Using the Range of Your Melody to Create Musical Energy
For those who don’t create (write or perform) songs, they’d probably have a simple answer to how you generate musical energy: turn up the volume!
But if you’ve been a musician for a while, whether that’s writing songs, or being involved in producing or playing them, you likely know that there’s a lot more you can do to generate musical energy. Making things louder means trying to make everything more energetic, but focusing on one particular component of a song — like the melody, for example — means you can be more subtle about it.
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One of the most powerful ways to control the power of your melodies, and the energy they generate, is to give thought to their range. Typically, when melodies move upward, they generate more power, and when they move downward they allow energy to dissipate.
That’s because when a singer is required to sing in their highest range, a natural kind of tension can be heard in the voice. Listeners interpret that increase of vocal tension as an increase in musical energy.
Then when the voice moves downward, that extra energy diminishes.
It’s a common principle in songwriting, regardless of genre, that the first section of a song (usually the verse) exhibits lower energy levels than the section that follows — the chorus. So that’s the reason that most songs will use melodies lower in range for the verse, and then higher in range for the chorus.
In addition to that, though, you can be even more subtle about melodic range within a song’s section. You can see evidence of this in practically any song, but take a listen to Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” as a good example. You can hear that the melodies dwell mainly around one note for quite a while, with occasional jumps upward. Each of those upward melodic leaps offers a slight shot of energy in the voice, even if the backing instruments mainly continue with whatever they had been doing.
Those melodic fluctuations allow for some understated but constant up-and-down of musical energy throughout the entire song.
In your own songwriting, take a look at your melodies and pay particular attention to how they move. When melodies move up, you’ll want to think also about the lyric at those moments: does the rising melody seem to make sense when considering the words you’ve placed in the lyric? Is there an increase in emotional content of your lyric at those moments?
The interesting thing about how you manipulate melodic direction and range as a songwriter is that listeners can clearly hear the effect, even if they don’t have the musical vocabulary to explain why those melodic manipulations are working.
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter.
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Don’t Ignore Your Playing When You’re Concentrating On Songwriting
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If you find yourself needing to write a lot of songs in a short period of time, it can take all of your creative energies. At those times, other creative activities (reading, drawing, listening) might take a backseat, at least for a while.
And because of your complete focus on writing, you may find that your pool of ideas dries up quickly. The problem is that you haven’t been doing anything else creative to replenish those ideas.
So what are the things that typically help you feel more creative? If you’re a lyricist you might spend time writing new lyrics, or perhaps reading someone else’s lyrics, or even unrelated to your own songwriting you can write poetry, essays, even novels. Any of these activities still require your brain to be creative, and they can help your songwriting by being a necessary diversion.
But don’t forget perhaps one of the most valuable creative activities you can do as a songwriter: playing your instrument.
Why Playing?
What makes playing so valuable is the fact that you’re usually playing songs, or at least snippets of songs. Solos, backing rhythms, chord progressions that are parts of your favourite songs… these all have a strong and particular relevance to songwriting.
Getting music under your fingers, whether you’re a guitarist, keyboardist, bassist, or player of some other instrument, puts you in the position of feeling music in a way that shouldn’t be ignored if you’re a songwriter. It’s inspiring.
When you’re writing songs, you’re probably using your instrument to create them, but I’m talking about making sure, during writing sessions, that you pull your brain out of writing mode and putting it firmly into playing mode. In other words, you’re playing your instrument as a kind of diversion from writing.
When you do that, and then go back to songwriting, you’ll find that your pool of musical ideas has increased and songwriting actually usually becomes easier.
So the main piece of advice here is: don’t ignore independent playing — playing for playing’s sake — when you’re in a period where songwriting is demanding most if not all of your creative energies.
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter.
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Here’s An Easy Way to Make Sure Your Lyrics Are Working the Way They’re Supposed To
Every time you write a song, you’re communicating something to your audience. When we think of that word communicating, we automatically think of lyrics, because communication and words go hand in hand.
But in good songwriting, everything you write plays a role in communicating. For example, if you want to write a nostalgic song, you need nostalgic lyrics, but you also need for the instruments to be playing in a “nostalgic” way, and you need to sing it with a tone of voice that similarly sounds nostalgic. Even characteristics such as key choice, tempo and backing vocals can effect the character of the music you’re writing.
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In that sense, everything you do in the production of a song, from the songwriting stage through to the performing or recording stage, needs to partner up and support everything else.
When it comes to lyrics, no matter what kind of song you’re writing, and regardless of genre, there’s a way most lyrics progress as a song moves along, and you can use this as a guide to make sure your lyrics are working the way they’re supposed to:
Verse Lyrics
The purpose of a good verse lyric is to describe what’s going on to the listener. In so-called “story songs”, this might be the actual story, but in any case, by the end of the verse, listeners should have a pretty clear idea of what the song’s subject matter is.
Because the story is so important in a verse lyric, words and phrases that elicit an emotional response should be kept somewhat to a minimum. Your main job is to describe people and circumstances by using simple, everyday words. The tone should be conversational.
Chorus Lyrics
A good chorus lyric is, in effect, a response to what the verse has just described. It’s not so much that the words and phrases you choose should show you being overly emotional; it’s more a case where the words and phrases should stimulate an emotional response in your listeners.
It’s usually why chorus melodies are higher in pitch than verse melodies, because a higher vocal line sounds more emotionally intense.
As with the verse, your chorus lyrics should be conversational, and you need to use words that are the kind that would typically sound emotional.
Bridge Lyrics
Keeping in mind that the bridge (which usually happens after the second chorus) is the last chance to finish up the story you’re creating, but also closer to the end of the song than the beginning, it’s normal for a bridge lyric to be a combination of verse-like descriptions, followed quickly by a chorus-like emotional reaction, al meant to increase musical energy.
I’ve often thought that one of Taylor Swift’s earlier hits, “You Belong With Me” is a perfect example of this. Check out the lyrical lines in the bridge, and you’ll see that it’s a great model for this important up-and-down of emotional content.
So really, all you have to do when you’ve written a complete lyric is to look section by section through your song and see that you’ve moved from descriptive to emotive as you go from verse to chorus, and then that your bridge lyric (if your song is using a bridge), fluctuates quickly between those two characteristics.
And if you’ve done that, you’ve created a lyric that has the best chance possible of enticing your listeners to stick with your song to it’s very end.
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter.
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As a Songwriter, You Need Daily Goals
As a songwriter, you could learn a lot from the companies that make and sell sports watches. These are devices that track the number of steps you take, or the distances you walk or run, as well as allowing you to set up and adhere to any number of specific sports training programs.
The success of these devices is their ability to set a daily goal. So even if you aren’t specifically training in any particular sport, you can still aim for a certain particular goal, whether that be 10,000 steps per day, 3 miles per day, or some other specific objective.
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These companies know what they’re doing; by setting a goal, there’s a feeling of “necessity”, you might say, on the part of the user: as they pass 9,000 steps, and it’s now evening, most users of these devices are inclined to do something to achieve that 10,000 step goal. And then of course, there’s that positive feeling of achievement and satisfaction in doing so.
There’s hard evidence out there to show that more people are likely to work toward a specific goal than the people who simply have a mindset of “I really must get a proper amount of exercise today”, with no specific goal in mind.
In the creative arts, the same is true. If all you think is “I really should make songwriting a daily activity”, the feeling of necessity is missing.
So the answer is to set for yourself certain specific songwriting goals. But what could or should those goals be?
In the creative arts, it’s hard to say what a particular objective might be. In sports, you’re either measuring distance, time, or perhaps heart rate (“zone minutes”).
In songwriting, you may spend a half hour trying to come up with the perfect one line of lyric to start verse 2. And while that may seem to others like a waste of time, it might actually be a great use of your time. So what’s the best way to establish goals for yourself in songwriting?
I think in absence of any way to say what the perfect songwriting session might be, it’s best to establish an amount of time where you are truly focused solely on some aspect of your songwriting.
If, for example your equivalent of taking 10,000 steps per day is to spend one hour each day absorbed in some aspect of songwriting — no distractions! — I think that that’s a worthy goal.
And because a songwriting session might be a segment of time where you’re trying to create a great chord progression, craft a catchy melody, write a great lyric, or… setting a length of time will give you that important feeling of satisfaction that you were able to devote a certain chunk of your day to the task of writing music.
That way, even if you don’t actually get that perfect line of lyric, you’ll hopefully feel a sense of satisfaction that you devoted time to an important goal.
So set a goal for yourself today, make it attainable, and see what it does for your feeling of creative self-worth!
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter.
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Why Playing Live Music is an Important Part of Improving Songwriting Skills
You are likely aware of the term “confirmation bias”. It describes this feeling we have to accept the facts that support or confirm a position we might take on an issue, and we reject facts that seem to challenge that position.
We experience confirmation bias in practically every aspect of our normal lives, whether we’re talking about politics, our position on social issues, our favourite sports teams, or even our own children’s accomplishments.
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As a songwriter, you also likely make use of confirmation bias. On social media for example, you’re likely to repost or “like” comments that speak to how good your songs are, and highly unlikely to repost anything that expresses a negative attitude.
And as far as that goes, it’s fine. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having a bias toward your own creative works, and I think it would be strange to be giving equal voice to naysayers on your own website or social media feed!
But as a singer-songwriter, it’s important from time to time to take a close look at your music, and assess in a more objective way the ways in which you could be improving your songs.
And probably the best way to do that is to play your music live.
And not just once, but to make live performance a regular part of your musical life.
One thing that a live performance offers is the chance for you to hear a spontaneous, immediate response. And when you perform live over a period of time, you get to, in a sense, “compile” various audience reactions and make note of what seems to be having a positive reaction and what’s perhaps missing the mark.
If you’re not sure how or where to perform your songs live, the best way is to try to make connections to other performers in your area, particularly those who work in your chosen genre.
And if it’s hard to make those connections, you will want to try the following:
- Check out local bars, restaurants or cafés who hire performers for weekend evenings.
- Research local festivals or group concerts.
- Participate in songwriter circles (which gives you the opportunity to sing your songs for experienced musicians who are usually very encouraging and respectful of everyone’e efforts.)
All in all, you want to increase the chances that others will hear your songs, and while building your own fan base it gives you that all important opportunity to hear other people’s immediate reaction to something you’ve written.
Those honest opinions give you the chance to hone and polish your music. Every successful songwriter is a person who has made acceptable compromises to how they write in the bid to increase listenership. And the one best way to achieve that is to start getting your songs out there for others to hear.
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter.
“The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” eBook bundle includes “Writing a Song From a Chord Progression”. Discover the secrets of making the chords-first songwriting process work for you.
I’m Gary Ewer. For years I’ve been helping songwriters understand the basic fundamentals of good songwriting. I do that mainly through the free articles on this blog, and also through my 10-eBook bundle. If you lack consistency in your songwriting, and you want to take your abilities to the next level, everything you need to know is in that bundle package, so please take a look at those ebooks. And if you want to browse through the more than 2300 posts in the blog archive, scroll to the bottom of this page.
Please feel free to leave a comment at the end of any article. I love reading what others are thinking about music.
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