The anatomy of a song.
What is a song?
The translation of emotion through lyrics and music. The 6 types of basic emotion can be express as happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, and anger. Songwriters captures these emotions through the words they choose in the construction of the lyrics for the songs. The lyrics alone however, will not transmit the message or the emotion required for the song so this is where the melody and the composed music comes in.
Happiness:
Songs for Weddings, birthdays, other celebration, dance parties, special gatherings, victory parties, celebration of a birth, graduation, parades, summer festivals, winning the lottery, worship, inspirational, etc, are examples of happy songs. The melody lines of these songs are normally faster and the music tends to be uptempo. These songs should bring out all the laughter’s and smiles in the performer and listeners. Lyrics don’t need to be all that perfect but the melody lines must roll with the music composition
Sadness:
Well, sadness says it all. Loosing someone, loosing freedom, heartbroken, failures, divorces, loosing income, loosing shelter, broken dreams, critical injuries, terminal injuries, going broke and whatever else makes you sad. Melody and music is normally slower with longer notes. Lyrics for these types of songs must tell a good story. The timings on these songs is important too. Having a live piano dominating the music composition with the other instruments providing more background sounds with the vocals just above the piano will help with the emotion.
Disgust:
High taxes, low income, high food prices, high cost of living, not enough housing, no work, prejudice, racial profiling, the people just cant take any more. Louder music, especially from the guitars and drums. High energy type of songs.
Fear:
High crimes, civil unrests, child abuse, human trafficking, gang activities, drug abuse, dying young, mistaken identity, the prison system, spousal abuse, backstabbing, cutthroat, scams, anger. Lyrics in these types of songs are well crafted and the musical composition are very melodic, matching the flow of the lyrics.
Surprise:
Surprise me. These songs will lose their surprise element the moment they hit the airways. Songs that comes out immediately after a surprising event will only be effective for the first few days of their release. Lyrics has to be clear and to the point as they are describing an event and there are no room for fluffs. Music composition must also be very catchy to properly support the lyrics
Anger:
Someone stole my bike, someone stole my car, someone stole my lover, my friend stood me up when I needed them the most, my boss drives me crazy, the people at work gets me all worked up, the traffic is miserable, where did my money go? I fail my test again. My team lost the championship again. Where did you go? You broke my what?? The artist singing these songs must be in touch with the deepest parts of their pain. Hard hitting lyrics and equally hard hitting music to complement each other. Emotion runs very high in these types of songs. Tears may even fall during performance
As a songwriter one of these emotional example will be the theme of your song and if you tends to keep writing songs using this theme over a few singles or album then people will believe that is your brand. Know thy brand; know thy fans.
If you want to learn more about understanding your brand or writing the kind of songs that will stand the test of time, then connect with us and lets get you started.
