Stale verse chorous patterns

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sohail

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Lately I've been writting songs in a verse chorous verse chorous bridge chorous pattern. I don't know but for me repeating the same thing over and over again gets boring real quick. Any advice on how i can make things more interesting?
 
Right..........just go ahead and purposely write a song that's not structured ABABCBAB repeat ending etc..... Write it any way you want it to be. At first your old habits will try to take over.........but once you get one done.......you'll see that you don't have to follow a pattern if you don't want to.
 
Sometimes when I write a song I have some licks, lyrics, odd snipets etc of ideas that I try to fit to it. More often than not I find a fit and the song seems to grow from there. I find my songs then take me on a new direction. If that makes sense?

Anything you create can be used. Like a collage. :)
 
Sometimes I write simple songs, sometimes I write complicated songs.

Sometimes giving yourself a constraint can make you creative, try this as a start:
Go through whatever directory you've got where you keep all your half baked ideas.
Select two ideas that you think are good and have legs that you've never done anything with and are in completely different keys.
Now spend some time working out a bridge or two to get from one idea to the other - actually use your bridge as a way of bridging the gap. Then try and get back to where you started by a different route.

Even if you don't like it and it turns out shit, it will be interesting and you'll learn something.

There's always the technique of a half-time moody slow bit dripping with delay too.
 
I have tried it. And the song sounds uninteresting for me at least. But i tried repeating a few riffs here and there and thing worked out just fine.
 
Turn one of the verses into a bridge.

Turn two of the verses into a bridge.

Drop one of the verses and replace it with a solo.

Turn one of the verses into a bridge that has the same chord progression as the chorus and then sing it as a countmelody over the chorus.
 
I've lately done some songs that open with a chorus. Then later verses start to explain the chorus's message.
 
IMO a song should take a life of its own. If you let it do that then the structure winds up being whatever it is.
 
wmalan said:
I've lately done some songs that open with a chorus. Then later verses start to explain the chorus's message.
Click to expand...
I may have to try this sometime. I have a number of songs that are kind of the opposite - no actual chorus until the very end and then it's sometimes just a single line. I call it the punchline, like if it was a joke.

I have a lot(!!!) of songs that are a basic verse-chorus-verse-chorus... pattern but the "choruses" are all instrumental. In many of these the last line of each verse is the same, and sort of does what a vocal chorus might.

Ive got a couple songs that do have a vocal chorus, but I only sing part of it each time it comes around. So I'll sing just the first line the first time, then right back into the verse. Maybe the second time we sing it all the way through, third chorus is instrumental, and at the end we repeat the chorus a couple times.

Course, nobody actually listens to any of it...
 
ALL songs ever written conform to patterns of some type. If they didn't they wouldn't be recognizable as "songs" and they wouldn't contain music. All music, be it commercial or ethnic, heavily relies on rather strict patterns (some simple patterns and others incredibly complex patterns).

"The" ingredient that makes any song good is "communication". If a song doesn't communicate an idea well enough, then it won't sound interesting. Also keep in mind that some songwriters are trying to communicate with a certain 1% of people, whilst other songwriters are trying to communicate with 100% of people ....... therefore 2 totally different types of songs result.

"Communication" results from the good melding of good lyrics with good melodies. A great, world beating lyric can also be an incredibly simple lyric. A great, world beating melody can also be an incredibly simple melody.

Types of "patterns" used has zero impact on whether a song is good or bad. A songwriter's ability to communicate is the most important thing.
 
ashcat_lt said:
I may have to try this sometime. I have a number of songs that are kind of the opposite - no actual chorus until the very end and then it's sometimes just a single line. I call it the punchline, like if it was a joke.

I have a lot(!!!) of songs that are a basic verse-chorus-verse-chorus... pattern but the "choruses" are all instrumental. In many of these the last line of each verse is the same, and sort of does what a vocal chorus might.

Ive got a couple songs that do have a vocal chorus, but I only sing part of it each time it comes around. So I'll sing just the first line the first time, then right back into the verse. Maybe the second time we sing it all the way through, third chorus is instrumental, and at the end we repeat the chorus a couple times.

Course, nobody actually listens to any of it...
Click to expand...

The 'instrumental chorus/last line of each verse the same' is actually a refrain style (think most Bob Dylan tunes) and what you're calling a chorus is really an instrumental bridge. 'chorus' dates back to ancient times when a group of people woudl sing the 'main theme' together. In current songs, the chorus is usually the hook/title and becomes the remembered sing-along part for the listeners.
 
philips said:
ALL songs ever written conform to patterns of some type. If they didn't they wouldn't be recognizable as "songs" and they wouldn't contain music. All music, be it commercial or ethnic, heavily relies on rather strict patterns (some simple patterns and others incredibly complex patterns).
Click to expand...

Hm. Only remotely true if you define a "pattern" as any sequence that executes at least once.
But then if you define it that way, you're not really saying much.

Kind of like saying every speech follows a pattern, with a pattern being any arrangement of words, ie: a speech.

philips said:
"Communication" results from the good melding of good lyrics with good melodies. A great, world beating lyric can also be an incredibly simple lyric. A great, world beating melody can also be an incredibly simple melody.

Types of "patterns" used has zero impact on whether a song is good or bad. A songwriter's ability to communicate is the most important thing.
Click to expand...

I see a lot of goods and greats in there, which are always, of course, in the mind of the listener. What we like says more about us and our receptivity than it does about the music, or the songwriter's "ability."
 
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