I’m one of those people that looks for patterns in everything. I may have mild obsessive-compulsive disorder (or whatever they’re calling it these days). Let’s not discuss why; I’m here to discuss a pattern I’ve been noticing for years.

People seem to be intimidated by the serious discussion of art. By art I mean the concrete arts (painting, sculpture), music, other performance arts (dance, wrapping buildings in plastic wrap), and writing. I even see the symptoms of this in myself sometimes, and I consider myself pretty well educated and also both engaged with and skeptical of the arts communities. (Full disclosure, in case I haven’t mentioned it before: I have a bachelor’s degree in music theory and history.)

I’m going to focus on music for the purposes of this post, since that’s what this blog is about. Here are the symptoms that I have seen: Vague complaints like “that song is not like his other songs” or “that song sounds like all his other songs”. A focus on the physical appearance of the artist. A focus on the personal life/emotional state/mental state of the artist (I mean other than Britney Spears, since obviously that’s wayyyyy more fascinating than her music). Vast amounts of excitement surrounding a new release, then comments like “Yeah, that’s pretty good” after the first listen. Outright refusal to discuss the music, while dissecting the meaning of the lyrics to death. Fear of instrumentals and jams.

Now, what would a serious discussion look like, in opposition to the above “symptoms”? Well, how about a discussion of keys and chords, and the way they set a mood and manipulate your emotions? Instead of “This song makes me sad because the lyrics are so sad,” you could say “This song makes me burst out in tears in the third verse because I think the chords are different from the first two verses, they’re sadder.” You don’t even have to know the difference between major and minor! And in the discussion of lyrics, I would love to hear less “Those lyrics are funny!” and more “The internal rhymes in that verse make it sound almost like a rap, but with more melody.”

So why are people afraid to engage in this sort of behavior? I think it’s because so many artists have made it a “thing” to say, “I am an artiste,” like that somehow makes them superior. Also, a lot of critics are total snobs. Of course regular, everyday, non-music-major people are going to be intimidated!

Well, here I am, music major, critic, snob extraordinaire, to tell you that you do not need to be intimidated by my kind!  At heart, I really am just a regular ol’ music listener; I have some terrible taste and some great taste, and I think everyone else does, too.  So let’s all just have a little chat about music, why don’t we?

Over the next few months, I am going to make it my personal mission to bring our readers out of their shells and convince you all to join in the conversation.  Let me know what I can do to make this a safe place for you to learn to talk about music without feeling like a dork.  Hey, I can’t tell a diminished chord from a monkey hitting a keyboard after years and years of ear-training.  So we can use words like “crunchy” and “groovy”, but I’ll also try to teach you the vocabulary of music.  If this works, I’ll go start an art blog.   Kidding… kinda.  To this end, I’ll be picking a song every week or so, then picking it apart.  Everyone is invited to jump in and tell me I’m wrong (actually, you’re always invited to do that).  How does that sound?

If you said “like church music”, we’re on our way already!

Welcome back to my hit tutorial! In our last installment, I covered hit dance songs. Today, I’m covering the other major genre of hits, the mid-tempo ballad.

The best way to illustrate the hit ballad is to examine the songwriting successes of Diane Warren. I cannot stand her songs, or her personally, but she has had more hit songs than any other songwriter in the 20th/21st centuries, so where better to start?  Artists to look at are Mariah Carey and Celine Dion.

With dance songs, we built from the bottom (the beat) up. With ballads, we move in the other direction, starting with the lyrics. Lyrics should be about love, or miracles, or other inspirational things, or occasionally about lost love. Think of your average American Idol “coronation” song — you want a song that conveys both grandiosity and happiness.  (There actually used to be a random word generator on the Internet that would create a random AI song.  If anyone still has the link, please let me know!)  Use a lot of words, too, especially in your verses, and make sure to have a bridge. The bridge will come in handy later when you get to the chord and key changes. When you write the chorus, make sure to include lots of open vowels — oohs, ohs, and ahs. Avoid ee’s, because they sound screechy when held and hiccupy when Mariah goes into melisma (a/k/a “runs”).

Which brings us to the melody. Long, sweeping phrases and an opportunity for the eventual singer to show off his or her vocal range and breath control are key. (Unless you know you’re writing for someone with no vocal range or breath control, like Madonna or Britney.) Don’t write too many notes, as a basic outline is fine. The singer will have their own style for filling in the blanks, honed over years of impressing Star Search judges. The singer’s style will also serve as a reminder of the genre they have been pigeonholed into: a country singer will be more yodely and a pop singer will be more punchy. Also, your chord progressions will provide them with a guide.

So what’s all this about chord progressions and key changes?  Read the rest of this entry �

What makes a song a hit? Is it a fashionable genre? Is it a (f/ Akon) notation in the credits? Or is there something more universal that gets radio requests and mass downloads? Considering that hits come from all genres and certainly existed before the advent of the professional guest artist, I’m inclined to go with that universal theory.

My personal experience is that there are two “usual” types of hits: the uptempo dance number, and the midtempo ballad (a/k/a makeout song). In this blog, I’m going to examine uptempo songs. Later, we’ll cover ballads, and the third, rogue category, the novelty song (which can occasionally fit into one or the other of the first two categories). Now, on to the hits!

The backbone of a danceable song is the backbeat. (It even has “back” in it!) This usually consists of drums (or some kind of percussion, drum machine, etc.) and some kind of bass line, either from bass guitar, “stand up” double bass, or maybe the left hand of the piano or organ player. This is what you tap your feet or fingers to, it’s what you move and groove and shake your booty to. It’s what made people on American Bandstand say, “It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it, I give it an 8.5″ for many, many years. If you haven’t got a beat, you haven’t got a hit dance song.
Read the rest of this entry �