Writing The Hook (An Intuitive Approach) | The Hit Song Architect S1E4

do you know what I really miss on YouTube videos that show the actual songwriting process too often we edit out the uncomfortable bits where we're searching for the perfect melody and skip right to the fine tuning it's a form of protecting ourselves from mean comments but I think the superficial perfection has a downside you won't learn from it and you will feel intimidated when you're trying to come up with melodies of your own so in this video I will give you the unedited version of me coming up with melodies enjoy welcome back to the it song architect where we gather a deeper understanding of how pop songs work and how to write them let's start this episode off with the oldest question in songwriting music or lyrics first if you're not aware I put on a video a few weeks ago that asked all of my subscribers this question and we got over 400 in depth comments that described 400 unique approaches and as far as I'm concerned they're all correct so if you're looking for an answer that's the place to go a week later I did a follow-up video reading out some of my favorite comments but I have yet to answer the question myself so here's my perspective writing a song is not adding music to a poem nor is it adding a poem to music songs live through the relationship of text and music and so the real answer to the question music or lyrics first is relationship first and how do you do that that's what I'll show you right now first we need a little bit of inspiration this could be a piece of text a word a melody fragment a sound even something more abstract like an idea an emotion a moment it doesn't really matter if it works for you anything is fine and by the way for a list of ways to start a song refer to this video here for now let's start with a piece of text though something I do when I'm out of ideas is going Amazon and do a search for fiction along with another descriptive word like romance thriller or cooking for me it's the quickest way of finding those power words which have an emotional impact and look at all these potential song titles titles which by the way are not copyrighted there's an entire world of inspiration here if you know what kind of song you want to write pick a title that sounds like what you're hearing in your head and if you see a Rea title but it doesn't give you any immediate ideas put it down into a notebook or text file on your cell phone you might need it again for another song do this with every piece of inspiration you find now let's say I'm writing a rock song from just five minutes of clicking through the fiction section Amazon hears the titles I came up with protect me outliers when we surrender returned the lost and the great alone now still have no idea what my song will be about but these titles fit the general emotion I'm going for dark larger-than-life dramatic so how do we turn these into hooks there are many many ways to do this in fact if after this video you're ready to learn the seven most important ones you can check out this video course here but today we're going to focus on a slightly different approach this is one of the easier hook writing techniques you can learn and it's all based on lyrics all we need to start is one great line something with an emotional impact this is where you turn those words you found into short poignant lines typically these will not be longer than four to six words while I'm finding those lines I'm already singing them to see if a rhythm comes up naturally in the excerpt that's about to follow I'll be doing this with a synth to add some color to my melody but in the past I've written on guitar piano drums or just in my head a little warning at this stage they're all gonna sound pretty similar that's because we're using the same instrumentation the same key the same chords the same voice similar tempos and the same emotion all I'm doing at this point is looking for a catchy melody the key here is to fail fast I call this rapid prototyping if I don't find a melody quickly I'll put the line I came up with in my notebook and abandon it for now think about this why would you write an entire lyric or song if you don't even have a good hook to start with so this is where it all begins and before we start what you're about to see is a slightly edited version just for brevity for the full video you can find that here on the listings all on your live channel now let's go the lost not such a cliche isn't it you are the lost inmate as it's something you lost in me and it's something you lost in me something you find you something lost on me something you couldn't find yourself something you lost in you something you can Shane let's check that got it down check them all around let me down south down a bit rolling like you got me but down at me going like around its gonna back down I'm sorry yeah I got it at around like a man tell me [Music] got me feelin down like a Marinette gone away I'm feeling down like a meeting it always got me feeling down like a mean in it we suffer that all that's know when we surrendered is that all that's left on weena fender is that all we get when we never is that all we are gonna take to give you my my my own bad I know where do we keep my own way and I made our own way another way we are gonna be outliers searching for the Sun searching for the Sun we're we're gonna be our last search for the Sun searching for us and we've got to be our search for the Sun searching for the Sun yeah that is one squeaky pedal the cradle owner the grill dome ready yeah the bread alone mustache you know fun staying on my I'm great alone I said our own stay all right what's next returned we are though return Liana return we are the return all right let's do something major we are the we have the return in that situation we are the return we are the return [Music] let's keep stick with this court we are the return we ever return [Music] we return my return [Music] [Music] we all return cuz we gotta go by the side and we're rolling like a kind of my nose we're probably going side to side because I think it's wet inside oh yeah yeah yeah oh yeah oh yeah [Music] all right now that's a bunch of very usable melodies don't you think now which ones would you like to see me explore in the next episode comment below with the title or timestamp and that's the song we'll be working on until then take care and stay fairly

Channel: Holistic Songwriting

Views: 567,830

Keywords: songwriting, songs, songwriter, hit, song, hits, friedemann, findeisen, holistic, drum-writing, drums, lyrics, lyric, lyric-less, storytelling, musical, music, composition, compose, composer, marketing, money, producer, producing, mixing, mastering, tricks, tips, tip, trick, technique, business, max, martin, hook, hooks, melody, melodies, singer-songwriter

Id: c94ozhd_FFo

Length: 9min 35sec (575 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 21 2018