I Regret Not Knowing This Songwriting Tip Sooner

Great singing Keppie 😊

Good god.
You guys are great!
At taking all the fun out of writing songs!!

Wonderful. Very cool, and I am going to address one song of mine that has the same chords all the way through. Just experiment a bit. I appreciate you two.

i amagine talking to my friend... "at the end of the day..." THIS IS MY CONCERN!!!!

Thanks for a collegiate level lesson, what a blessing.

David Bowie often repeated this one mantra “Swim against the stream.” to avoid a generic approach to creativity. We live in a time where commercial music is just about appealing to the lowest common denominator. Maybe some tutorials on how to avoid standard ideas and cliché. Sadly there are so many videos teaching people how to be other people.

"A chorus is not a chorus because you repeat a section; you repeat a section because it's the chorus"

I agree with most but a lot of great choruses start with the same as the verse where oc the vocal line is mostly somewhat the opposite in rythm and timing, but often have a pre chorus with a different chord progression. But still, its true that trying different chord is overlooked a lot:) subscribed!

awesome tips

So the chorus is like a summary or emphasis of the expression of the song. I don't have a problem with choruses but I never knew how to name my song. I know songs that don't have a title or they sing the title in the end.

Bad songs whose chorus makes you remember it by making you repeat it over and over again in your head? My number one vote: “Round And Round” by Ratt.

Tom Sisson

Don't Bore Us... Get to the Chorus

This sounds very similar to what we were taught when I was studying journalism. This is just like writing a column for a newspaper. Decide what you want to say and communicate it as clearly as you can.

I couldn't disagree more with this video. These people are caught on the lyrics. That's not what a chorus is.

A song is all about tension and release. A chorus is supposed to be your release, while your verses are your moments for building tension. The lyrics mean nothing to the structure of a song.

To be sure, some people do write the lyrics first. Elton John immediately comes to mind. But elton john can sing the phonebook and make a great song out of it. The lyrics don't actually matter. Or look at Nirvana. Kurt wrote his lyrics in the studio, minutes before hitting record. The lyrics don't matter to the songwriter.

These guys have a VERY basic idea of how to write a song, and that's why the songs they do write sound overly familiar and boring.

What would you think of a chorus melody that has a note jump/interval of about a 7th?

Thanks 🙏

Worse than Rick Beato. I don’t say this lightly. Go to hell.

In a musical sense, meaning chords and vocal melody, I want the chorus to be the strongest part of the song and everything else leading up to that payoff. Then lyrically, as they mentioned, what sums up all the words leading up to that section. There is no magic formula, there are techiques that work as they have pointed out but for every rule there's a broken rule out there that can work. I'm thinking of a few Taylor Swift songs where she stays on the tonic for her vocal melody quite a bit In the chorus.

A chorus is the REFRAIN of the song.

I view it like one writes an essay. The verses are the arguments or observations and the chorus is the central thesis. And, as other commenters have said, a song doesn't need a chorus to be good.

Thank you so much, you guys are awesome!

Are they married? 🥹

You are a really good singer.
Great sounding voice.

That's really interesting, I recently wrote an instrumental song that doesn't have a chorus about a vampire's agony. I didn't really understand why not having a chorus worked, but now I know it's because there is no solution to this vampire's problems, their life is nothing but problems

Very good, I enjoyed it very much. Your performing skills are excellent too!

So good

Underpants

Art is never able to be figured out by scientists in a real unpredictable way. Pass me an amp and some fun instead. Tin pan alley is a shallow place.

That’s not Lady A… Lady A is a black woman artist who has been performing under that name for years before “lady antebellum” ditched their name and got woke to the obvious racism they perpetuate and benefit from. Good content, but you could’ve been more responsible with your platform.

Great stuff! That tip about vagueness and clarity surely has exceptions. Otherwise "Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel wouldn't be such a great song - or even "Kiss From A Rose" by Seal.

Repeating a chorus almost never happens in country music listen to all of Luke combs songs

The chorus is a response like you said but the hook like is usually at the end of the chorus

The chorus is what the core is 😉

How do you get over the thought that everything has been written already? That there’s too many songwriters and songs? That someone else might publish lyrics you’ve written before you do? That’s the main thing that discourages me about songwriting. Like, how is there anything even left to write? There’s no original ideas left. And with people like Taylor Swift trademarking WORDS that makes it even harder.

thanks so much. I gave up trying to write songs. Wish I heard these tips years ag0

Cool tips, thanks

This is awesome! 😁

I had no idea how to go about being a LEGIT songwriter until now.

I can barely make it halfway through one of these videos without pausing it and thinking of 50 ways I can apply and/or interpret what they're saying.. to my own process & music.

I sure am glad I found these two, and all these new ways to think of music & songwriting.

After 6yrs of trying to force it, and magically hammer out entire works of art without any process for actually generating lyric ideas in the first place.. lacking intent, direction, etc. just writing random "bars" and trying to tie them together afterwards 🤣

I had figured out all the musical stuff and developed a process for THAT, but I now see that the final piece I was missing all along was all this 'SONGWRITER' stuff.

Just their lists of questions to ask myself (*alone)... have already started to open my mind to more ideas and in more ways than I've ever experienced even on my best days of writing.

I'm about to start the '14 Day Songwriting Challenge'; I'm writing out lists and notes on all these questions and methods of generating & extracting ideas from my own subconscious mind; and I'm starting to apply it all to the rest of my process and the endless stockpile of beats and musical ideas and unfinished songs I've been building up and sitting on for so long...

I'm basically sitting on a goldmine that I couldn't really exploit bc I didn't have, know about, or understand the right tools; and all of a sudden I've just had the exact machine I never knew I needed, dropped into my lap, and my failure of a mining company will be back in business within a week now.

That's a perfect metaphor for what I'm experiencing right now because I stumbled into this amazing new world of REAL songwriting.

Super stoked rn! 😃

PS.. when I say REAL songwriter, I'm aware that there's more than one way to skin a cat, (*although I can't figure out for the life of me WHY anyone would ever do such a thing 😆😆🤣)
...and technically I was already a 'songwriter' as I've been writing and releasing complete songs for 6yrs.
But there are levels, and there's a HUGE difference between someone who just manages to DO a thing, and someone who fully UNDERSTANDS that thing and has a bunch of time-tested strategies and techniques to CONSISTENTLY generate not only complete songs, but GREAT complete songs.

So I'm not trying to put down those who do it all their own way and don't need any of this stuff...

I'm just saying they're probably not reaching their full potential and if they're good now they COULD BE great, if they learn to utilize these tools.. I've made good songs, and I think ALL my releases so far in some way touch on great things to come; but I want my songs to be UNDENIABLE now.

I want it so if a random stranger who doesn't know Cyrus from a hole in the ground, comes across one of my tracks... that even if it's not their personal cup o' tea, and they don't normally listen to that genre, they'll STILL be able to recognize that it's a great song.

I think I can now start to get to that level. Thank you. 💯

Hmmm your thesis is contradicted by successful creative artists who deliberately employ vagueness and ambiguity in their lyric writing, take for instance The Cocteau Twins. It doesn’t matter whether that be verse or chorus, both can be deliberately vague, without any literal meaning. You’re presenting opinion as if it were fact in this video. Whether a composition communicates with a listener is not dependent on lyrics, unless the artist chooses to make that particular artistic decision.

What is Yellow about? Even Chris said it is not about anything. Sold how many millions? Launched a career!

There shouldn't be any video's on the "do's and don'ts" of songwriting because songwriting is complex and much of it subjective. What gives one person chills, may be regarded as tasteless for another person. But I do think that you can narrow it down to what has been most effective for many artists, and what gives people an emotional lift. Most of the time. History has shown that the best songwriters simply teach themselves, learn from their own weaknesses, and are willing to embark on a journey to figure out what really works.

Extremely generic paint by numbers songwriting advice. There are millions of cathartic songs that touch the human spirit that don’t follow these guidelines because they don’t have a chorus at all or have a modulated version of a traditional chorus. Songs by the cure, TOOL, NIN and a number of electronic artist that changed the landscape of modern music. The list goes on and on ………..

It’s incredible how convinced you seem to be of your dogmatic views about songwriting. As in if you don’t do exactly as we believe it won’t touch the hearts of other.

Here a top tip for songwriting
Humility ! Experimentation and openness to new ways of doing things. Groundbreaking artist will always come around and dismantle your religious beliefs

when song writing gets reduced to a set of rules then it's a sport not an art. The craft is great but a lot of it is too predictable and not really about anything interesting-to me that is.

great video as always! Keppie you said there so many things you could teach about crafting a chorus, so perhaps a part 2/3 to this subject? ☺

Value value value!

One tip I can give y'all is: verses aren't just exposition and filler. If you can make them almost compete with the chorus for sheer catchiness and sense of a narrative arc, you're on your way to an actual solid song. Listen to the Beatles—their verses, e.g. Penny Lane, are so solid melodically they could be choruses.

🎉Awesome 🎉

Fantastic tips. Loved hearing you sing the examples. Spectacular vocals!

Great video and tips and your voice is awesome! Thanks!

Brown eyed girl has no chorus.