• How to begin writing songs with superior structure and the techniques you need to master the craft of songwriting.
• The basic song sections with advice on how they relate to each other and tips on how to write them.
• Real world examples of dozens of hit song to show you how it all works.
• How to make your verses sound more conversational and pull the listener in to the song.
• Discover the four common verse types and tips to write effective verses.
• How to build contrast between your song sections so they compliment each other.

If you want to learn how to write songs like the masters, then join Samurai Songwriting today.

Use these five rock solid songwriting techniques to make your next song title more memorable.

• Polyphonic, while literally meaning “many-voiced,” refers to multivoiced texture of considerable interlinear independence, often imitative; it is understood to have qualitative implications beyond its literal, limited meaning.
• Homophonic would literally denote a condition of interdependent voices, but its traditional connotation is of texture where a primary voice is accompanied by a subordinate fabric sometimes interactive in tentative ways, the bass normally in a contradirectional or other contrapuntal relation to the primary voice (or voices).
• Chordal is a term referring to texture consisting essentially of chords, its voices often relatively *homorhythmically related.
• Doubling refers to lines *homorhythmically-homodirectionally-homointervallically associated.
• Mirror association, usually understood as strict, involves a relation that is homorhythmic-homointervallic-contradirectional.
• Heterophonic is a relation that is *homodirectional (parallel in contour) but *heterointervallic-having minor diversification of interval content.
• Heterorhythmic is a term that means having dissimilar rhythms (see below).
• Sonority is defined as the overall resonant character determined by texture (including doublings) and coloration (including articulation and intensity of dynamics.)
• Counterpoint (contrapuntal) is a condition of interlinear interaction involving intervallic content, direction, rhythm, and other qualities or parameters of diversification.
• Monophonic means single-voiced (monolinear).

From Theory of Harmony by Arnold Schoenberg:

*In the following system, the prefixes homo- (uni-, or co-), hetero-, and contra- are adopted to refer to conditions of identity, mild and very local diversification (as in the conventional “hetereophonic”), and more pronounced contrast, respectively. Moreover, three specific parameters (aspects, dimensions, spheres of reference) are adopted as relevant to the evaluation of textural conditions: these are rhythm (specifically rhythmic pattern), direction (of melodic succession), and linear intervallic content.

1. Within the parameter of rhythm, the terms homorhythmic, heterorhythmic, (both of these in conventional usage), and contrarhythmic all emerge as potentially applicable and useful.
2. Within the parameter of direction, the terms homodirectional, heterdirectional, and contradirectional (“motion” in a straight line exists as a possibility along with motion up and down) all have potential applicability to relations among components of texture.
3. Within the sphere of intervallic content, the terms homointervallic, heterointervallic, and contraintervallic can all be used to describe particular textural situations and relations, usually applying to specific intervals rather than classes.

Understanding musical texture will give your music more creativity, originality, depth, as well as justification for your musical choices. Master these qualities and experience unlimited compositional options.

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Before you commit to a single note of your next song, you want to do some serious sleuthing behind the scenes.

I call it being a hook detective. What you’re looking for is the “hook” of your song–that unique part of the song that arouses burning curiosity, and drags the listener into your song like a baby boomer to a Rolling Stones concert. A great hook–especially in your song title…

Will FORCE People
To Remember Your Song

It’s the key to writing a big winner. When you find a great hook, you’ll know it… because it will ring in your ears constantly.

Here’s how to do it: First, you gotta get into a Sherlock Holmes-like frame of mind.

You’re going on a search for specific details to write about… something that no one else has paid any attention to. Gather about you all the great hooks of the past (I like to use this list for inspiration), the current Billboard charts, and any other popular song playlists and references you can think of. Use them to get a “feel” for the qualities of a great time-tested hook.

You won’t find your hook here, however, No one’s written your hook yet.

No, the only reason to use all that stuff is to…

Know How To Walk The Walk
And Talk The Talk

You want to be completely immersed in the details of great hooks, the placement, the lyric ideas, the melodic motion, everything. Because… you’re now going to investigate the human connection in all of this. The heart-pounding connection to the song that will jar even the most distracted listener into full attention.

Think of it as a little game of “connect the dots”.

Because you’re now going to mentally interview everyone who can pull off “the eternal hook”. Get inside the songwriters who do it every day, who breathe, sleep and eat hit songs.

Ready? Good job, detective. Now cuff ‘em and book ‘em. You’re taking them to the interrogation room where you’re going to pump them for information, looking for the following:

1. Lyrical Insights: You’re searching for human interest tidbits–small yet fascinating pieces of information–that are unusual, provocative, titillating, and intriguing.
2. Melodic Insights: What is the melodic motion of the hook and how does it contrast with the rest of the song? How does the melody build intensity as the song approaches the hook?
3. Hook Placement: How is the hook emphasized? Where exactly is the hook positioned in the song section? How many times is the hook repeated? What surrounds the hook lyrically, melodically, harmonically, rhythmically? Notice the note lengths, phrase lengths, and space.

An idea, use the hook in your song like a short, outrageous headline… that is so achingly incomplete, you wouldn’t be human if you weren’t dying to find out what it was about. And then, in your verses, weave the story. Complete the hook.

Remember this:
Most folks do not get to meet interesting people…
Or go to interesting places…
Or do interesting things.

And that’s your opening. Your hook is a chance for the listener to feel something special for a few moments… to be titillated, shocked, startled, and metaphorically…

Pinched On The Ass!

1. Stick with I-IV-V
I know, it’s not new, but I-IV-V doesn’t have to be uninteresting. There’s a reason why these chords are so fundamental to our harmony. So master them. Use their constraints to challenge your songwriting ability.

2. Copy another song’s chord changes
Just take a look at the top 10 in the past 10 years and you’ll find a long list of songs that use the same chord progressions. The chord changes to Prince’s Purple Rain have been used before that song and after that song many, many times. The challenge then becomes how to write a unique melody over those chord changes.

3. Copy another song’s chord changes and modify them
One of my favorite techniques to come up with chord changes is to simply copy another song and then modify it. You can modify the color of the chords (major/minor/dominant 7/major 7/etc.). You can modify the rhythm of the chord changes by making them change faster or slower or syncopate them. You can play the chords backwards or start in the middle. You get the idea.

4. Create a chord progression mashup
You can follow the popular mashup trend right now. Take two or more songs and then combine their chord progressions. You can cut them up, play them simultaneously or play them sequentially. I haven’t done this yet, but it sounds fun

5. Write a modal progression
Modal progressions–made popular by Miles Davis (Kind of Blue)–are a very easy place to start. The best modes to begin with are mixolydian and dorian. If you’re going to stay in a single mode throughout your song section, the challenge becomes making the melody interesting enough to sustain the listeners interest. And if all of your song sections are going to be in the same mode, then the challenge is to make each section contrast.

6. Write a blues
The blues doesn’t have to sound like the blues. There’s no point in trying to be another Robert Johnson. Just listen to Prince’s Kiss or U2’s When Love Comes To Town.

7. Dig into other genres
Classical music is an endless supply of time-tested music to recycle. Sting’s Russians is a great example of a song that is based on Prokofiev’s “Lieutenant Kije” Suite.

8. Use music software
I’ve used Band in a Box to inspire me and I’ve messed around with other music software that’s resulted in a few keepers. Check out the del.icio.us musicsoftware tag for the latest releases.

That’s it for now. I’m sure you have some chord progression shortcuts that I haven’t thought of yet. Please share them.

Here’s my top 10 lyric writing insights:

1. The rhythm of your melody and the rhythm of your lyrics should match.
Rhythm has *strong and week beats. So do words. When you speak to someone, you use conventional stresses–found in the dictionary–to communicate your ideas as efficiently as possible. If you spoke with the ac-CENT on the wrong syl-LA-ble, people would have a hard time understanding you. Yet this happens over and over again in lyric writing. Match your stresses and your listeners will get what you mean.

2. Show, don’t tell.
Compare “I was nervous” with “My palms were sweaty” and you’ll get the picture. The first example is about the experience while the second example is from the experience. The easiest way to do this is to stimulate your listener’s senses by using sense-bound language. Write from the 5 senses and you’ll find interesting details that will keep your listeners captivated and emotionally involved.

3. Use prosody. Support your meaning with your lyrics.
How you put your lyric together should support what you have to say. You can create prosody with:

Form: Organize your song functions into effective song forms, e.g. verse/chorus, AABA, and verse/prechorus/chorus, etc.
Musical Stress: Put words in relation to each other according to its relative stress in the bar and its relation to surrounding notes. Put the most important word in the most important stress, beat 1 of bar 1.
Line Length and Number of Lines: You can balance or unbalance a section accordance to its meaning by having an even (balanced, stable) or odd (unbalanced, unstable) number of lines. You can also match line lengths perfectly (balanced, stable) or match lines imperfectly (unbalanced, unstable).
Rhyme: Perfect rhyme and Family rhyme will support a stable or resolved meaning. The more remote rhyme types (assonance rhyme, consonance rhyme, etc.) will support an unstable or unresolved meaning.

4. Create contrasting sections.
Lyrically, line length is one of the most effective tools to create contrast. Create contrasting sections using one or more structural elements, i.e. contrasting ideas, number of lines, rhyme schemes, etc. Ask yourself, “What have I got? What’s different than that?”

5. Consider when to balance and unbalance your lyric.
The main point of balancing and unbalancing is, again, prosody: supporting your meaning with your structures. Do you need stability or instability to support your meaning? Combine all four structural elements–number of lines, line length, line rhythm, and rhyme scheme–to balance and unbalance sections.

6. Use fresh metaphor.
To see one thing as though it is something else is your unique ability. To make sure your metaphors aren’t cliche, use the “duh” method (I got this from Shane Adams). You start with your first object, cake. Think of the most obvious characteristic of the object, as in the cake is round. These are called the “duh” descriptions. Now take the “duh” description and think of something else that has that quality or characteristic. The cake is round…duh…what else is round? The moon. Now think of a “duh” characteristic of the second object, the moon glows, the moon is distant. Now plug those new traits into the original, the cake glowed like a distant moon. Now that’s original.

7. Develop your verses.
Develop your song idea from verse to verse making sure the chorus gains meaning and interest each time it is repeated. Give your final verse a “pay off” that rewards your listener for their attention. Think of how you tell stories to your friends. Usually, the point of the entire story comes at the very end. Where you begin your story and how much you share depends on what material is relevant to the understanding of the song’s climax.

8. Control the song’s point of view and verb tense.
Discuss a song’s story-line from the singer’s point of view. This solves a lot of problems: verb tense, setting, point of view, gender, etc. Write from the perspective of the singer of the song.

9. Use fresh rhymes.
Rhymes occur at the ends of lines. These positions are natural spotlights. Since your listener has time to consider what you just said before the next line begins, make it worthy of the spotlight. Avoid cliche rhymes and boring rhyme schemes. Learn how to find fresh rhymes that stick in the mind of the listener and that help you say what you mean in a unique way.

10. Spotlight important ideas.
Certain positions in a song spotlight important ideas. These power positions get special attention:

Opening lines
Balancing lines
Unbalancing positions

When you have something important to say, these techniques can help emphasize the point:

Shorten lines to spotlight important ideas
Lengthen lines to spotlight important ideas
Put your important ideas in opening lines, balancing lines and unbalancing positionsAnd use power words (action verbs, sensual adjectives, unique words, etc.) in your power positions.

Rules are definitely meant to be broken. But please learn the rules first.

*This relative pattern of strong and weak beats, from strongest to weakest:
In 4/4: Beat 1, Beat 3, Beat 4, Beat 2, Beat 4&, Beat 2&, Beat 3&, Beat 1&
In 3/4: The only strong beat in a bar of 3/4 is the downbeat. The second and third beats are weak. In order of strength, the beats line up like this: Bar 1, Bar 3, Bar 2, Beat 1, Beat 2, Beat 3, Beat 2&, Beat 3&, Beat 1&
In 6/8: Think of it as two quick bars of 3/4. In order of strength, the beats of 6/8 line up like this: Beat 1, Beat 4, Beat 6, Beat 3, Beat 2, Beat 5