Sia obviously see is an amazing songwriter. He’s written tons of future hits.  She had a cool thing that she said, it took me 15 years to be able to write a song in 20 minutes. And I think that’s so interesting ’cause it’s, yeah, like sophist simplicity can be the most sophisticated thing you can do, especially with, you know, logic and pro tools and everything where you can just  throw a a million ideas at a track and you kind of get into this more as, more  mentality.
And you know, there’s times when that is lots of fun and it can be cool. But  I, I went on a writing trip to to Norway last year, to work with some artists who assigned to, a company called Maid Management  who have Sigrid and Aura and a few other, lots of other kind of up and coming nor, Scandinavian artists  and cigarettes manager was saying  if he could impose on all the producers that work that produce tracks for his artists,  if he could say to them, right, you’ve got eight tracks, that’s it.
 He would, he would do that. Obviously he kind of can’t enforce that on anybody, but like in his dream, in his dream world, that’s how everyone works. You’ve got HVACs,  everything has to really, really count and be doing a job and be there for a reason. And I  think the, the, the thinking behind it is just the power of clarity. listening to all these Max Martin hits, to me, there’s just this beautiful clarity to everything.
Like every idea is introduced in a way that’s just like pleasing, but there’s also surprising elements and kind of curve balls, but it’s just  gloriously sort of clear. let me see what I’ve got next. so yes, clarity and balance as I was just going on about.  So yeah, the melodic math. And I’ve realized actually looking at my notes,  I’m not really gonna talk a lot about melody in this, in this chat because to me,  you can get into the musicologist mindset about analyzing a hit melody,  you know, sort of jumping from the tonic to the maze to the sort of relative minor and then over a subdominant, this and that and the other.
And  it doesn’t,  for me, it feels a bit of a kind of pointless academic exercise because you can sort of like point to another melody or top line from a hit song that does the exact opposite  and it kind of contradicts what you just kind of said about the first one.
and also like,  I think it’s really important to try and think like as much as you can like a listener, imagine you are your audience, like  really as much as you can. And to that end, you know, you wouldn’t be here doing the course and everything and if you weren’t lovers of music and lovers of songs,  so melodies, I think you kind of, you just know, you know, if it’s good. So for me, analyzing melodies isn’t so much a useful way to spend your time and energy.
But what I think is interesting more, to me anyway, is structure  and tricks you can do rhythmically, with your top line, with the, with the singy bit. and so to start that topic, basically clarity and balance are incredibly important.  So,  and thinking holistically about your song in terms of sections, verse, pre chorus, chorus,  how is each section  supporting the other sections around it?
 So you kind of,  it’s a bit like whack-a-mole. You kind of have to have,  while you’re writing one section, you need to sort of,  if you’ve already got a chorus, for example, and it can be really good to start a song with courses. I don’t know how many of you guys do that already  to start your song by writing a chorus.  I I, I tend, I try and do it. I don’t always do it, but I think it’s a great idea  because you kind of like, in a way you’ve nailed the most important bit if you get a good chorus.
So it’s kind of like  in a way you are like, you are safe to an extent and you are kind of,  it’s, it’s, it’s really frustrating when you, when I find when I write a verse and I really like it and then I write pre it’s, oh, this is all really good. And then you’re just staring at this kind of peci piece of like, like the next bit has to be like the best bit  and it can be almost a bit daunting and it, it can feel a bit like sort of  painting yourself into a corner a bit.  So like,  if you’ve got a chorus,  look at what it’s, what’s happening rhythmically, and write the other sections in a way that support the chorus you’ve got.
So for example, if you’ve got like a  really busy chorus with a lot of information, a lot of meter,  meter being just the rhythm of the words rather than the melody, which is obviously the tune.  If it’s a very busy metery kind of intense, information heavy chorus,  okay, maybe you can get away with having a, a busy verse.
But if you have also have a busy pre-course,  there’s a good chance that your listener is gonna be just getting really, really kind of bamboozled and just over too much information, too much stuff to a point where it’s all just a bit  unappealing and, and overwhelming.  So there’s that way of, of, of kind of reverse engineering and thinking about those blocks. Think of like verse pre and courses just blocks.  And if each block has a color,  you want each  block, go with me, go with me on this.
 You, you don’t want the same color to be next to each other, if you know what I mean. So you have a blue block, the green block and the yellow block, you know, ideally ’cause then you have you, you support the feeling of transitions and  things can support each other. so  I’m  gonna play an example and do a little kind of, analysis of what’s happening. So I’m talking, I’m not really talking so much, I’m just talking about meter. So the rhythm of the words, which in pop music these days is  absolutely as important as as the tune as the melody.
So  thinking about meta  should be an as big a priority as your actual tune. and I can, I can justifiably claim ownership, of this idea, which Martin I think is used in different courses. I think he calls it clap Down,  where it’s  try writing a, a melody, just by clapping or using, if you are, if you are in your, software or whatever, if  you’re in logic, for example,  get your chords down and then get some, a sample of sound, like a snare drum or rim shot or a sidestick or something percussive, not melodic.
and write your melody with it  because that will force you to just think about rhythm. and that’s, yeah, I can’t stress enough how  rhythmic singing is is everything in, in, in pop.
