Songwriting Basics

on the repeats of the chorus' and verses' change them a bit, preferably more rhythmic events, embellishments and passing tones etc...(aka more complex so that the music is developing interest). Finally use part of your bridge to make the Intro which is ONLY 4 measures long for unknowns trying to break in to the biz.

People listening to your tune want to get to the chorus quickly. If you've written a GREAT chorus consider placing it before the verse and also consider dropping the intro. Now that the melody is handled, it's time to think about accompaniment and percussion.

The Bass guitar and bass drum should be similar but not identical most of the time, the high hat and the piano/guitar should be similar but not identical. One way to create the high hat part is from the bass part. Just use the bass part's rhythm played backwards.

Have the piano and guitar follow the high hat part fairly closely. Likewise, if you've come up with a good guitar or piano accompaniment part, make the high hat similar and then write it backwards and give the backwards form to the bass. (Picked that idea up from Modern Drummer magazine). This doesn't always work but it's a place to start. Some idea is better than no idea at all.

Major chords mostly don't work so well in root position except at the beginning and endings of tunes, so everytime you come across a major chord in your writing put it in first inversion (aka with the third in the bass)

Also, you can't repeat the drums ad nauseum. You have to put variety in. So if you've got a 2 measure drum pattern, repeat it but with changes in the repeat.

Then repeat those four and change the last measure or two of that, then repeat that and put a drum fill at the end of the section. (That's hard to do well if you're not a drummer.)

Relationship between the Bass Guitar and the Bass Drum

To my way of thinking you can’t use ANY preprogrammed sequences or prerecorded drum loops unless you’re doing a certain kind of hip hop or trance music and even then, it could always be better if they weren’t doing that. There is an inverse relationship between the bass guitar’s activity or the lack of it and the importance of the vocal line or the absence of the vocal line.

The bass guitar and the bass drum should be similar if not sometimes exactly the same. That’s how we know they’re supposed to be part of the same song and not completely unrelated gobbledygook. Let’s say you created a killer bass guitar part but don’t have a drummer and then slap some beat with that. They’re never going to sound like the close-knit family that they’re supposed to without significant tweaking of either the bass part or the drum part.

Another issue is making the drum part sound like a human could have played it even if everyone knows it’s a machine. I've got a handy dandy guide to drum programming which I'll put up here soon.

Hopefully, your drum or bass part won’t be as boring as this but, not surprisingly, preprogrammed bass drum parts often ARE as boring as this. Notice I’ve taken a basic four on the floor ala Copeland and repeated it with variation, then repeated all of that with variation again. The last four lines are the completed section of music, with stronger and stronger rhythmic cadences built right in.

The numbers below signify the importance of each rhythmic location both on and off the beat. 84627351. The least important is given a number 1. That is the first one I’ve chosen to change. I’m taking my rhythms from a pool of rhythms and going through them one by one. You don’t have to do this. It’s just one way of working. You could just as easily use the same one from the gene pool several times.

The off-beats are the least important and the on-beats go 4231 in descending order of importance and hence likelihood to change. As you can see form this, beat one is the least likely to be given an embellishing rhythmic event.

I got these ideas from someone who knows drum programming. This will help your bass drum and bass guitar stuff sound MUCH better. You would of course be using your ten times more interesting bass guitar rhythm in this bass drum part instead of the example I’ve created except with variations at the locations indicated.

There ARE other ways to create the variations in the bass drum. This is just one sure fire way.

There should also be a relationship between the high hat and the keyboard/guitar parts and most probably the vocal rhythm. The relationship to the other parts should be heard in either the high hat’s accents if it’s straight eighths or straight sixteenths or it’s actual rhythm it it’s not straight eighths or straight sixteenths. Just click on the picture to see it larger if it’s not large enough already.