Songwriting Tip of the Week #1

Hello Fellow Songwriters!

From now on every Wednesday I'm going to post a songwriters tip of the week! Welcome to week one.

My first tip is about song structure.  Before I became a songwriter, I wrote a lot of poems.  It is pretty easy to translate poems into lyrics if you know the right format; and the same goes for musicians who normally just improv.  Keep in mind that you can always go in and out of these structures, but it is good to know them when you start out!

Defining the sections:

Verse: usually the plot, setting the story or mood leading into the chorus melodically and lyrically

PreChorus: the change in melody/lyrics that shows a change is coming

Chorus: the catchy part of the song, this is the section you will repeat so you want your listeners to remember it

Bridge: this is the third melody that changes the song and draws the listener back in, it is sort of like a palate cleanser before repeating the chorus one more time

Hook: the hook of a song is that one line that you want your listener to remember, in chorus based songs it can often be the first or last line of the song, in a verse/story based song it is common to repeat the hook at the end of every verse, it is usually the title of the song

Structure 1:
(Structures 1 and 2 are the most common in pop music)

Verse
Chorus
Verse
Chorus
Bridge
Chorus


Structure 2:

Verse
PreChorus
Chorus
Verse
PreChorus
Chorus
Bridge
Chorus

Structure 3:
(Starting with the chorus is a good way to bring the listeners in right away, look at almost any Beatles song!)

Chorus
Verse
Chorus
Verse
Chorus

Structure 4:
(Common in folk music, used well with story telling)

Verse
Hook
Verse
Hook
Verse
Hook
Bridge
Hook


Thanks for reading my 1st Songwriting Tip of the Week! Come back next Wednesday for more songwriting tips :)