The Creative Building Blocks

Have you read our Whole Brain Songwriting concept?

Well lets say that you took the opportunity to let your creativity simply pour out of you: unobstructed by the analytical side of your mind. Ideally when you are finished you should have lots of separate little phrases of inspirational music. These are the raw building blocks which your analytical mind can use to build a coherent song.

Meta Structures

Usually there are three distinct parts to a song. Verse, Chorus, and Bridge. Sometimes the bridge is just an instrumental "break" from the basic theme.

Once a song is properly arranged: the human brain can hear it once with total recall. We almost instinctively KNOW what will come next in a well developed song.

Once you get the sense of how power songs are structured: you will hear the basic patterns in anything from the Beetles to Beethoven.

Forget about that old idea of trying to come up with a "hook" for your song. In the best music, the WHOLE SONG is a hook!

Even the instrumental patterns are based on the same theme and variation arrangement. This is why most people can guess (or recall) the name of a well written song after hearing just a few notes from the introduction.

Your Emotional Soul-Palate

Often in various musical genres: the same melody will be repeated over and over while the backing chords are changed to subtly shift the emotional import.

An important key to developing great music is to become familiar with the unique chord structures common to various styles of music. These chords are your artistic palate: like the colors a visual artist uses to paint with.  The different "shades" of musical color enable you to express different feelings and moods in your music.

Taking the time to familiarize your self these essential chord options gives you a powerful basis for song writing.

Many courses exist for gaining this education in a few weeks without learning to read music

Free Online Interval Training for Your Ear. Automatically recognize musical structures.

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Experienced "ears" in the business are those executives who are able to "hear" a hit. A big part of it is the spirit and intensity of an artist. But even more so it's the fundamental STRUCTURE of a song. To be honest: if a song has the right structure even a kid on the street can pick it out.

Those golden ears often prefer to hear a song in it's raw form without a fancy demo to obscure the underlying inspiration. An acoustic guitar or piano and a vocal should be enough. Even in electronic music: LESS is more when showing off the underlying strength of your songs.

If you song doesn't pull in the listener in its most basic form then it probably won't be a hit.

Throughout history – ALL great music has certain basic organizational features in common. For this discussion we will focus on the way this is done in pop music.

Note of Clarification: Obviously I'm an 80's kid – so the examples I'm using come from my youth. But you can try the same exercises and experiments with YOUR favorite genre. The patterns are essentially the same.

Click to open up this convenient link in another window and instantly listen to many of the song-examples we use in this course. www.Playlist.com  Just enter the name of the song into the "Playlist" search window. By clicking on the little arrow the song starts to play.

The songs examples mentioned here for discussion are property of their respective copyright owners.

Putting Them Together

The normal mistake is to use the analytical mind to come up with filler material to hold together a few inspired phrases. This is what wannabes call a song. But this does not make sense to the whole brain which craves circular loops known in music as theme and variation.

A powerhouse hit song is composed of repetitions of several strong musical phrases. In some cases such as "Born In the USA" by Bruce Springsteen, the song features only a single basic phrase pounded into the brain over and over for the entire song. ( Over 15 million albums sold. )

Note: for the purpose of this discussion, a musical phrase is a melodic/chord progression. We are not specifically referring to the words, but more to the tune and the chords that back it up.

If you would like to check out "The King of Pain" by Sting and the Police. You will find essentially two phrases repeated throughout the entire song.

Try listening to any of your favorite pieces and count the number of phrases used in the entire song. You will find that they are all STRONG ( also called active ). The same goes for lyrics – it's better to repeat impactful-phrases than to fill in with mediocre statements. Repetition builds memory.

Basically you can label each distinct phrase as follows: A,B,C,D. Listen again to the examples above.

And then listen to "Head Like a Hole" by Nine Inch Nails.

You will find various patterns of arranging these phrases.

Another great example to start off with is "Free Fallin" by Tom Petty.

In Country music: check out these best sellers: "Fast Cars and Freedom" by Rascal Flatts, "Otis Redding" by Sara Evans, and "Friends in Low Places" by Garth Brooks – (20 million albums sold).

If you listen to New Age Jazz check out anything by Craig Chaquico – for example: "Native Tongue". Just download it and listen, especially if you've never heard this phenomenal musician – make sure you can really hear it good – its like musical champaign & caviar. Pure class! Craig is the ex guitarist from Jefferson Starship. He offers a great example of these patterns in music without words. You may need to actually download this one rather than searching for it on Playlist.com

Click on this link to hear just how far back this goes.

- Submitted by Visitors - "Gone" by tobyMac.

Even in such diverse genres such as hard rock, blues, folk, hip-hop and the best selling rap etc. etc. etc… you will consistently find that your all time favorite music, in some way always conforms to this essential model.

As you listen to examples of great music: label the distinct phrases used and write out their patterns. Here are some popular arrangements of musical phrases -

AA BB AA BB CC DD

AB AB AB AB CD CD

AAAB AAAB CCCD

AAAA AAAA BBBB BBBB

Take note of how the phrases are arranged in groups.

Take the time to identify the order that the phrase-groups are repeated as well.

Staying Inspired

Knowing these secrets can be the absolute SUICIDE of creativity. Because thinking this way short circuits the natural inspirational processes in the brain.

For this reason we highly recommend that you separate the brainstorming stage of songwriting from the "producer" stages. Read Whole Brain Songwriting in order to discover how the human brain works the best when engaged in the creative process.

Most musicians might be better served to engage an analytical creative partner (called a producer/arranger) to help structure the inspiration as it flows. In this way the creative and analytical processes are separated into two or more distinct individual brains. The song bounces back and forth gaining dimension, richness, and structure. Please read Creative Partnerships for smart strategies on how to build your own collaborative songwriting teams.

Remember this. Great music happens when the eternal soul-self is revealed through interacting with the traumas and thrills of being human. If your music is not firmly rooted in your soul experiences of life, it will likely not go down in history as anything worth remembering.

Developing Your Skills:  Find Examples

It's important that you go out and find at least 10 examples of your all time favorite music and write out their phrase-patterns.  If you go through the trouble of performing this exercise, you will experience a crucial "AH HAH" moment, where everything suddenly starts to make sense.  Once this happens your view of the music world will fundamentally shift.

 

Strategic Note: DON'T get involve in building up the full band parts until you have the basic song laid out.

• QUESTIONS:
• WOULD YOU BE COMPELLED TO BUY YOUR OWN MUSIC?
• DOES IT DRIVE YOU TO INSPIRATION EVERY TIME YOU PLAY IT?

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

The brain craves to hear the same theme patterns over and over again with brief variations for contrast.

(Please See our Ear-Opening article: Anatomy of a Hit!)

To be a real producer you have to learn to identify each distinct theme and related supporting phrases and build a separate song around each group.

If you have one good line that doesn't fit. Get together with other musicians and throw that line out there, let them take it, add something of their own, and bounce it back to you. Next thing you know a truly hot new song will be the result.

If it still seems like something is missing, just add a bridge and the whole thing should come together nicely.
 

Breaking Down Your Existing Compositions

Let's say that you have some stuff that you genuinely felt INSPIRED to put into music. You know its real, and its good, but you suspect that its not at its full potential.  

What to Do?

Go back through the piece and ONLY grab the lines which are truly awesome. This includes melodies, chord progressions, riffs, and lyrics.

Now take a deep breath and take a leap!

REBUILD the song according to the above pattern strategies in Anatomy of a Hit!  JUST USING the good stuff.

All the rest is just filler that is watering down your hit. Right now its sleeping underneath the extra junk you thought was needed.

Try this process and you will be astounded how a piece of music can come to life. You will be amazed how people want to hear it over and over to the extent that they will just go ahead and buy a copy.

People will come up to you and talk to you about how they love your music, that they heard someplace, even though they never listened to you perform in person.

You will hear over and over that your career is going places and get lots of offers. This is when it pays to know everything on this site – inside and out.

As you know, we recommend avoiding standard music recording contracts.

To understand how smart artists are going big in today's market please read our article called The New Way to go BIG!

At this point you might also want to know the process of Selling Songs to Big Names.

Songwriters need to recognize that much modern music ( including the Beetles sound ) is the result of a committee-style creative process. The guys from the band would come up with the brilliant stuff and their producer George Martin would structure it into a coherent musical statement. Neither could exist without the other.

Often I hear people who obviously have a great concept that came right from their soul experience of life. In some cases I totally related to the theme of their song, cause I have been in those same shoes.

This is really where great music begins. However: their piece turned out to be unmusical in many ways.

These writers need to consider taking their concepts and hooking up with a composing partner who is very talented musically but lacks the verbal expressiveness.

This strategy is a key to Elton John's success, his lyrical themes were actually developed by his writing partner. Elton took that VERBAL soul-inspiration and then ran with it musically.

Finding Better Writing Partners

I've heard several submissions from folks who have very nice recordings and compositions backing them up. But I can tell that the "producer" – although very qualified musically has ZERO appreciation for what the singer/writer is all about!

This includes:

• Writing music that doesn't at all match up with the real emotion behind the piece.
• Styles of music that don't tonally complement the sound of the singer's voice.
• Great sounding recordings that totally feature the producer's strong points to the point that they overshadow the vocalist.

For example: a great rock-guitarist that ALWAYS has to be featured through-out every song. Even though his female vocalist partner has a soulful voice that is better suited to something much more mello.

Singer/songwriters end up spending thousands of dollars with these types of people before they realize what they've gotten into.

Learn how to cut your losses before you get in to deep.

Taking Control of the Creative Process

By learning some basic recording skills – such as how to operate a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) you can eliminate concerns about the high-cost of studio time – especially while you are in the songwriting stage.

Check out our recommendations to get a strategy on setting up your own basic recording studio for as little as $200.

Chances are, that you can figure this out on your own in a very short time. But if you prefer, you can hire someone for a couple of sessions to help you set it up and learn to use it.

Once you are empowered you are free to really get creative with your music. This gives you the advantage of being able to try out a whole variety of different writers and see if any of them has something that really speaks to your soul and fits with your unique sound! See if there is a creative chemistry that brings out your best!

If you follow our whole songwriting strategy – you will see that we recommend solidly laying out the song and Performance Testing it for sales-power – BEFORE you go and invest a ton of money on studio time, session-musicians, or shrink-wrapped CD product (See Your Own CD Factory.)

Paying Your Collaborators

Make that first session more of an audition. If you aren't impressed after 3-4 hours there should be no payment involved.

If you come up with something you like, offer a work for hire agreement. For "good-and-suitable payment" of say $25-$80 – they agree that the content belongs to exclusively to you, to use however you may want. The writer releases to you any future claim to income or copyright credit on the piece.

Get a separate signed receipt for the payment – and write a check – to keep an official record of the transaction.

If you feel real chemistry and want a long-term relationship – you can both put your names on the copyright registration and share income and songwriting credit.

See Know Your Royalies.

I’m hearing from extremely talented musicians who have sufficient smarts to actually get a composition all-the-way from idea to recording. However it’s these exact people who tend to be living much more in the analytical half of their brains.

Average vs. Great

A lot of this material ends up being flat and one-dimensional. It lacks vitality, imagination, and PATHOS. (Click to look that one up.) It lacks that fascinating PERVERSITY we all buy into. Life is IMPERFECT and great music often embodies that in obvious or subtle ways.

There is a stark honesty-of-experience that all of life’s great protagonists share.

The protagonist is always that main character in a story who takes the risks and goes through the changes. Within the context of that individual’s life everybody else is just a supporting character. Others play the role of either villain or helper. They either PUSH or pull the main character to go through some kind of transformation towards greater personal authenticity.

Think of the butterfly emerging from the cocoon or the fall of Rome… It could be the LOSS of a loved one… or the loss of innocence… it could also be the REDISCOVERY of innocence… it can also be the agony of getting there or being stuck… it can be that final redemption and liberation… or the opening of a fresh new page…

Great music and art are often all about TRANSFORMATION.

On the other hand it might just be your own skewed yet provocative stream of consciousness. I think of Picasso and Pink Floyd.

The main thing is that it should come straight from what’s real to you. Almost unfiltered so we can taste our own reality from different place and experience a part of our selves we might not have otherwise known.

It doesn’t matter what your style or sound is… It all comes down to the structure of the song…. When musical phrases are structured and ordered in the correct manner this has a special effect on the human brain… It’s easy to apply once you understand how it works…

NOTE: The most important parts of this web site are the songwriting articles. Because if your music doesn’t have that power-factor: all the other promotional efforts and expenditures are just an experience in loss.

Hidden in each one of your pieces of music are nuggets of inspiration that could very well set the world on fire. The process of effective songwriting is one that helps you EXTRACT those powerful inspired items from the surrounding filler material supplied by your analytical mind. Once you can let go of those extra musical “crutches” – the real song will start to come forth.

Just keep reading and digesting one article at a time. Each piece of information builds upon the next one. Pretty soon you will start having “AH HA” moments of realization as you begin seeing the big picture on the music industry – AND – exactly how you can start helping your self right now!

Get out a new notebook if possible – or just open up a fresh document on your word processor. Paste in anything you can use – or anything that stands out and maybe puzzles you. Go back and read it again so you can apply it. This is all stuff you can USE to start building your success.

Once you make a commitment to a certain path in life – doors naturally start to open – that you may have never even noticed before – but were always there!