[stylist] Feature article

[Brad Dunse]

>Robert and Marion,

Thanks. Sure, where they will be published is at: 
http://www.musesmuse.com/musenews.html

An older sample is below. Now that it is in a 
venue beyond just my site I'll try to put the 
grammarian hat on a little tighter :)

This month's tip deals with music and melody 
rather than lyrical content. Melodies and music 
are like people's lives, they like a bit of 
repetition, patterns, and familiarity. Not every 
one of course but the majority by far.

Most people like a certain amount of predictable 
direction, their expectations being met, and 
sense of familiarity so they feel at home and can 
join in comfortably. Ever have a couple friends 
play a card game you never played, they ask you 
to join in and you say "No thanks, I'll watch for 
a while and see how it's played first." People 
like adventure but they do like things somewhat 
familiar to them so they can join in comfortably and safely.

Melody and music is very similar. Have you been 
at an open mike night, heard a song that starts 
out cool, and you think you might want to sing 
along or at least feel comfortable with its 
direction? Then as the song went on the melody 
kept drifting to and fro, up and down, twisting 
around in all directions and never seeming to 
have any sense or pattern to it? It felt like 
going from Point A to Point B by landmark 
directions only without any indication of how far 
between landmarks. It seemed like it lasted 
forever right? No doubt you found it frustrating. 
Or worse you were the one behind the mike and 
wondered why you lost folk's attention.

Getting people into your music quickly is easier 
if you set up the melody or music with cyclical 
patterns or some set of shorter phrasings easily 
remembered. Blues guitarists do this often with 
their short but catchy "call and response" type 
riffs. Repeating phrases, building tension, and 
then releasing it. This can be done in your 
songwriting, including the background 
instrumentation to compliment the melody and syllable patterns.

Here are a few examples of what I mean. Take a 
good listen you can search for these songs on You 
Tube and hear what I mean. Check out Billy Joel's 
"We Didn't Start The Fire". There are a ton of 
items in this song what we call a grocery list. A 
smattering of names, places, events in history 
and other assorted goodies. I'm sure Billy knew 
that there just weren't no way his listeners were 
about to memorize all that stuff. So the 
instrumentation, melody, and music had to be very 
cyclical. Both verse and chorus are filled with 
short similar phrases and though he doesn't stick 
to a constant syllable uniformity, the melody 
feel and phrasings are all similar in fulfilling a listener's expectation.

 From the Country market you can find another 
example with Dierks Bentley's "What Was I 
Thinkin'". Again a very repetitive familiar 
pattern with the choppy one line rhyme scheme to 
help it along. Another advantage to introducing 
your listener to this in your songs is it can 
serve as a catapult for your hook or chorus. 
Folks get just enough taste of the familiar 
phrasing and before they get to the point of "OK, 
I've heard this enough times now I'm ready for 
different", you take them to a pre-chorus or lift 
and slingshot them to the chorus.

Some other examples to check out are: Runaway by 
Love and Theft, Sweet Thing by Keith Urban, Dirty 
Laundry by Don Henley, Ironic by Alanis 
Morissette, and maybe Enrique Iglesias's I Can Be 
Your Hero. All of these examples use short catchy 
repetitive phrases which have made them huge 
hits. They are easy for people to remember, to 
sing along with, and to ask for on the radio or when searching I-Tunes.

Take a look at what you've been writing. Are your 
melody lines stretched out and complicated? Are 
they difficult for people to remember? Perhaps 
you can find one in your catalog to use as a 
project to rewrite the melody and groove using 
the characteristics of the above examples making 
it more memorable and attractive to a listener. 
Or you can purpose to write a new song this week 
using these tools and see how your writing and 
thinking about your songs might change. One way 
is to take one of the above songs and write a 
different lyric to it following the syllable 
pattern and feel, then go back and re-write a different melody to it.

Happy writing
 see you next month!