First you have to have The Song

• the most important

1 – great lyrics, a good story

2 – great melody, hooky melodies that stick

3 – great arrangement, instrumentation, beat, tempo, feel, groove

here’s a small and funny ( to me) list of things to check:

a – Dance factor, is it danceable, does it make your body move

b – Importance, does the lyric grab you and connect

c – Love factor, does the song take you to your own space and comfort you

d – Snuggle factor, does the groove make you wanna hug and slow dance or touch somebody sensually

e – Rage factor, does the song make you let loose of all your inner aggressions (both dance & Rock/Metal does this)

if you can check 2 or more of these boxes you probably have a good song

there are songs and songs

You could roughly put songs in 3 categories: 

1) the storyteller 

2) traditional verse-chorus 

3) the groovy kind

1. With the storyteller I mean a song that doesn’t necessarily need a chorus and that is telling a story i e a lot of country stuff, blues, folk, singer songwriter, indie/alternative to name a few. I used to play in a bossa nova band in the 90’s and there was a song called Chega de Saudade. It felt like it just went on and on with the melody changing all the time and with no going back to the previous parts. It felt very weird at the time for me as a young pop/rocker. Now almost 30 years later streaming Antonio Jobim and hearing him playing it makes perfect sense.

Other examples are Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, some Joni Mitchell stuff and to stir it up add Bruce springsteen. He has a lot of songs that are 1 & 2 combined, a story with a chorus.

2. The traditional way means having a song with verse, verse, chorus, verse, a bridge and interlude/solo and choruses at the end. may or not have a pre choruses.

Nothing much to say about these. Usually verse 1 could be about “the plot”, “me”, “they” or “at first”. The second verse about “the story goes on”, “you”, “now”. The pre chorus is a link so the chorus doesn’t stand out too much. The chorus is the punchline of the story usually with less notes and at a higher pitch than the verses, The 3rd verse could be about “us”, “what now”, “to be”, “the judgment”, “the end” and the same or an altered pre chorus. The bridge/middle 8 is usually “if”, “hope” etc and so on.

3. The groovy kind can be two things:

1. just some groovy beats, riffs, hooks, lines that makes you smile/dance/feel OR
2. groovy as in weird can be with strange; stories, sounds, voices, melodies…

Arrangement and Pre Production

Here is where I think the producer comes in and does his/hers first great deeds.

A songwriter/artist seldom can stay objective to their art and that’s why bringing someone from the outside in is helpful.

Help, that’s the word. A producer isn’t supposed to take over and make his/her own visions come to life. He/she is there to help make the song the best song it can be.

To become a great producer I think it helps to get a vast knowledge of all kinds of music: classical, blues, jazz, folk, world, country, film, TV, theater, hip-hop, pop, punk, rock, metal… The only way to do that is to Listen, Listen, Listen and play if you can.

It takes time, like years, to be familiar with all kinds of music and be able to recognize what makes a genre a genre i e what instruments are typical for a particular genre and what kind of chord progressions and rhythms are typical.

Here I digress a little to mention the invaluable skill of knowing music theory and understanding ranges of instruments and how pitch and the frequency spectrum works i e a normal tuning note would be A and that’s the same as 440Hz as is 220Hz, 110Hz, 55Hz, 880Hz 1.760kHz … only those latter ones were different octaves. 

And what is an octave? that’s an interval, the distance between 2 given notes. Others are thirds, fifths… 

Point. Learning basic music theory is a must I think, knowing the difference between major and minor, flat and sharp notes, different note values, time signature. Reading and writing music makes everything easier if you ever work with bigger ensembles featuring professional musicians and we’re all hoping for that?! ey

Back to the pre production and arrangement. 

Begin with talking to the artist about favorite music and sounds and what they would like their music to sound like. It gives you a chance to figure out in advance what the outcome could be. This was a mystery to me for the longest time, how producers/mixers told in interviews  that they were able to hear what they wanted to hear coming out of the speakers even before they even started.

Also ask the artists what makes them tick: stamps, fly fishing, bulldogs, cakes, football?! Get to know them. You’re going to be their support and need to earn their trust. They’re going to be vulnerable and fragile at moments. Especially when it comes to singing their story.

Arranging the song and choosing what kind of song it will be (remember the funny hit factor list), making decisions about instrumentation and first of all building up the story of the song.

I often see a song as a short movie with an intro/intrigue moving on to the foundation and core of the storyline to then explode into a party/action scene where everything reveals and if you have a bridge/middle8 that’s the something/issue/problems on the way leading to the ending and grand finale.

So when arranging it could be that you have to cut and maybe re-write something to really get the story right.

A good tip is to avoid doing something that already has been done, because the chance that your version would be better is minimal i e bands mimicking other old bands are plain boring and dance tracks using same kind of arrangements and beats as ABBA just sounds like poor copycats and the lifespan is always short on that kind of stuff. I’m not saying everybody has to be Bjork or Tom Waits, that would be weird, but finding something new and unique to add to familiar grooves is the key.

These are of course only guidelines. NOT the facts. There are as many ways to write and produce music as there are musicians. These were just my thoughts put to “paper”.

Who said it would be easy to make music stand out? Not me. Fun, but not always easy.

Good luck!