 on the right:
We can then turn the E Major chord into an E Minor chord as follows:
And can even further augment this by adding a 9th note to create an E Min9, which sounds really beautiful, dark and mysterious. Here’s what that chord shape would look like:
A Minor and D Minor
You can also add a 9th to A Minor and D Minor to create A Min9 and D Min9 respectively. Have a look at the image below:
Similarly to the idea with the C Major chord earlier – where you took your first finger off to make a major 7, and then dropped your little finger to create an add9 – you can do the same with a D Minor to create a melodic idea.
These ways of playing chords are useful because they allow songwriters to have chord progressions that aren’t particularly complicated, yet still create a lot of movement, and motion.
The F Chord
Instead of playing F Major in it’s standard form with a mini barre across two strings, you can leave the last string open to form F Maj7. Doing this also frees up your little finger to potentially add a 9th to form F add9. Below you can see F Maj, F Maj7 and F add9:
F Major can also be played in a split voicing form where you take your first finger and come across to the sixth string, then put your third finger on the third note to create a sort of tenth voicing, like so:
This voicing is super useful if you’re not comfortable with barre chords because it can be moved up and down the neck while still providing you opportunities to engage the open strings. However, it should be noted that the chords you form with this technique won’t work in every key.
Experimenting with Bass Notes
So far, the main method we’ve been using to create different chord voicings is to use the fingers we have available to create some melodic movement on top of the chord. Another way we can make these chords interesting is by using bass notes that aren’t the root of the chord.
The basic construction of chords is usually 1-3-5 for major chords and 1-b3-5 for minor chords. We can use either the 3 or 5 as the bass note of the chord, instead of the root as usual.
Let’s use D Major as an example. You could take a finger off to create a D Sus2 or add a finger to create a D Sus4.
The above two forms of D Major sound great but what we’re going to do now is instead put a F# on the top instead of a D, to create a D/ F#. This is a really rich sounding chord and the chord shape would look like this:
You could also use this technique to create smooth transitions between chords. For example, if you went from F/C to C, the C bass note becomes the common note between the two.
Conclusion: Learn to Turn Basic Chords Beautiful
The great thing about guitar is that it has the ability to let open strings ring, and we want to search for those opportunities as often as possible. To help us, we can use techniques such as changing the bass note or adding extra notes on top of our chords. This way, we’ll be able to make the most out of the open chords we know, and create interesting chord progressions for our songs.
If you would like more details, explanations and examples, then be sure to check out the video now
Level up your songwriting with five radically practical exercises used by professional songwriters around the world:
As songwriters, we’re often focused on the details of our songs and the creative process. However, it’s important for us to remember that our audience deserves to feel like they’re a part of our songs as well. Through analysing Queen’s song “We Will Rock You”, we’ll discuss the importance of listening to your audience as a songwriter.
The story goes that the song came about after Queen had played a show at Bingley Hall in Stafford on 29th May 1977, and at the end of that show the crowd began to sing a classic football anthem known as You’ll Never Walk Alone. Brian May in particular was really moved by this experience.
In an interview with Radio One, he said “We were just completely knocked out and taken aback. It was quite an emotional experience really”. Following this, the band felt inspired to create their own anthem that a crowd could engage with, sing along to, clap along to, and even stomp along to.
If you’re interested in finding some inspiration for you to write great lyrics, then click here to download this free PDF ebook entitled “The 5 Best Exercises for Writing Great Lyrics”:
What We Should Learn from This
What’s important to notice here, is that instead of dismissing his experience as just him having a particularly rowdy and excitable crowd, he took it and sought to create a song where he could give back to his audience. He actively tried to learn from this, and wanted to include the audience and seek more engagement with them to make them feel like they were part of the show.
This is one of the reasons that Queen became one of the most successful live bands of all time. As songwriters and musicians, we often value the creative process over everything else. While this is definitely a crucial part of the process, this doesn’t mean that we should overlook what we can give back to the audience instead. In hindsight, the greatest rock anthem of all time was born out of this very simple idea of giving everyone in the crowd a song that they could perform with the band.
By making it all about the beat and the chanting, everybody in the crowd was able to feel like they were a part of the song and weren’t limited by not being able to play an instrument. Instead, they got to use their feet, hands and voices so that for a very brief moment, they got to feel like they belonged in a rock band.
Conclusion: Songwriting Tip #5 – Listening to Your Audience
In conclusion, it’s important for us to take into account our audience’s or listener’s needs as well when writing a song. This way, our song will be able to capture the attention of our listeners, thus further ensuring that it sticks to their minds and hearts.
Turn your inspiration into beautiful songs with step-by-step guidance through two professional songwriting methods. By the end of this course, not only will your tool belt be stocked; you’ll have a plan and a method for finishing your songs – all of them:
Songwriters are often solitary creatures. Most of us like to work away at our projects, treating them as our babies and ensuring that they never reach another person’s ears till they’re complete. However, one of the most crucial habits that distinguishes highly effective songwriters from the rest is their willingness to seek and embrace feedback. In this blog post, we discuss what getting feedback means, why it matters and more.
It’s necessary to understand that getting feedback doesn’t mean sharing your song the week before it releases on Spotify. While that is important, that’s asking for support and not getting feedback.
Getting feedback means asking for a third party’s opinion during the process of creating your song. This gives you the chance to take their opinions onboard, and consider how you might better improve your song.
If you’d like to discover more ways you could improve your songwriting, download this free PDF eBook entitled “14-Day Songwriting Challenge”:
Examples of Artists Who Find Getting Feedback Important
John Legend:
During a Hollywood Reporter Roundtable discussion, John Legend talked about how he shared a collection of songs that included his hit single “All of Me”, with a group of trusted friends and collaborators. What’s important to note here, is that at the point in time of sharing his songs, he didn’t know that he would release “All of Me” as his single.
However, when he got feedback from the people he shared them with, all of them unanimously agreed that “All of Me” was the song. In this instance, John used feedback to help him narrow down which of his songs he should focus on and develop further. He understood that a third party would be able to make a more impartial decision, since he as the songwriter was too close to the matter.
Dua Lipa:
Sometimes, feedback can be given in the form of collaboration or co-writing. On a Song Explorer episode, Dua Lipa discusses the writing of her song “Levitating”. She talks about how the song was constructed working with some of her long-time collaborators in the studio bouncing ideas off each other.
This situation can be described as her receiving real-time feedback. She’s essentially taking their suggestions onboard, making changes and throwing it back to them again. Through this, we can see that collaboration, co-writing and feedback sometimes all blur the lines between each other.
Sting:
In interviews, he talks about how he often starts a song by himself. Then, he takes the song draft to his band, and if they can’t make it work within 30 minutes, he scraps the idea.
You can see from this that Sting uses feedback not only as a way to develop a song, but also as a process of elimination. In this manner, he’s able to ensure that he doesn’t waste time on developing songs which might not work out. He uses feedback as a tool to help him decide.
When to Ask for Feedback
There are multiple stages throughout a song’s life where you can ask for feedback. The initial draft phase of a song is one of the best times that you can get feedback. Since the song is in its early stages, everything is still very easily changed and there are so many different directions that it could go in. By asking for feedback, you’ll be able to easily influence your song in the early stages of its life.
However, for some people, it’s too difficult for them to share a song in its first stage. This is understandable as the first stage is when things are still very raw, which would make many songwriters embarrassed of sharing. If this is the case, you could polish your song a bit more first, before using the second or third version to seek feedback from other musicians, producers or songwriters who don’t necessarily write in the same genre or style as you.
Who to Ask for Feedback
A lot of musicians aren’t sure who to ask for feedback. This is mostly due to the fact that songwriters are often solitary, and have trouble forming the right relationships to help with this process. One way to go about it, is to seek out a community of songwriters or join some songwriting groups.
An amazing example of this is our Patreon channel which we specifically set up to invite other songwriters in and give them a safe space to be able to share their songs at different phases of the writing process. We also host songwriting groups that run 4 times a year that anyone in the world can join. – click here to check that out.
Another thing that’s really important, is to identify and follow the kinds of songwriters whose music and songwriting you love. Find out who the producers on that record are, then take a chance and reach out to them, asking if it’s alright for you to get some feedback.
You should also be sure to actually go watch live music shows. These environments are great to physically meet people in, foster relationships with people and ask for the kind of feedback that you’d require as a songwriter. This might result in you having to pay people for their help. However at some point, it’s really important to hire people who have the skills and knowledge to help you take your own craft to the next level.
As songwriters, we need to be open-minded enough to understand that feedback is meant to be a tool to help us grow. To that end, we should actively seek out feedback to further develop our craft and ensure that we can make our songs the best versions of themselves that they can be.
The song “Let It Go” from the Disney musical Frozen is a song that solves an age-old problem that songwriters face: how to repeat something, but make it get more interesting, not less interesting. So, whether you’re into Disney or not, take a moment to read this blog post and learn the crucial songwriting tricks that “Let It Go” uses.
Repetition is a fundamental element of songwriting. Listeners don’t just enjoy hearing something repeated; they need it. It’s the repeating part that draws them in, creating an emotional connection with the song. However, the challenge lies in ensuring that each repetition feels fresh and emotionally resonant rather than becoming stale or predictable.
For example, if you tell the same joke again and again using the same punch line, the joke gets increasingly less funny. Similarly, if each of your verse sections use the same words or imagery, then your song will become less interesting and get less of an emotional reaction.
This is a problem that many songwriters struggle to overcome, and it’s something that “Let It Go” solves very well.
Analysing “Let It Go”
Before we jump into some techniques we could use to overcome this problem, let’s take a look at how “Let It Go” does it.
“Let It Go” is not only the title of the song, but also its hook. In line with that, the phrase is repeated multiple times throughout the song. However, instead of becoming dull, the phrase “Let It Go” means something different each time it’s sung. Below are the different meanings of the hook throughout the song:
Letting Go of Expectations: The first time Elsa sings “Let It Go,” she sheds the weight of other people’s expectations, revealing her true self and powers to the world. She is letting go of the person she’s expected to be.
Letting Go of Limits: In the second instance, she lets go of her own self-imposed limitations on her powers. She’s no longer bound by rules, and she’s eager to explore the extent of her abilities. This shift in meaning helps the emotion grow and gain power, rather than lose it.
Letting Go of Relationships and the Past: Finally, in the third iteration, we understand that Elsa is actually letting go of the past. She is severing her identity and becoming someone new.
Each time Elsa sings the same words, they take on new layers of meaning and emotion, creating a captivating story that resonates with listeners.
Technique #1: Title Strategies
The first technique we can use to create interesting repetition in a song is title strategies. This means that we should try to choose a title that can be re-colored from different angles.
Instead of looking for just any memorable or interesting phrase, look for phrases that could be approached from different angles. We can apply this thinking even as we’re brainstorming for titles by asking ourselves:
Are there at least two angles from which I could approach this title?
Are the two angles able to be related to the core idea of the song, but not take the same approach?
Once we’ve decided that, then we can use the different angles as different parts of our song. For example, take the phrase “No one but me”. We could approach the phrase as follows:
All alone, there’s … “No one but me”
No one has answers…”No one but me”
I don’t need … “No one but me”
The 3 different meanings can all be used as different song sections, which would then serve to further deepen our song’s story.
Another important part about this process is to try and structure your thoughts in the form of a song map.
And to download a free PDF song map template, click here:
Technique #2: Trigger Lines
The second technique involves the use of trigger lines, which are the lines immediately before the repeating chorus. These lines “trigger” the meaning of the chorus into something new with each iteration. They’re called trigger lines because their proximity to the hook or chorus or title of the song triggers its meaning into that repeating thing
To give you a clearer idea of how they’re used, the trigger lines from “Let It Go” have been highlighted in the image below:
One way to use trigger lines is to reverse engineer them. First, ensure that you have your title and a song map. You also need to have a clear idea as to the different ways that you’d like to approach the title. Then, start at the end of a section and work backwards to write your trigger lines.
Sting has previously talked about this in a Sodajerker podcast. In it, he talks about reverse engineering his sections from the titles or from the important lines that he wants to put at the end of sections
Conclusion: Let It Go – A Lesson in Songwriting
Disney’s “Let It Go” demonstrates that the art of repetition in a song is not magic, but the result of carefully crafted technique. As songwriters, we should learn from songs such as these and consciously employ these techniques to create songs that people will listen to over and over again.
If you would like more details, explanations and examples, then be sure to check out the video now
Level up your songwriting with five radically practical exercises used by professional songwriters around the world:
Songwriting Tip #4 – Turning the Chorus into an Anthem
The goal in most songs is to shine a spotlight on the chorus, and really ensure that the hook sticks in our listener’s minds. In this blog post, we’ll analyse how “We Will Rock You” by Queen turns their chorus into a powerful anthem.
If we take a look at the phrasing of the verses, we’ll see that it goes from extremely busy at the start of the verse to less busy as the song heads towards the chorus. This is an interesting phenomenon that is known as phrasal declaration.
In a nutshell, phrasal deceleration is when we go from having a lot of notes in a bar to having less notes in a bar. This results in us feeling a sense of deceleration, even though the tempo of the song remains unchanged. By using phrasal declaration, we anticipate the refrain even more, as it provides a release from the tension that was building in the verses.
If you’d like to learn more about how you can build tension and release in a song, download this free PDF entitled “Functions of Chords in a Diatonic System”:
Conclusion: Songwriting Tip #4 – Turning the Chorus into an Anthem
By creating a sense of anticipation using phrasal deceleration and ensuring that the refrain only lands on downbeats, Queen successfully creates an anthem that resonates with people of all ages and backgrounds. As songwriters, we should learn from this and try to implement these techniques in our own songwriting as well.
Turn your inspiration into beautiful songs with step-by-step guidance through two professional songwriting methods. By the end of this course, not only will your tool belt be stocked; you’ll have a plan and a method for finishing your songs – all of them:
Songwriting isn’t just about writing songs. It’s about how we find inspiration and ensure that we can write not only consistently, but also regardless of whether inspiration jumps out at us or not. Here, we’ll discuss a part of that process: Stepping away.
It’s important to note that the creative process is not just all about being hunched over your desk or laptop and pounding away at a line that you can’t solve. While this is important, it‘s only half of the process of songwriting.
When we step away, we allow ourselves to enter a different headspace. By taking a break, we can achieve breakthroughs and gain new perspectives that we may have never thought of before
If you’d like to discover more ways to enhance your creative process, download this free PDF eBook entitled “14-Day Songwriting Challenge”:
Examples of Artists Who Find Stepping Away Important
Sting:
In an interview on the Sodajerker podcast, he says “There’s something about the binary rhythm of walking around – left, right, left, right – that opens up the creative channel. If I get stuck with a problem, I’ll go out and walk it off.”
Paul Simon:
Songwriter Paul Simon is also a fan of stepping away when he’s stuck. He has said “I think it’s very calming, it’s like a Zen exercise really. The act of throwing a ball and catching a ball is so natural and calming that your mind kind of wanders. And that’s really what you want to happen. You want your mind to wander, to pick up words and phrases and fool around with them and drop them.”
Tom Waits:
This prolific songwriter has also talked about how he will deliberately go for long drives as part of the creative process. He feels that by putting his brain in a completely different state of mind, it helps to create new connections between ideas that he wouldn’t have come up with sitting at a desk.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
Even classical musician Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been quoting saying “When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say, traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal or during during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.”
Conclusion: Songwriter Habit #5 – Stepping Away
Stepping away is a habitthat is just as important for songwriters to practice, as it is for them to practice writing songs. By stepping away, you allow yourself to create connections you never would have thought existed. Thus, helping you to write songs more consistently and efficiently.
