Sunday, July 09, 2006

Songwriting: Chorus Construction

This article is SPOT ON.

You gotta read it.

Calvin

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By John Braheny

The majority of choruses adhere to certain guidelines. I say 'majority' because there are songs that ignore some of the guidelines and still win by the strength of their performance, arrangement and/or production.

1. The title should appear in the chorus, in a way that, by virtue of its placement in the chorus and/or its degree of repetition, we know it's the title. If words or phrases other than the title repeat in the chorus, or in strong positions, the listener won't know which is the title when they call the radio station to request it or ask for it at the record store, which is why you sometimes see songs with two titles, like "Untitled (How Does It Feel)," "Blue (Ba Da Dee)" or "C'mon and Ride It (The Train)" – that usually means that someone felt the song's title was not its strongest hook, or even that the song has two hooks and they're covering their bets by putting both in the title. Since you can't buy or request a song if you can't remember its name, these are very important commercial considerations.

2. Keep the information simple enough for people to remember easily. If you're a literary genius, you may tend to think most choruses are too simple. Don't worry about it. They need to be simple! ....

Click here to finish reading the article.

Source http://www.taxi.com/faq/songwriting/song-chorus.html#btm

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