The element of surprise, how to keep things unpredictable within standard song structure. So I guess I’m gonna touch on pure songwriting, but also it will touch on kind of production stuff, arrangement stuff, even mixed stuff. Although I could never, I couldn’t possibly try and describe myself as a mixed engineer ’cause I’m just not. But obviously I’ve been kind of involved in lots and lots of records and songs that have been mixed and produced and you know, all the rest of it. So really the essence of it is that, how do you make something designed to be predictable, feel unpredictable and fresh?
So when we talk about song, traditional song structure, you know, it’s intro, intro verse one, pre chorus, chorus, re-intro verse two, maybe pre chorus again, chorus two maybe, which is a double chorus, and then into a mid late or solo. And then double chorus big, you know, hammering your point, home, big emotions, big everything, and you’re out.
So that shape, that structure serves us really, really well. And I, I love it. I love songy songs. I love traditional shaped songs. And, those kind of, that framework is there to help us. It’s there to help give, give our ideas shape. And also I think a big part of it is that all of all, every all the listeners out there that we want to enjoy our songs and hopefully stream them by them, come and see you, somebody play them live.
those, the listener has heard thousands of songs in that kind of format and they’ve internalized it. So whether or not somebody could really tell you the difference between a middle eight and a pre-course, they, they kind of know and they feel it because they’ve just heard a ton of songs. So it’s kind of like a, a framework that is in, it’s in every music lover or anyone who’s been familiar with, with songs for however long. And that is something that we can use to our advantage.
the job is how do you kind of strike that balance between working within that framework but stopping it from being like boring or kind of too predictable. So, a big part of our job as songwriters is to keep people engaged and stop them from drifting off. You know, we’ve all had that experience where, you know, you are at family gathering or whatever and, and somebody goes, oh, go on here, you’re doing music. Play a song, and you play in the song. And people kind of, after maybe a minute they start to talk or look at their phone and you’ve lost them and it’s like, s**t.
It feels, it feels really kind of annoying and a, a bummer, but that’s kind of our job is to make that not happen, to make people be glued to the song from start to finish. So in a way, this webinar is a little bit like the one I did on, melodic math, which is kind of thinking about having a sort of toolkit of things to reach for when you are Stuck or when you are looking at your song and feeling like it’s just a little bit, a little bit dull and a bit too predictable, a bit too formulaic.
So, alright, so number one is not really a writing thing, but more of an arrangement thing. So throw, throw a curve ball into your arrangement. start an instrument like an important key instrument or sound somewhere a little bit counterintuitive. A classic obvious one is, wonder Wall by Oasis, where the drums come in in the second, like a bar late.
Basically they come in like there’s a verse. The verse one is in two halves. There’s verse a verse verse one a, verse one B, and the drums come in like a, a bar later than you would kind of expect them to. And it, it is just one of those things that kind of wrong foots the listener in a, in a great way where use some sounds that can’t be easily or immediately identified. I think this is super important and a lot of the best producers I’ve ever worked with have a phrase for it.
Like, it’s like the last thing you do in a production where you, you do all the sensible, serious, kind of like main building blocks of your arrangement. So you’ve got your drums doing the drum thing, bass is doing, you know, works out his part, keys, guitars, vocals, backing vocals, and then whatever your genre, obviously it’s genre specific, but let’s, let’s, let’s use that as a, as an example. So once you’ve got your basic arrangement that you’re not finished, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta throw some weirdness at it. And I think jazz ashur actually coined that one.
Another, another way I’ve heard it described is is putting some smoke on it where you kind of, you have, it’s great to have some sounds in there that you can’t just go, oh yeah, that’s a guitar, or, yeah, that’s bass. Yeah, that’s keys. Yeah, that’s violin. It shouldn’t be that easy. There should be a few sounds that are just kinda magical and weird and sort of mysterious and that I think will keep, again, it’s about keeping people engaged and not just switching off because it’s too familiar to their ear. I think that’s a really key thing and it’s so much fun as well.
I mean, who wouldn’t want to like get a violin, put it through an amp with loads of gain on it and put a tremor pedal on? Like, why, why wouldn’t you wanna do that? It’s, it sounds killer. I can, I can, I can guarantee that because I’ve done it and I’ve used it in a track. Okay, moving on swiftly be asymmetrical. So with those sections that we talked about at the beginning, pedals are your friend Scott. They’re certainly my friend. I, I love them probably too much, but, yeah, be asymmetrical.
So if you have, yeah, like an eight bar verse four bar pre into an eight bar chorus, let’s say it’s worth looking at it and go, okay, can we add a, can we subtract the bar and make it seven can make it a little bit asymmetrical or maybe add one, make it feel like it’s a one bar too long or even a beat too long. Also, two four bars are great, like, it’s like a bar and a half basically. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2 Next section happens. So just kind of cutting a bar or adding a bar here and there to make things like nines and sevens and sixes rather than always fours and eights.
That can be cool because it just kind of, again, I like, I like the phrase I throwing people off the scent. It’s that kind of just throw a little bit of a curve ball with the length of, of sections. yeah, things like, I mean, again, also all the rules about, about structure are kind of there to be, to be tinkered with and messed with. So we talked about, I think in the, was it melodic math?
I can’t remember which one it was the one about the idea of putting a chorus at the front of a track. so that’s a really great trick where you do that and then when the first kind of proper chorus happens, the listeners already kind of heard it once, so it’s familiar, it’s already kind of embedded a wee bit. a good one. Another common one is like skipping the second pre, so don’t do a second, don’t do a pre-course in between verse two and chorus two. So the chorus will kind of come quicker than expected, which will make it potentially feel quite exciting if it kind of happens a sooner and b, a little bit out of the blue.
there’s some great examples of using, perhaps using the, using the pre as a kind of middle late instead of a middle late. So the section that happens after chorus two. So, you can use the pre, or the thing I love to do is using, having a reprise of verse one, the beginning of verse one. So chorus two happens and usually it’s kind of up energetically, so it’s like big sounding and then you drop down into a kind of quiet, fragile sounding snippet or like half of verse one.
and I think it’s something really nice about reprising and you kind of bring the song back to how it began in a slightly different context and then you power into, your final chorus. The Pretender by Foo Fighters does, does a great job of that. And that’s a great example of a song that has some really dramatic stops and starts, you know, like, like turning on a dime, like completely power powerhouse to kind of fragile clean guitar, you know, those kind of sudden changes in, in, in energy I guess is the word can be really effective as a sort of surprise as well.
Okay, number five, rhyme schemes. How can, how can you mess with and mix up rhyme schemes? I think it’s a good thing to keep an eye on things getting a little bit too nursery rhyme and a bit too kind of ab BAB or a A BB.
and I wanna play you a great example of a song with a slightly odd rhyme scheme in the chorus, but it works amazingly actually. And also this is co-written by, Jez Hurst, who’s, a TSA contributor and a Wildly talented chap. the song is called Jenny and the Art, the band is the click five.
yeah, check out the chorus and the rhyme scheme. It’s very interesting. so the, the rhyme scheme of the chorus, okay, so A, B, C, C, B and then I guess DD but for me, what’s so cool is the way that the B the B rhyme is delayed. So you’re kind of, you, you’re waiting for it and when it comes it’s just so satisfying because you’ve had to wait for it a little bit. So first you say you won’t, A, then you say you will B keep me hanging on C.
We are not moving on C or standing still. So you get the will and the still line, but the coming back to the B is is kind of delayed by two lines and it’s just so, it’s just a bit unusual and it’s kind of not what you expect, but it’s just so effective. I mean, it’s a killer song, great production, great everything, but I think that’s a cool example of just tinkering with things being a little bit too kind of nursery rhyme. Also, limiting one’s use or limiting our use of, perfect rhymes.
I think it’s quite good to be a bit careful of that. So, you know, fly high sky why, hire fire desire, but sometimes it’s really satisfying to have a perfect rhyme, you know, but if you overdo it, it can feel just a bit spoonfed and you and your, your listener can sort of can hear it coming. I always hate that when you’re kind of like, you know, what the rhyming word’s gonna be before it happens. Just ’cause it’s like, ugh, okay.
You know? So sometimes a bit of perfect rhyming is great, but, but partial rhymes or even, or even just not rhyming. There’s like we talked about in the last webinar I did was, the song What A Full Beliefs by Doy Brothers, which is insanely great and the rhyme scheme is completely nuts. In fact, there barely is a rhyme scheme and you just don’t notice. It’s, it’s kind of, I think we can get away with more than we think we can. so yeah, avoid too much nursery rhyme.
Perfect rhyming is another good thing to do, to be less predictable.
