Have you ever had a song stuck in your head? One day you might be walking down the street and find yourself humming your favorite tune, wondering what it is that makes that song so catchy. Chances are this part was the chorus of the song, the part that sums up the meaning and gets to the heart of the message. If only you could make your choruses have that effect on people, think of the audience you could reach!
What if I told you can learn to write melodies just as singable as your favorite songs? There happen to be a few techniques for crafting memorable melodies and you can learn them just as you would learn any other skill. While none of the following are hard and fast rules, they are all techniques for emphasis that will help get your ideas across.
1. Use higher pitches
The purpose of a chorus is to stand out and grab your attention. Whether it’s a happy-go-lucky dance tune or a tale of lost love, this is the part where the songwriter intends to grab the listener by the collar and deliver their point empathically. And just like when someone has an emotional outburst, the songwriter does this by raising the pitch of their voice. By saving the highest pitches of the song for the chorus, we communicate that it is the most important and meaningful part of the song.
2. Use Longer Rhythms
Just as the highest notes of a tune grab your attention, the longest notes draw your ear and make it easier to sing along. This doesn’t necessarily mean holding one long note ensures a killer chorus, but if the rhythms in the chorus are generally longer than in the verse it signals to the listener that they are important ideas. In the same way that we slow down our speech when we want to convey something meaningful to another person, using longer rhythms in the chorus emphasizes the melody to the listener.
3. Use More Space
By separating each melodic phrase from the next with more space, we give it a chance to catch the listener’s ear. They are left waiting, considering the last line while anticipating what is going to happen next. So give each melodic phrase a greater amount of space than you did in the verse and your audience will know that you want them to listen to these ideas more carefully. Plus, these spaces can be a great place to insert an instrumental hook.
4. Use repetition
Far from just repeating the same old phrase ad nauseam, there are a few different ways you can use repetition in a chorus. Repeating a title or hook line with the same lyrics and melody is a strong tool for emphasis and we call this “exact repetition.” However, we can also repeat a melodic phrase while changing the lyrics or repeat a lyric phrase while changing the melody. This is called “varied repetition”. Changing your lyrics while varying the melody is a great way to create memorable “swing” lines (chorus phrases that are not the hook/title). Conversely, stating the hook/title one way at the beginning of the chorus and then varying the melody when the lyric is repeated shines the meaning of the lyric in a different light and causes the listener to consider it in a new way.
5. End your hook/title melody on the tonic and on a downbeat.
This is the strongest way to emphasize a hook or title line. Ending the melody of your hook on the tonic (the root of the key) returns it to “home” and signals a resolution to the audience. This is made even stronger if the chord the melody ends on is the I chord, especially if it is preceded by a cadence. In addition, ending your hook/title phrase makes it feel solid. Putting all these techniques together sets your chorus up to have a really strong hook.
It should be stated that no amount of technique will save you if you do not have anything valuable to say. The most brilliant of melodies will not carry a lame, dispassionate lyric. And while there are plenty of hit songs that do not follow these rules, keeping these ideas in mind will help to convey your emotions and thoughts to your audience much more strongly. We want them to hear what you have to say, not be bored by it. So experiment with incorporating these techniques in your chorus writing and you will be sure to hit them right where it counts!
For anyone interested in exploring these ideas further, I recommend The Songwriter’s Workshop: Melody by Jimmy Kachulis.
Chris Primeau is a Berklee Graduate and owner of Primeau Guitar Studio, a guitar lesson studio in Austin, Texas.
Courtesy of Christopher Primeau.
More Songwriting articles @ The Blogging Musician.
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