How to Write a Song

In the advertising business, they use a device called the ‘call to action’ to influence people’s behavior and encourage consumers to do something like: “Buy now while stocks last!” or “Call this number now!” or “Like us on Facebook and get a free gift!” 

In your song, the CHORUS is the ‘call to action’. It’s the section that is meant to persuade people to listen to the rest of the song, and then go out and buy the record! 

Publishers and A&R execs will look for this ‘call to action’ when they hear your song for the first time. They want to be sure that, if the song gets played on radio, the chorus will stand out enough to attract the listener’s attention when he or she is busy doing something else. 

This means the chorus melody should be extremely catchy, memorable and significantly different from the verse and the bridge, with a different chord progression. Changing the beat on which the chorus melody starts can have a subconscious impact on the listener—especially if the verse melody begins on the second beat of the measure (the ‘two-beat’) and the chorus starts hammering home the hook on the first beat (like Kylie Minogue’s infectious ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’, writ- ten by Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis). 

Some experienced writers put the chorus in a higher key to set it apart from the rest of the song. Other writers use a four-bar pre-chorus to add a burst of extra energy at the end of the verse. 

Building a climactic moment into the chorus (usually during the third phrase of a 4-phrase chorus melody) also serves as a kind of fuel that adds momentum and energy to the song, while at the same time providing a musical goal for the melody, chords and lyrics. 

All of these techniques can suddenly elevate the melody and let people know they are now in the chorus. While a soaring chorus can deliver a sense of satisfaction and emotional fulfillment for the listener, the heavily repeated hook drives home the title line as the musical ‘call to action’. 

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“Interesting chords will compel interesting melodies” —Jimmy Webb  

New writers often tend to develop the melody line for their songs by stringing together a sequence of random chords, without trying to achieve a good balance between the individual chords and the emotional message of the song. This can sometimes result in a song that sounds confusing or boring. 

Your choice of chords can bring character and color to your song and give it a sense of direction. So don’t just use the first chord that comes to you (although it may eventually prove to be the right one). Instead, assess every individual chord to make sure it matches the emotion of the melody and the lyrics. 

Understanding how chords like to move—and how different chords harmonize with certain notes—is a vital part of the craft of songwriting. Most chord progressions work to pinpoint the ‘home’ chord (e.g. C in the key of C) as the harmonic and melodic objective. 

Every chord has a different emotional tone. Major chords can convey happiness, joy or a positive feeling; minor chords create a sense of melancholy or sadness; and tension can be increased by using unresolved chords (chords that want to re- turn to the ‘home’ chord, but don’t). 

Roger Nichols believes in using different inversions of a chord, or trying the song in a different key, to add extra color or character to a melody. “After I’ve finished a melody I generally play it in two or three different keys to see if anything is happening chord-wise,” said Nichols. “Many times I’ll hear a new chord in a different key. I basically compose the melody line by singing the melody that occurs to me as I play the undercarriage on the piano or guitar.” 

Jimmy Webb—who wrote the best-selling book Tune smith: Inside The Art of Songwriting—believes creating a strong melody is all about finding the right chords. “It’s very hard to write a boring melody to an interesting chord sequence,” he said.

It is also important to consider the frequency of chord changes in each section of your song because this too can affect the balance between chords and melody. In many songs, chords tend to change every four to eight beats—typically on the first and third beat of every bar. A song may sound boring if the chords don’t change often enough, but changes that are too frequent and complex can distract listeners. Switching chords too often in an up-tempo song, for example, can make it sound frantic—so the faster your song the less frequent the changes should be. It is also important to avoid using the same chord patterns again and again in your songs, otherwise they will start sounding identical. 

Chord progressions can’t be copyrighted, so try something different by building your own melody around the chord sequences used in several of today’s hit songs. A word of warning though: while the basic shape of your song can be similar to the hit, make sure you DON’T copy the original melody or lyrics … or you’ll be guilty of plagiarism! 

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As mentioned previously in this book, most listeners—whether they’re music publishers, A&R reps or ordinary record buyers—have a subconscious desire for symmetry when listening to music. This musical symmetry creates a sense of predictability that is reassuring and comforting to the listener. 

The harmonic progression in a song’s chord structure is an important source of this musical symmetry. Listeners like it when the overall sense of rhythmic and harmonic direction is clear and easy to follow. 

A chord progression is defined as a series of chord changes that should have the definite goal of establishing a tonality founded on a key, root or ‘home’ chord (e.g. C in the key of C). In other words, the chord progression works to pinpoint the home note and the home chord as the harmonic and melodic objective. It moves away from the home chord as the melody unfolds and eventually returns to it to complete the melodic circle. 

Unfortunately, many new writers use chord progressions that don’t have any sense of direction or harmonic goal. The chords just wander aimlessly and don’t flow properly, giving the impression that they aren’t actually going anywhere. As a result, there’s a danger that the song won’t feel right to listeners … and they’ll quickly lose interest. 

A good harmonic progression in any key has three basic parts: the home chord (e.g. C in the key of C); destination chords such as the ‘pre-dominant’ (D, F, etc. in the key of C) or the ‘ultimate harmonic’ (E, A, etc. in the key of C). The dominant or ‘turning’ chord (e.g. G or G7 in the key of C) then completes the progression by returning to the home chord (C). 

As you try to evoke different moods to match your lyrics, some of your destination chords can be less predictable and more ambitious—such as chords that don’t necessarily exist within your chosen key. What is essential, though, is that you complete the musical journey by finding a sensible way of getting back to the home chord. 

It is this return to the home chord that leaves the listener feeling subconsciously ‘satisfied’ because the progression has been harmonically resolved. 

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“How strange the change from major to minor…” —Cole Porter (‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’)  

Some new writers deliberately avoid using minor chords because they believe that sticking to major chords will make their songs sound happier and more positive … and consequently make listeners feel good about what they’re hearing. 

But writers who completely ignore minor chords are not only missing out on being able to add greater depth and character to their songs, they’re also going against one of the most significant songwriting trends of the past 50 years. 

In 2012, an academic study revealed that the number of minor chord hits has actually doubled since 1965, and fewer hit songs are now being written in major chords. Music psychologist Professor E Glenn Schellenberg and sociologist Professor Christian von Scheve evaluated more than 1,000 American Top 40 songs that charted between 1965 and 2012. Their study found that in the second half of the 1960’s, about 85% of songs that reached the top of the charts were written in a major mode, but by the second half of the 2000’s that figure had fallen to only 43.5%. 

“Just as the lyrics of pop songs have become more self-referential and negative in recent decades, the music has also changed—it sounds sadder and emotionally more ambivalent,” Schellenberg and von Scheve explained in their study. They added: “Listeners of popular music today like emotionally complex pieces. The use of minor chords makes it possible to express a greater scale of emotions in a single piece of music.” 

Minor chords can substantially change the mood or feel of your song. And they can often help you to emphasize or dramatize the meaning of certain words or phrases in your lyrics. 

In the 1920’s, George Gershwin started enhancing Tin Pan Alley ‘pop’ songs by frequently moving between major and minor chords in the same song in order to convey an emotional shift. 

Throughout the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, hundreds of rock ‘n’ roll hits were based on just three basic chord progressions. And only one of them actually included a minor chord (the classic C-Am-F-G in the key of C, or G-Em-C-D in the key of G). This progression was heavily used by almost all of the early R&B, Mo- town and Brill Building songwriters. 

Then along came The Beatles. The innovative songs of John Lennon and Paul McCartney helped to introduce a greater number of minor chords to rock ‘n’ roll— resulting in some unforgettable Beatles tunes that were built on simple but unexpected chords which chromatically shifted between keys, or between major and minor. 

So don’t just write in a major key. You’ll be missing out on an entire palette of emotions—and neglecting a highly effective means of making your songs sound far more interesting and edgy. 

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New writers sometimes strike gold and discover a songwriting ‘formula’ that really works for them. It could be the result of a particular chord progression—or the use of a specific climactic chord change or musical phrase—but it helps them to create a new kind of song that evokes the best response they’ve ever had from listeners. It’s a great feeling to find that you’ve finally made such an important breakthrough in your songwriting. Naturally, you will want to take advantage of this winning ‘formula’ to help you establish your own distinctive sound and style. 

But be careful not to end up writing songs that are all built around the same few notes, chords and keys. 

While each new song may sound great on its own, there is a danger that you could end up with a collection of songs that all sound alike—especially if you put them together on the same demo submission or a showcase album (or on your own website, YouTube channel or Sound cloud page). 

So don’t keep using the same progressions again and again. Create a few surprises by inserting new chords into your basic ‘formula’. Or take the same chords and twist them around. 

You may find that trying out the same chord progression in two or three different keys can lead to a completely new melody line. If you’re a guitarist, try playing your successful ‘formula’ on a piano (or vice versa). You may find it sparks a whole new set of ideas. 

You can also make similarly-constructed songs sound different by varying the rhythm of your melodies. In other words, vary the note lengths from song to song (and within songs) to create contrast. Using a different combination of sustained notes, shorter notes and staccato notes will make your songs stand apart from each other. 

And don’t open every song in the same way. If most of your tracks have a four-bar instrumental intro, try adding some variety by starting a song with the chorus in- stead. 

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“It’s not just finding interesting chords, it’s how you sequence them—like stringing together pearls on a string” —Jimmy Webb  

Writers who are just starting out often end up building all their songs around the same notes, chords and keys—especially when they discover chord patterns that seem to work for them, or which they really like. As mentioned in #53, this can result in a collection of songs that all sound the same. 

So don’t just use ordinary chords, be extra-ordinary. Keep each new song sounding fresh and different by creating plenty of variety in your chord progressions. There are several ways you can use unexpected chords to bring different textures and colors to your songs without losing harmonic cohesion. For example, you can surprise listeners by changing key during parts of your song—weaving together closely related keys that have common chords. 

You can also use ‘pivot’ chords which enable you to move from the original key to the destination key by way of a chord that both keys share (e.g. inserting an E minor chord to help you move from C to A). 

Then there’s ‘parallel’ key modulation which allows you to change the mode but maintain the same tonal center (for example, one section of your song may be in the key of E major and you then modulate to E minor). Distant keys can also be reached sequentially through closely related keys by using ‘chain modulation’ (for example C to G and then to D). 

You can also use variant chords to make a chord progression harmonically interesting by simply replacing the default chords at any of the seven harmonic scale positions in your song. 

Adding sixths, sevenths, ninths or suspended chords can also bring different flavors to the basic chord. For example, the verse of The Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard’ features a sequence of suspended fourth chords that resolve to their major counter-parts. 

Major seventh chords can be very evocative and are common in most styles of pop music. Examples of tonic major seventh chords in hit songs include Labelle’s ‘Lady Marmalade’, Chic’s ‘Le Freak’, ‘One of These Nights’ by The Eagles, Bread’s ‘Make It With You’, ‘You’ve Made Me So Very Happy’ by Blood Sweat & Tears, and Chicago’s ‘Color My World’. 

You can also enhance the feel of your song by using so-called ‘jazz chords’, such as thirds, fifths, sevenths, ninths, elevenths or thirteenths. In the 1920’s, the great George Gershwin reshaped popular music by taking jazz elements and certain harmonies and combining them with Tin Pan Alley pop in a way that hadn’t been done before. 

In the modern era, ‘jazz chords’ such as ninths, elevenths and thirteenths are featured prominently in songs like Billy Joel’s ‘Just the Way You Are’, ‘Ebony and Ivory’ by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder, and Mariah Carey’s ‘Love Takes Time’. Carole King’s classic song ‘I Feel the Earth Move’ even uses elevenths in a minor key! 

Paul McCartney’s ‘Yesterday’—one of the most covered songs of all time—is a great example of how to make a simple tune harmonically interesting. The song doesn’t just feature ordinary majors, minors and sevenths; it also includes a mixture of fifths, thirds and seconds, and a couple of well-chosen variant chords. The progression in the verse is: F-Em7-A7-Dm-Bflat-C7-F-Dm-G-Bflat-F; while the chorus is: A11-A7-Dm-C-Bflat-Gm-C-F-A11-A7-Dm-C-Bflat-Gm-C-F. 

“Even if chords are simple, they should rub,” says Jimmy Webb. “They should have dissonances in them. 

“I’ve always used a lot of alternate bass lines, suspensions, widely spaced voicings, and different textures to get very warm chords,” explained Webb. “Sometimes you set up strange chords by placing a chord in front of it that’s going to set it off like a diamond in a gold band.”

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Whether you’re pitching your songs to a music publisher, an A&R rep or direct to a record producer—or perhaps trying to sell your music direct to fans through iTunes or your own website—your songs must have one essential ingredient to help them sell … a memorable HOOK that will get inside the listener’s head. 

A musical hook is the line in a song—usually the title line in the chorus—that re- ally stands out and lets people know what the song is called. It’s the one line (both melodically and lyrically) that people should be able to remember long after the song has finished. 

Many established songwriters (especially top liners) concentrate on writing the hook before they even start working on the verse and the chorus. They often build the rest of the song around the hook because they know it’s the most important part. Some writers even keep ‘hook books’—notebooks full of hook ideas and catchy musical phrases. 

Unfortunately, writers who are just starting out often don’t understand the importance of building an easy-to-remember, attention-grabbing hook into their songs. They don’t realize that the craft of songwriting involves telling the song’s story in the verse whilst musically building tension that peaks and resolves itself in the hook in the chorus. Without this ‘payoff’, listeners may not feel satisfied by the song. 

Failing to make sure a song has a strong, frequently repeated hook also means you’re making it harder for listeners to easily understand and remember the song when they hear it for the first time. 

Whatever style of music you’re writing, if you have a great hook that expresses in just a few words and notes what the song is all about, then you’ll have the starting point for a great song. 

How do you know if you’ve written a great hook? Try playing it to friends and relatives and see if they can hum it afterwards. And if you can’t remember the hook yourself the next day, it can’t be that great! 

Always keep in mind, memorable hooks are what music publishers, record labels, producers and artists are all looking for. If they don’t hear a killer hook inside the first 60 seconds of your demo, they may not bother listening to the rest of the song. 

In fact, the boss of one dance label reckons you have even less time than that to hook the listener. “People on average give a song seven seconds on the radio be- fore they change the channel,” he said. “So it’s not enough to have one hook any- more. You’ve got to have a hook in the intro, a hook in the pre-chorus, a hook in the chorus, and a hook in the bridge.” 

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Your chances of having a hit will be substantially increased if you write a great hook that makes it easy for listeners to remember your song. But you still have to make sure you put the hook line in the right part of the song so that it will stand out and grab the listener’s attention. 

A musical hook is usually a short, catchy melodic phrase that contains the song’s title. In more than half of all hit songs, the hook phrase is only about three words long. But what matters most is where you put those few words and notes in the structure of the song. 

Most hit songwriters believe the hook should be the ultimate destination of the verse and pre-chorus, both lyrically and melodically. That’s why, in the verse- chorus format of most of today’s pop songs, it is usually placed in the first line or the last line of the chorus. It is rarely located in the middle of the chorus, or in the verse, where it is much harder for a hook line to stand out. 

Melodically, the hook should cover a wide interval—perhaps a fifth or more—to give it greater impact. And it must be repeated several times throughout the song to make sure it gets inside the listener’s head. 

If you carefully analyze some of today’s hit songs, you will spot the phrase in each song that really stands out and is familiar to you by the end of the song. That’s the hook. Look at where it is located in the song. Is it in the first line of the chorus, or the last line? Is it also the title line? Is the title placed at the beginning or the end of the line? How many times is the hook repeated throughout the song? 

By dissecting and analyzing hit writers’ songs in this way, you will quickly learn how great hooks work. And you’ll soon begin to know instinctively where to place your own hooks. 

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The hook is meant to be a simple line that is so catchy (both musically and lyrically) that it immediately grabs the listener’s attention and gets inside his or her head. But writers who are just starting out often create a hook phrase that is too long and too complicated for listeners to remember easily. 

You can’t just write a melody for the title line in your chorus and call it ‘the hook’. If the melody and lyrics don’t stick in the listener’s mind, it’s not a hook. And many music publishers and A&R reps will reject a song if the hook doesn’t have ‘stickability’. 

It’s hard to define what makes a hook ‘catchy’ and ‘sticky’, but it all comes down to creating a short lyrical and musical phrase that brings together connected sounds that are instantly memorable. For example, clever use of alliteration can make a hook lyric easier to remember—especially if you’re looking to create a sing-along or anthemic hook. 

The hook line should also have a different melodic construction from the rest of the song so that it stands out. 

Listen closely to the hooks from some of today’s biggest hits and you’ll see how simple and short they are. More than half of all hit songs have a hook phrase that is no more than three words and four beats long. You’ll also hear how successful writers make their hook even more memorable by repeating it many times through- out the song. The more they repeat it, the more it sticks. 

When you’re writing a lyrical hook, remember that simplicity goes hand in hand with repetition. The song’s title is the only information you need to include in the hook. The song’s story should be told in the verses. 

It is also important to build instant familiarity into the words used in a lyrical hook. That’s why so many song title hooks are derived from sayings and phrases that we hear every day. Something so familiar is reassuring to the listener and, subconsciously, makes the song easier to follow—increasing its ‘stick ability’. 

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The ability to keep coming up with catchy, memorable hooks is a valuable skill that will increase your chances of songwriting success. But don’t make the mistake of believing that writing an outstanding hook will automatically result in a great song. An average song with a great hook is still an average song. 

A distinctive hook line is an important part of any song because it helps to communicate what you’re trying to say and makes it easier for the listener to remember what you’re saying. But any weaknesses elsewhere in the song can’t be fixed by adding an amazing lyrical hook, or an infectious instrumental or production hook. Music professionals will still judge your talent on the whole song. 

You still need a well-structured verse that tells an interesting story and gives the song substance, plus an exciting pre-chorus that propels listeners into the chorus itself, and a contrasting bridge that gives your song an extra lift and an additional point of interest. 

Many top writers start with a killer hook and then build all of the other sections around it—rather than trying to find a hook that will help make an existing song sound stronger. 

If you’ve got a great chorus-based hook but you’re struggling to find a verse that lives up to the quality of the chorus, here’s a trick I’ve suggested to many of my songwriters over the years: 

Take the chorus and hook that you’ve written for another incomplete song and use it as the basis of the VERSE for the song you’re trying to finish. 

In other words, the chord progression and melody from the chorus of Song 2 becomes the verse for Song 1 (obviously you’ll need to put them in the same key and add new lyrics). 

This simple solution could result in a very commercial song because it will have both a catchy verse and an easy-to-remember chorus! 

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