Part 6 - Story arcs

Let's talk about story arcs and having something to say.

A story arc is basically just a fancy way of saying the 'beginning, middle and end' that you're familiar with from creative writing at school. You'll often encounter it as the 'three-act-play' structure that forms the core of most plays and movies. 

The first act sets up the story: our hero, their life and, at the end of act, the change that upsets the normal. The second act then introduces all the fall out from the change, the difficulties that our hero* has to battle with and frequently ends with all seeming lost and the low point of the story. The third act then deals with the our hero overcoming the challenges, frequently both internal and external, some form of learning and redemption and then happily ever after.

That's an approach that has kept story tellers of all kinds in business for literally thousands of years.

Now I'm not remotely suggesting that you need to build this into all your work, but ask yourself what tale your song is currently telling. Does it have those elements? Set-up, change, challenge, fall or fail, redemption and resolution?

Is something missing? Is something over-played? Is your story arc more of a flat line?

Fundamentally, what are you trying to say? Have you said everything that needs to be said? Are you saying too much?

This last one is a common error, and one of the masters of avoiding this is Bruce Springsteen. He has a wonderful way of setting up a story and then leaving it unresolved. Black Cowboys and Highway 29 are good examples.

Another way of thinking about this is in terms of tension and release. 

Lets transport ourselves back in time to our folk singer in a pub. Our singer uses the verse to tell the story (quite possibly in a classic three-act-play structure) building the tension through each verse as we introduce our characters and their peril, each verse increases the tension and the chorus, where everyone joins in, gives that release until finally everyone has either shot, stabbed or poisoned themselves or everyone else. It's what happens in folk songs.

This keeps the audience hooked in using three techniques. First, there's the hero-challenge-resolution of the story arc, second there's the audience participation in the chorus, and finally there's the careful management of tension across the piece.

You'll often find a kind of proto-middle-8 in folk music where a last verse will mostly follow the usual harmony but heavily slowed down and with a minor chord or two slipped in to be suitably tragic.

So look at your song and work out what's building tension and what's providing release. And if things are feeling a little flat then that's a great place to introduce a middle 8 or bridge - because you can set that up to do either. 

Of course how you choose to approach that tension and release cycle is up to you as well. It doesn't have to follow the same cycle as your verse and chorus. Some songs will reverse it with the verse providing the release and the chorus the tension - All My Heroes by Bleachers for example - some will do it more frequently, some will just do it a couple of times, and some, like You As You Were by Shearwater just follow a single growing tension thread throughout the song as it grows and grows until a final climactic release. Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit is another good example of this approach.

It's easy to think of these ideas of story arc and tension and release as being lyrical devices but I think they apply just as much to instrumental work. The idea of introducing themes and instrumentation is part of the set up, the change and challenge of the second act comes as you adapt and counter those initial themes, until we end with a satisfying musical resolution - or not! You can leave the audience hanging.

Which highlights one way of building tension in the music, don't resolve the musical progression when expected; lob an extra bar in there or jump out earlier. Similarly tension can be added with discords, unexpected instrumentation or polyrhythms. Listen to the first chorus/post-chorus of 'All My Heroes' again for a few of those elements. This is then released with the simple structure of the verse. Andrew Bird's Left Handed Kisses, mentioned earlier, is worth studying from this perspective too.

The vocal-instrument balance is, of course, another way to add colour and variety to your song structure. I hesitate to suggest it, but the old cliche of the instrument solo is there for a purpose. Well, it should be. Personally I've heard far too many songs and bands where solos are jammed into every song without thought to what purpose they're actually serving. 

But used as a tool to build that story arc or work that tension and release they are very powerful. As is putting a sudden vocal arrangement into an otherwise instrumental piece. Remember Outro by M83 from the previous instalment for example. Or consider Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits, where the vocal delivery is almost spoken and the answering guitar part carries the bulk of the emotional intent.

So before setting off on an epic of technical noodling, please ask yourself if it's really serving the song.

It's worth reminding ourselves at this point of why we took that detour into song structure last time, and that's to help us take those scraps of ideas, those half-finished bits and pieces, and to give you some tools and techniques to turn them into complete songs.

Got a verse and a chorus? Good start - what story are you trying to tell? What's missing?

Everything feeling a bit flat? How can we mix things up a bit and get the audience hanging on the next note, yearning for a conclusion?

That's what these ideas should help you do.

Let me know in the comments what works for you - and what doesn't.

* You didn't think I'd get through 6 blogs without shoehorning the best band in the world in somewhere did you?