Rough to Release

In the previous chapter we looked at production and setting out the vision for the song. So now we have our spark and spice mixed together and our direction set, how do we go about turning that into a reality? If you're a proper composer or you're just really good at thinking about musical parts, it might be as simple as writing down everything you want to play, hitting record, and playing it all.  If you're anything like me then you might be quite a long, long way from that. So I have a 'Demo Dub Delete' cycle, and you might find it helpful too. Demo Firstly, and most importantly, capture the essence of the song as completely and accurately as you can. For me, this involves practicing to a metronome a few times and then recording to a click. As well as being a bit of good discipline, this also makes it easier to add midi parts later if the baseline is solid. It can get a bit awkward if you have a tempo or time-signature change, ideally work out where those things a...

Spock: why is that music playing? Kirk: Tension Spock! Atmosphere. Spock: It's space; there is no atmosphere. Kirk: Hence the tension! There's an old saying about writing a novel that the sequential passage of events is the story, but how you chop up and present that sequence of events is your plot. And one of the key ways in which you can dice up your novel is to simply chop things out. This idea applies double to lyrics, it also applies to the music and the production as well. We'll come back to production later, but before we delve into lyrics, let's talk briefly about the music. Subverting structures To keep people interested you obviously need an attractive melody but, unless you're writing for the Baby Shark audience, you also need some variety and contrast.  In terms of song structures an easy way to add a bit of variety is to extend or contract a segment. If you've established a verse-chorus structure, then adding an extra bar or two to the second v...

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 in...