Lesson 3: Adding Rhythm To Your Lyrics

The simple, regular rhythmic pattern

This pattern is a very basic one. Advantage of this is that it's rather easy to use. But the big disadvantage of this one is that your lyrics may become quite boring and predictable when you misuse this pattern-form. This pattern can be described as words written in a very steady, regular rhythmic pulse. Rap-artists really love this pattern and use it a lot. If used correctly it can achieve a very hypnotic or hectic effect. It can make your lyrics sound like a machine-gun! Therefor, this pattern is used most commonly for uptempo songs and/or lyrics, like rap. But it can also be used for less fast songs.

The regular, but broken rhythmic pattern

As I said before, you must take care with using the regular pattern too much. You might begin to sound predictable when you use that pattern too much! This is where you can start using the regular, but broken rhythmic pattern.
Basically it's the same as the pattern we discussed first, but it's kind of cut in pieces. The lyrics use a regular pattern but every now and then rests, accelerations and stuff like that are built in. The trick is not to do it too much so that the lyrics sound as if they don't have any rhythm at all. The effect, if done properly, is that you keep a very rhythmic songtext that doesn't sound to dull or stiff.

The sluggish, loose rhythmic pattern

The third pattern is different from the first two in a way that this pattern sounds rhythmic in a more poetic way. The rhythm seems to flow along the lines and is already very obvious while only reading the lyrics, as is the fact with good poetry. This pattern tends to be more connected to the melody and feel of a song rather than the rhythm of the music. It's often far less mechanical and much more fluid, thus demanding fluid, less harsh music.
As I stated before, you can find rhythm in everything and so also in poems. While reading a poem you actually are forced to read it in a certain manner, a certain rhythm. If you ignore that "force" the poem sounds very clumsy. This is also the case with the sluggish, loose rhythmic pattern. Because it's rhythm resembles that of a poem, it forces you to obey to it's rules and follow! If you don't, the lyrics will sound hopeless out of pace with the music...

This kind of rhythmic pattern is best for improvising. Because of the loose feel of it the singer/reader can feel invited to give the lyrics his own interpretation. A good improvisor can thus give the song an extra dimension. But it's very important that the improvisor doesn't loose track of the pattern.

 To make things more clear I've made a table where you can see most of the information about the most common rhythmic patterns I've given you in this lesson at a glimpse.
 
 

Common Rhythmic Patterns
Type of rhythmic pattern	Advantages	Disadvantages	Remarks
Simple, regular	Easy to use	Danger of becoming boring and predictable	Suitable for fast songs. Hypnotic, mechanical and tight effect
Regular, but broken	Not too difficult to use, refreshing	If used too much rhythm disappears	Creates illusion of different patterns while using just one
Sluggish, loose	Pattern already interesting without music, good to improvise on	Pattern possibly difficult to interpret by reader	"Takes over" the song; music must follow the lyrics

Finishing the rhythmic feel of the song

After all your efforts to build rhythmic patterns in the lines of your songtext, you definetly don't want to ruin it by loosing track of the overall view of the lyrics. Rhythmic patterns are very important but they don't stand to themselves; they are part of the total lyrics and they can only play their role if you manage to organize all those patterns in such a way that all those rhythmic pieces come together.
As I stated before mirroring can come in very handy when writing lyrics without knowing the music yet. But mirroring is also a useful tool to give your song that finishing touch when it comes to rhythm.
It's very important that the audience recognizes parts of your song. Most of the time they will hear your song for the first time or during difficult conditions, for instance during a concert or a noisy party. So if you bomb them with pattern after pattern they will soon loose track! Mirroring your verses can help avoiding this. When you build a pattern in the second line of the first verse, and you use the same pattern in every second line of the other verses, the audience will recognize it and thereby get the chance to appreciate it more.
Using this technique brings a distinct structure to your song. This structure is very important to make your song actually a song instead of a collection of lines, rhythms, riffs etc. etc. This structure is also important to make composing the music easier; a songtext which lacks a certain structure is a horrible thing to put on music!

Lesson 4: What Rhyme Can Do To Your Lyrics

Rhyme within a line

A special kind of rhyme is rhyme that occurs within a line of a song/poem. This form can occur in lyrics that use the normal rhyming-methods but also in lyrics and poems that don’t seem to rhyme at all and lack all kinds of patterns at the end of the lines. This kind of rhyme is one of those secret things in a song that can make it much more interesting.
This kind of rhyme can be divided into two sub-forms, normal rhyme and begin-rhyme.

Normal rhyme
This form uses the same rules as normal rhyme, which means the words sound like each other. This form can produce a very special effect: if used properly it completely focuses all the attention of the audience at once, and thus has the same effect as a shout in a bedroom full of sleeping people. Now this is a rather clumsy comparison, who would compare his lyrics to a bedroom full of sleeping people?? But I think you know what I mean....
Take a look at this example taken from "The Widow's Game", released on The Stag's last cassette "Reset". In the first line of the third verse the audience's attention is drawn back from the instrumental break to the lyrics by starting with rhyme within one line:

Begin-rhyme
This kind of rhyme doensn’t seem to rhyme at all because the words only use the same first consonants. An example could be: “the sun is shining on their severe burned backs”. None of the words in this line does actually rhyme but they sound like they are connected because of the same first consonant. Another example can be seen in the above example from "the Widows Game"...

 For both of these special types of rhyme counts that if used properly you can create a special effect that jumps right out of the rest of the line or even the whole song. Used in the right combination with rhythm it can also produce a very hypnotic effect. But be careful wth using these rhyme-forms: they can easily be overdone!

How and when to use rhyme

As we already noticed, rhyme is easy to use and abuse. To write good rhyme is merely a matter of taste. Because of that, you will always encounter people who will tell you your rhyme isn't good. (Usually they will use other terms to tell you this...). You will never be able to get around this problem, because everybody has a different taste...
Because of this it's very important to make some decisions before you start writing a new song. You will have to decide IF you are going to use rhyme, and if so, what kind of rhyme in the sense of style. It's also important to think about why you are going to use rhyme. To help you with this, look at the following checklist:

1) First decide IF you will use rhyming-words.

You'll have to use rhythm but you might consider to avoid the use of rhyming-words. Modernists will love you for this!

2) Consider why you want to use rhyme

The reasons why you want to use rhyme can help you deciding what kind of rhyme you will use. For example: if you only want to use rhyme to draw the attention, you might consider only using rhyme within a line.

3) Choose a general rhyming pattern or style for your song.

This will help you keep your song together and not turning it into a collection of rhyme-styles. (Of course, you can decide not to choose a general pattern, like I did in "Vain Regrets").

4) Put something personal into your rhyme.

Try to stick as much as possible to the general rules that count for the type of rhyme you use to "please" the purists, but don't forget to be original. Put your own inventions to the rhyme you are making.

This list will help you with your decision how to start setting up the rhyme for your lyrics. After these decisions the real work begins. And when the hard labour is done, don't forget to be objective. After that, all you can do is hope people will like what you have written.

How to make your rhyme more interesting

Rhyme can help you with bringing structure to your song. It can also be used to make the lyrics more interesting for those people who like to play with language. But rhyme can also make your song very boring and predictable. The challange is to stick as much as possible to the rules yet to make it look as fresh and new as possible.
As always, this is easy to say but very hard to achieve! But there are some do's and don'ts that will help you to accomplish this...

Avoid to be predictable

While keeping your rhyme simple may help you easier find the words you are looking for, it might lead to a song which is very predictable. So watch out! Try to avoid the use of tricks already used by everyone. Certain rhyming-combinations and patterns are so much used they might become boring.

Be inventive

Although almost everything has been done already at least once, it will never hurt you to experiment with unfamiliair rhyming-patterns. As long as there is a certain scheme in your song it's okay to break the rules of rhyme. For example, you could try to make words in different verses rhyme to each other.

Don't use the same words

One mistake that's very disturbing is the repetetive use of the same rhyming words. It may seem the lyrics rhyme but they don't!!! The only effect is irritation. A similar effect can occur when you use different words that rhyme to each other but with the same sound over and over again.

Of course, there are exceptions to this, but be very careful when you want to try techniques like these. 

Be careful using "dumb" rhyme

What I mean with dumb rhyme is using words that almost rhyme, like for example "line" and "mind". Forgive me the literal translation but that's how we call it in Dutch language and I don't really know how it's called in English. The use of this kind of rhyme can be helpful to overcome problems when you can't find a rhyming word at all. It can also be used to "hide" the use of rhyme, helpful for those who don't want to use rhyme too much.

But don't use it too much, for people might start to think you can't rhyme at all!

Tips and tricks on how to find rhyming words

Now that we know more about the different types of rhyme and their occurences, we'll have to find out how to make those words rhyme. Rhyme is one of those things that can become a disturbing factor while writing your lyrics: just at the moment you are inspired you can’t find that certain word that rhymes... To get around these kinds of problems everybody develops some personal tricks. Here are some of mine, plus additional information which probably will make the job easier for you and help you make your lyrics more interesting.
 
 

Don’t think!

In the first lesson I stated already that usually you get the best results in writing lyrics when you let your thoughts flow right out of your pen onto the paper. This certainly counts for rhyme. To have full profit of that general built-in feeling of what rhymes and what not you should NOT think too much at first. Just write down what you think. You’d be surprised how much words already do rhyme. This is due to the fact that you are at that moment totally devoted to writing a poem/lyrics. You feel the rhythm and your mind follows, opening all those secret archive-doors with parts of other songs. These reflections of things you've heard and/or read in the past greatly enhance your inspiration, like it or not!

Don’t be neat!

In addition to the last point I made: don’t bother if anyone couldn't read what you write down. Just use the first paper and pen you find and write it down, strike things through, make lists of rhyming words in the margins, whatever! Your paper will become a mess but who cares? Ever seen a painter keeping his studio clean while being inspired???

Help yourself to recollect.

As soon as you “hear” a piece of lyrics that seem to rhyme, write it down, even if it doesn’t fit at all in the rest of the song! Maybe it’s one of those jigsaw-puzzle-pieces that you’ll need later. And if you can’t use it, maybe you can use it in another song.

Examine what you have written down

After a brainstorm, or maybe a little brainbreeze.... you will encounter a moment you seem to have run out of rhyming words. At this time it’s always helpful to reread what you’ve written down. Look at everything you wrote, including the things you scratched or stricked through, the footnotes, etc. etc.. There might be something more useful than you thought a few minutes ago. This way you give your mind a moment of rest while still being focused on your work.

Keep it simple

Try to avoid difficult rhyming-patterns, words etc.. Unless you are very skilled and experienced making your rhyme difficult will only get in the way of your inspiration.

Lesson 5: The Structure - A Global View

Verse

If there’s one element that you can’t avoid to use then it’s the verse. Every song has at least one verse. The reason why this statement’s true is the fact that a verse can have any shape you want it to have; long, short, monotone, irregular etc. etc.
The main purpose of the verse is to make the song’s structure more clearly. Therefor it’s better to write the verse in such a way that it’s recognizable as a verse; give it at least some structure and let it come back later in the song.
The verse is the part of the song that “tells the story”. It’s one part with the lyrics. The verse is definitly NOT the part of the song where it all happens musically. So save the fireworks for later! When writing the music for your verses consider the following:

Let the music “step back” a little

Keep it down a little during the verse. This way you give the lyrics more room to tell their story. Another advantage of this is that it’s easier to make the chorus stand out and built a climax in the song. You can hear this effect in the soundsample which goes with the part about the intro.

Keep the music simple in the verse

This is more or less in addition to the previous point; The music is supposed to make more room during the verse. This can be achieved even more easily by using simple, repetetive patterns for the music. That’s why all the big songwriters in rock are good at writing catchy riffs! Or is it the other way around???

Don’t make the verses too long

Lenghty verses with lots of lyrics are okay ONLY if you are a great poet who has something interesting to say. Dylan used to be one of those. Strangely enough some modern music styles like Hip-Hop for example are totally based on lenghty verses. Maybe I’m just getting old or oldfashioned...

As you can see, writing a verse isn’t the hardest part of writing a song. The only difficult thing about it is making it not too difficult! 

Chorus

Writing a good chorus on the other hand is very difficult! (Who ever told you writing song’s is easy?). The chorus is the part of the song that’s supposed to stick in people’s heads and never to get out of it again. To accomplish this you don’t necessarily have to bear a name like Jagger/Richards, Lennon/McCarthy or Adams. But it wouldn’t hurt you if you’d listen to some songs written by these guys. They are/were capable to write choruses who are remembered by millions of people for many years. You don’t have to like their songs to admit they indeed can write songs and especially choruses...
Choruses generally follow these rules:

They’re short and catchy

Most choruses are no longer than 4 to 6 lines. The shorter a chorus is, the less disturbing is it when it comes back often in a song, which choruses tend to do.

They’re melodic

Even in monotone music-forms the chorus is more melodic than the rest of the song. Since the majority of music-lovers do like melody (otherwise they wouldn’t like music) making the chorus the most melodic part of the song helps in focusing the attention to the chorus and thus remembering the song.

They stand out in the song

A good chorus is easy to recognize. As soon as you can’t distinguish the chorus in the rest of the song there’s something wrong. Making the final climax happen in the chorus is a good trick to enhnce the effect of the chorus as well as the climax itself.

By the way, the picture (you should see the original...) is made by Henny Witkamp, a great artist from Nieuwegein, the Netherlands. He also paints on order, so if you need a logo, decor-painting or whatever, please let me know by email and I'll bring you into contact with him.

Additional elements

Like stated above there are a few elements to help avoid your songs to become predictable. These are instrumental breaks, bridges, hooks en outro’s. In fact all these elements have the same purposes, like:

Refreshing the song

They differ from the rest of the song and thus are helpful tools to prevent the song from becoming dull.

Letting loose the animal

These elements are parts in the song where the musicians are “licensed” to show their skills. Instrumental “freaking” can be disturbing during a verse or chorus, but it might be useful during a break, because it can really help to get the attention back. The thought behind this is that as long as instrumental highlights don’t interfere with other parts of the song it’s generally okay. Listen for example to all those old rock-hits where you even can hear the bass-player freak out during the fade out. Reason why I used to call the faders on the mixer freaks.

Be careful while using these elements not to make them become the major part of your song. Just use them to spice things up. Overdoing might change your song into a blurr of musical fragments. These elements will be discussed more thoroughly in an upcoming lesson.

Tales and Tricks from the past...

The most ordinary elements of a song’s structure were part of the big success of all those 50’s, 60’s and 70’s songs. In those days it seemed as it was almost impossible to get a record-deal without writing a repertoire that contained only well built songs. Take the Beatles for instance, masters in defining a song’s structure.
Maybe the strict rules about a song’s structure in those early days of rock&roll were part of the upraise of the so called Guitar Hero’s; guys (no girls in those days, sorry...) who couldn’t hardly wait to get on stage to do their thing... As kind of a backwards effect on this you see nowadays people are getting back to the basics and dropping all those lenghty guitar-solo’s, so we’re right back at the beginning as far as this is concerned... But more of this story in an upcoming lesson!

 Classics in pophistory have (almost always) one thing in common: they are built around a distinct songskeleton based on the 3 main elements of a song: intro, verse and chorus. This resulted in short, clear and easy to remember songs. Songwriters in those days used some tricks to avoid their songs to become predictable. One very popular trick was transforming the key (oops, technical term...) of the song in the last verse and/or chorus. This was done so many times that nowadays it often sounds outdated. But of course feel free to experiment with it!

 Another trick from the past is the use of a so called bridge. We already discussed the bridge in one of the lessons about the lyrics, but of course there’s no bridge without something to flow beneath it, in this case the music!
Many classics have a built-in bridge to give the audience kind of an injection; it attracts the attention and refreshens the song. The bridge is still a good thing to use in a song; because in fact it’s a (very small) second theme in a song you can make it sound the way you want it. Therefor the danger of sounding outdated isn’t there.
There is a lot more to say about bridges in a song: we’ll get back to this in another lesson. But be sure to write your bridges in a matter that they still fit in the general structure of the song.

Lesson 6: A Closer Look at Writing Intro's

Different methods, different intro’s...

There are various methods of writing/composing intro’s, which can also be combined in many ways. This results in various types of intro’s. Let’s take a closer look at some of these types. Please keep in mind there are as many methods and types as you can come up with. There are no strickt rules, so just use the methods you like best.

The Preview Method

As we could see in the previous lesson, it’s a good idea to build your song’s intro with parts taken from the rest of the song. Some advantages of this approach are:

The intro will be easier to write

Because you use parts of the song, you don’t have to compose a totally different piece of music.

The intro will help enhancing the song’s overall structure

Because your intro will be kind of a preview of the rest of your song, the song will be easier to interpret by the listener.

Please remember the fact that one of the characteristics of a good intro is the fact itself that it’s a preview of the song, as stated in the previous lesson. However, though this method is easier because you don’t have to come up with a new musical idea for your intro, it will definetly test your arranging-skills!
Arranging in fact is not much more than ordering all those great ideas you have for that particular song you are working on into a hitsong. This sounds easier than it is! Arranging is a skill which is lacked by many musicians who are great improvisers. Not having the ability to arrange will be one of the major reasons why such musicians will never be good composers. To put it simple: having great ideas doesn’t mean you are a great songwriter...
Building your intro out of parts of the rest of your song is a good way to practise arranging your entire song; in fact it’s the same job, only on a smaller scale. Some will find this is easier, others will prefer arranging a whole song prior to arranging an intro. Fact is arranging an intro will give you far less room for improvising.
Don’t make the mistake of just picking some pieces and putting them together into the intro. This intuïtional approach works fine on many other aspects of songwriting, but it will often result in rubbish when writing an intro. Better is it to evaluate the parts of music you have already to see what part is catchy enough to be the intro yet not too stunning it will make the rest of the song an anti-climax. Considering these remarks it seems a good idea to save writing your intro for last, odd as it may seem!
This brings us to a totally different method of writing intro’s which will be discussed next.

The “First Things First” Method

This is a totally different approach to writing your intro’s. Although you will see it’s the opposite of the previous discussed method in almost every way, this method might be very usefull. Maybe this approach is most often used, because of the fact it’s a totally intuïtional way of writing intro’s. Using this method, you'd usually start writing your song with the intro itself. Many songwriters that prefer writing intuïtional use the same method for writing their intro’s. Two major advantages of this way of working are:

Familiair way of working

Because you “just write what you feel”, this way of writing your intro’s feels vary natural. After all, every real musician should know how to play (and/or write) what he feels...

Short, catchy intro’s

Because the intro will be written more or less on an improvising base, most of the time it will be a riff-like piece of music, setting the tone for the rest of the song.

Intro’s written using this method will never be complicated, unless you’re a genius, but often that’s the strong part of intro’s written this way. They will be simple, short and to the point, the ideal intro for certain types of songs. AC/DC for instance are masters in writing intro’s like these, which became very clear already when they released their first hit Whole Lotta Rosie.
Of course this method has disadvantages as well... Used improperly you will write nothing but predictable intro’s, leaving little or no room for the rest of the song. Remember, an intro should make people curious, not tell them everything about the things to come! Avoiding this you will find this method very convenient to use, especially if you are not too good an arranger and/or if you are just starting songwriting.

The “Showcase” Method

This method is very dangerous to use because of various reasons. But if you take good care, using it may result in very interesting masterpieces of music, almost little songs on their own. They can be compared to those beautiful, painted capitols in those medieval bibles: those pictures often were nothing more than illustrations, but just because of their sheer beauty they enhanced the message in the text that followed.
This method will only work in certain types of music, like for instance HardRock and Symphonic Rock. They won’t work in music like HipHop or Funk. Of course, intro’s written using this method will still be judged according to the general rules discussed in the previous lesson, and as you can imagine, they can easily be condemned to hell for not obeying to these rules. But if the composer did his job right he will gladly be granted grace because of the exceptional beauty of the crime!
The showcase-method itself can be used in different ways, resulting generally in two different types of intro’s:

“Freaky”, virtuosic intro’s

This type of intro’s are usually built on a virtuosic instrumental riff (i.g. Malmsteen) or unconventional, complex rhythmic patterns. They are especially interesting to musicians.

Long, “narrating” intro’s

These intro’s are usually intended to create a certain atmosphere. Synthesizers and/or sound-effects are often used in intro’s like these.

For both types counts they will NOT work on A&R-managers looking for the Next Sensation On the Block, but songwriters writing stuff like this wouldn’t care too much about that. They are more interested in writing a Concept-album like in the good old 70-ies or blasting away the front-lines of the audience with arpeggio’s at full throttle! Now this might sound like I’m mocking writing intro's like these, but the opposite is true: I’m a great fan of intro’s like these and I believe some of the best intro’s ever are written like this. But on the other hand, writing intro’s using this method is full of risks.
Keep in mind the following remarks before attempting to write intro’s using this method:

Be sure you are at the right place

Be aware of the fact intro’s like these simply don’t belong in certain kinds of music. Any attempt to introduce an intro like this in a different type of music will fail, unless you are lucky; you may then call yourself the New Beethoven...

Be sure you have the requiered technical skills

Writing intro’s like these is impossible if you lack certain skills like virtuosity and arranging skills. If you lack any of these skills yourself, be sure the people who are going to perform your work do have them.

To put it short, don’t try this at home!
So far for the methods. Remember, there are lots of them so feel free to experiment!
 

More types of intro’s from a different point of view

As we could see above, there are many different types of intro’s, when you consider the way (or method) you can write them. But intro’s can also be distinguished by the way they appear to us during performance. Intro’s can appear in many shapes, and of course the way they sound is the first thing that enables us to distinguish them from other intro’s. Some of the differences in the way intro’s appear to us are due to the method of writing used by the songwriter, but others are much more just decisions made by the songwriter. For example, a songwriter can decide to start a song very laid back, and thus choose only to use an accoustic guitar for the intro before the rest of the band blasts off.
We’re talking about the actual “shape” of the intro as we hear it and how could that better be explained then by using some examples. This chapter I will discuss some (parts of) intro’s I wrote, to show you some different forms an intro can have, what effect it can have on your song and the pros and cons of that. The examples are mentioned in a coïncidental order.

Example 1: Main-riff intro

This example is taken from the song Live it Up, which was also part of lesson 1. This song is built on one riff, which gives plenty of room to the singer to put his emotion into the song. This main-riff is used in the intro to make the hypnotizing effect of the riff even bigger.
Keep in mind while using intro’s like these to keep them short, otherwise your song will easily become boring. Generally this also counts for the whole song when based on a main riff.

Example 2: Effect-intro

As we saw while discussing “narrating intro’s” the use of sound-effects can help built a certain mood. This is usually done with the help of synthesizers, but of course you can use other instruments to achieve this. This example, which is the intro of Alien Tune taken from the Stag’s last cassette “Reset” features guitar-noises imitating strange, space-like sounds. The drums enhance this spacial effect by using echo-like patterns.
This intro is also an example of an intro that starts with part of the band. Sometimes it helps focusing the attention to hold back the rest of the band during the intro.

Example 3: Intro with unconventional rhythmic pattern

This example shows a rather daring effect, which is the use of a strange rhythmic pattern. The unconventional beat of the intro of The Last Unicorn helps drawing the attention because the audience generally is used to more conventional intro’s. To avoid the side-effect of confusing the audience too much the intro drops back with sort of an intro within the intro. The vocal-part of the intro helps the audience to “find the way back”.
It can be refreshing to have one or two songs in your repetoire which use tricks like these in the intro, but be careful not to use this trick too much; the audience might get bored or even worse, numb!

Example 4: Full throttle intro

Intro's like this full-speed Freaky-type intro of Mr. Hide, one of my favourites, might be usefull to get the audience’s attention back by force! The tight breaks help the guitar-riffs sound even faster.
This type of intro also shouldn’t be used too much for the same reason as the previous example. It’s also important not to overdo things. Be sure there is a distinct structure in intro’s like these because otherwise it might sound messy.

Lesson 7: How To Write A Chorus

A song without a chorus can hardly be called a song. This rather bad statement is my personal opinion so if you don’t agree, that’s okay. But I would like to start this lesson with this statement, not only to wake you up, but rather because it’s one of the key-statements of this lesson. So if you don’t like songs without a chorus and never intend to write one, than probably you won’t feel at home in this class this month. I must say I never felt at home when I was at school but that’s another story... But if you do stick around, even if you don’t like to write choruses, maybe you will change your mind about them.

A chorus is more or less the heart of a song, at least if it’s a good one of course. Why this is true is not as obvious as it seems. People always tend to remember the chorus of a song, while it may not even be the most interesting part of the song at all.
The easiest explanation of course is the fact that the chorus is usually played a couple of times during a song. But if this was the only reason why a chorus is the heart of most songs, how come then that lots of choruses are easily forgotten, even if they are played seemingly endless in the fadeout of a song? So there must be more to it.

In this lesson we will see it’s hard to reveal the secrets of a good chorus. Writing a good chorus may be more a matter of the heart (something called talent?) than the mind. But since this counts for songwriting in general, don’t be afraid; there are always some tricks to learn to help those who have to struggle a little more then the lucky, more talented ones. And believe me, most of us belong to the first group, to put it stronger, even the most talented ones often join the struggling crowd when they’re not inspired...
In lesson 5, we already saw some elements a good chorus should have. Now we will take a closer look at these elements, by discussing some rules you should follow if you want to write a good chorus. These rules are:

1. It should be catchy
2. It should contain elements of the rest of the song
3. It shouldn’t be an anti-climax

Following these rules, you obey to the most important rules of writing a good chorus. We will take a look at these rules in the next paragraph. You can also click on the links to go directly to the discussion of each of these rules.

Rule 1: a chorus should be catchy

What makes a chorus catchy? The easiest answer (for me at least) is: listen to all those golden oldies. Almost all the classics from the sixties and the seventies have catchy choruses. Of course The Beatles were real masters at this, but it seems all the bands that became famous in those days were able to write catchy choruses which seem to stick in your mind forever. Who doesn’t know the chorus of Honky Tonk Women for example...
Listening to examples is a great way to teach yourself, and that counts for songwriting too! But there's something more to say about this issue too.

Keep it simple

One of the main rules in writing a good chorus is to keep it simple. Try to avoid to make the chorus sound complicated.

This doesn’t mean that as long as you keep it simple technically spoken the chorus will sound simple! A chorus built around a difficult, but well written musical part will be easier to listen to than a technically simple chorus which is written in an unlogical manner.

Consider The Average Listener

The above indicates you’ll have to keep the average listener in mind while writing your chorus. Most listeners aren’t musicians so don’t forget that! The average listener will often look for things he/she can recognize, a certain general feeling of what sounds logical and which has been developed during many years.

You would probably think now that I’m saying most listeners are dumb but that’s not the case. So don’t treat them like that. They won’t buy the same stuff over and over again (‘though this seems to be heavily contradicted by the house-rage of this time....) so you will have to keep them anxious.
In the chorus you can try this by experimenting with backing vocals, special arrangements etc., but be careful and don’t overdo things.

So in general you could say the secret to write a catchy chorus is to make it sound logical. 

Rule 2: a chorus should contain elements of the rest of the song

In this lesson we already saw a chorus is one of the most important parts of your song. In most cases, it's the part of the song which will be played the most often. So it better be good! Another trick to make your chorus a good chorus is to give it the treatment it deserves! Since it's the main element of your song, whether you like it or not, it should get all the attention it needs while you write it, to gain all the attention it needs when you play it.
This brings me to a rather contradictionary issue: writing songs is a very intuïtive job and that also counts for writing choruses. But to obey to the rule that a chorus should contain elements of the rest of the song, you should at least examine and evaluate your music thoroughly. In mine opinion just writing your music from the heart will generally result in the best music, but it's not very sensible only to rely on your heart. Evaluating your music can be very useful and especially when it comes to writing a chorus.
So no matter how you write, whether you write straight from the heart or not, you will have to evaluate your song. Not only because it will enhance your songwriting skills simply because you are "forced" to think about what you have written, but also because "technical rules" like these can only be followed by using technical means like evaluation.
Since a chorus is the part that will be played and remembered most, it's the best place to "advertise" your song. Maybe if you consider the chorus to be the advertisement of your song, you will better understand the importance of putting elements of the rest of the song into it, making it kind of an excerpt of your song. Some advantages of doing so are:

Recognition

People will recognize the song by just hearing the chorus. But it works the other way around too; they will recognize the chorus as being part of that piece of music they accidentally hear when they enter a bar for example.

Recollection

People will remember your song much more easily. Because the chorus is an excerpt of the song, they will only have to remember the excerpt to remember the song. Why not using old school-tricks when they work fine?

Strenght

By putting elements of the song together in your chorus, in fact you are just making a miniature of your song. When you do this right, it will result in a very strong piece of music. Producers will be pleased when they see you have skills to achieve this, because they usually want you to cut out all the unnecessary stuff from your song.

But what elements should you take? This in fact is completely up to you and depends on the song you are writing. Generally it works fine to pick some of the more melodic parts of your song, simply because most people remember a melodic piece of music better than a monotone piece. And that's about all there is to say on this issue, but there are some pitfalls to look out for. These tips might help you avoiding them:

Don't copy too much

While putting the best elements of your song together into your chorus, you are taking the risk of ending up with a chorus that unveils all the secrets of your song making the rest of the song predictable and dull. Therefor it's better not to copy too literally but hussle things a little. Tricks like changing the key of the parts while played during the chorus can help. Just consider all the best parts to be some sort of colour-palette, which enables you to make various versions of the same picture.

Don't make the chorus too long

Better leave out some good parts than desperately putting everything together in the chorus! Good choruses almost never exceed 6 lines.

As you can see, this part of writing songs can be very tricky. Don't forget your skills will grow after every song you've finished, even the more technical skills that you'll need to write a good song, like evaluating your song and deciding what parts should be reflected into the chorus. I deliberatly used the term reflect, because this is one of the most vague issues of writing songs, making it one of the most difficult parts of it. But aren't things always getting more difficult when technique meets feelings? 

Rule 3: A Chorus Shouldn’t Be An Anti-climax

The third important rule seems simple but, unfortunatly, is not. Just like the second rule we discussed above, we will discover it's again a matter of walking on the edge. You will have to carefully find your way between what's good and what is bad, and there isn't a clear path to follow. But again, experience is something you can't buy but which comes free with endurance and perseverance. So just don't give up when it's getting tough; your peaks will get higher and your downs won't be as low as they used to be!
So a chorus shouldn't be an anti-climax. Clear! But why is this rule not as simple as it seems? I will try to explain this. If you follow the first two rules you won't too quickly end up with a chorus that's an anti-climax, just because these two rules ensure your chorus will be more or less the heart of the song. But still your chorus can become an anti-climax, simply because another part of the song attrackts too much the attention. A very impressive instrumental break can easily put the chorus in the shadows.
So if your chorus is an anti-climax depends not only on the chorus itself, but on the rest of the song too. To avoid this disturbing effect, you will have to be very careful where to put that instrumental break, charismatic leadvocal-line etc.
To make things even more complicated, you will have to watch out for the chorus to become the climax of the song itself! This can be disasterous to your song, because you will end up with a song which repeats it's climax over and over again, with the result that you end up with a song that doesn't seem to have a climax at all! So every time you write a song you will have to deal with the problem to write a strong, catchy chorus but on the other hand not to make it too strong....
This virtual contradictionary is hard to solve, just listen to daily radio. But there are some ways to help you with this:

Distinction

To avoid the chorus and the climax of the song to interfere with each other, you can try to make a very clear distinction between these two rivals. You can do so by putting them apart from each other "physically" (give each of them their own space in the song), or by making them sound as different as the song allows you to.

The clearer the difference, the less chance of interference.

If you can't beat them...

Another aproach is to put the climax in the chorus itself. This works best when done in the final chorus. This solution requires you to change that chorus, otherwise it won't work, as we discussed earlier in this lesson. These changes can range from just changing the key, adding additional instruments (like backing-vocals) to even changing the lead-vocal line. When done right you will end up with a super-chorus, which won't be forgotten easily!

Some Examples

To give you some examples of the things I told you in this lesson I have added four soundfiles to this lesson, which can BE listened to just by clicking on the links. The files are all recorded in the AU-format (PCM 8 bits 8kHz Mono).
I will briefly discuss each example and will try to show you how the above is implemented into the examples. I also will point at some tricks I used in these choruses. Don't forget there are numerous examples to come up with, each with different combinations and interpretations of the rules we discussed in this lesson. Just consider these soundfiles as my contribution to what this is all about: music and the fun of it!

 The first example is the chorus of Alien Tune, taken from the live-recorded third cassette of The Stag, Reset. Lesson 6 included the intro of this spacy song so maybe it's not a complete new-one for some of you.
This version of the chorus is played at the end of the song, and to make it stand out to the other choruses just because it's the last one, the third line is added to it, which is actually a repetition of the first line. The original chorus has only three lines, this final one has four.
Another trick I used in this chorus is as simple as efficiënt to draw the attention a chorus needs. I used an effects-processor to distort the lead-vocals. Keeping the original lead-vocaltrack and putting the distorted vocals behind it creates a very dramatic effect. A band like ZZ-Top used a trick like this in their song Manic Mechanic.
 

 The next example is also taken from Reset, and is more melodic than the previous example. This will make it a lot easier to remember this chorus as you will probably notice, but this of course is also due to the fact that parts of the lyrics are repeated a few times.
Another trick used in this chorus to make it the eye-catcher of this song are the backing-vocals, which answer the questions "asked" by the lead-singer. Using several backing-vocals and making them "fade out" into the lead-vocals enhances the choir-effect. Recorded in a real studio in stead of the rehearsal-room this can sound real impressive.
Please note the sound-sample starts with the last line of the verse, which features a break to focus the attention to the chorus even more.

 Another track taken from Reset, so recorded live at the rehearsal-room of The Stag, is the chorus of The Widow's Game. This chorus is an example of a miniature of the entire song. It contains parts of the main riff of the song, but the lead-vocals switch to a melodic, strong line, while they stick more to the rhythm of the song during the verses.
 

 The final example of this lesson features the first track of The Last Season, the first cassette of The Stag. This chorus is short and melodic, yet it sounds simple. A chorus like this is hard to forget, whether you like it or not.
In this particular case, the trick I used to make the chorus stand out to the rest of the song is the addition of backing-vocals (again) and a more prominent role for the keyboards in comparison to the verses. Changes like this are great to draw the attention to the chorus.

For more, visit the Free Music Education Center

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