Beyond The Triad – “Advanced” Harmony

I will be posting a primer on basic harmony (i.e. triads) at a later time so watch out for that.  In the meantime for you more advanced songwriters, I’m going to talk a little about where you go when you’ve finally mastered your simple major and minor triads.  A lot of great and famous songs have been written solely using those basic triads so let’s not diminish them, but if you want to expand your palette of sounds and chords to add to your songs, you should try to get beyond those basic triads. Here are some of the other important chord types that any aspiring songwriter should keep in their arsenal:

1.  Dominant 7 (written as C7, F7, etc):  This is a major chord with an added note that is a whole-step below the root note.  If the root note is C, the chord would be:

C-E-G-Bb

This chord is used generally to toughen up a chord sequence and make it sound less “settled”.

2.  Minor 7 (written as Dm7, Am7, etc):  This is a minor chord with a note a whole-step below the root note.  If the root note is C, the chord would be:

C-Eb-G-Bb

This chord makes a minor chord sound less “minor”.  Some people say this chord sounds “jazzy”.

3.  Major 7 (written as Cmaj7, Fmaj7, etc):  This is a major chord with a note a half-step below the root note.  If the root note is C, the chord would be:

C-E-G-B

This chord is used frequently in ballads and slower tempo music.

4.  Minor/major 7 (written as Dm/maj7, Am/maj7, etc):  This is a minor chord with a note a half-step below the root. If the root note is C, the chord would be:

C-Em-G-B

This chord is not as commonly used in popular music, but it can be used when you are trying to write music that sounds unsettled or tense.

5.  Major 6 (written as C6, F6, etc):  This is a major chord with the sixth note of the scale added.  If the root note is C, the chord would be:

C-E-G-A

This chord can be used to bring a slightly jazzy feel to a chord progression that uses major chords.  A “minor 6” chord can be created too by adding the sixth to a minor chord, but it is extremely rare in popular music.

6.  Suspended Second (written as Dsus2, Asus2, etc):  This is a chord that is neither major or minor (as are any “suspended chord).  It is created by taking the third and replacing it with the second note above the root note.  If the root note is C, the chord would be:

C-D-G

This chord adds mystery, color and movement to a chord progression.

7.  Suspended Fourth (written as Dsus4, Asus4, etc):  Again, as a suspended chord this chord is neither major nor minor and is created by replacing the third and replacing it with the fourth note above the root note.  If the root note is C, the chord would be:

C-F-G

This chord is more tense than the sus2 chord – it is a chord that has a strong need to be “resolved” (by either going to the major 3rd or minor 3rd).

8.  Minor Add Ninth (written as Dmadd9, Amadd9, etc):  This chord is a minor triad with an extra note that is the second note in the minor key added an octave above the root.  If the root note is C, the chord would be:

C-Em-G-D

This chord is used to make a minor chord sound even more sad.

9.  Major Add Ninth (written as Cadd9, Fadd 9, etc):  This chord is a major triad with an extra note that is the second note in the major key added an octave above the root. If the root note is C, the chord would be:

C-E-G-D

Conclusion:  There are also  augmented and diminished chords, but they are not very common in popular music so this discussion will omit these chord shapes.  Try incorporating some of the above chord shapes into your chord progressions to see how they add color and interest to your progressions.  Try to really absorb the sound of these chords, so that you can recognize them when you hear them on the radio. Let me know if you have found other uses for these chord shapes that I haven’t discovered!

Hit Song Analysis – Miley Cyrus “Party in the U.S.A.”

Last week (October 3rd), I analyzed the No. 1 and No. 3 songs (“I Gotta Feeling “by Black Eyed Peas and “Down” by Jay Sean ft Lil Wayne) of that week.  Anyhow, guess which songs are #1 and #2 this week (Week of October 10th)?  Those same songs, so where did that leave me?  I checked the charts and to my chagrin, the highest charting song that I haven’t analyzed was Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.”  I’ve never heard the song before and don’t know anything about her personally (or her music), so I shouldn’t rush to judgment, so here we go, objectivity in hand:

Chart Position:  No. 3 (Week of October 3rd, 2009),

Songwriters:  Lukasz Gottwald, Claude Kelly and Jessica Cornish (I’ve heard some of Claude Kelly’s songs before which were great.  I didn’t know he wrote pop.  Dr. Luke is an amazing producer and songwriter, so the big guns were definitely brought out for this track.)

Producers:  Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald

Key/Time Signature/Tempo/Genre: F#, 4/4, 96 bpm (Mid-Tempo), Pop Rock

Song  Structure: After a short intro of four bars of solo guitar, the song structure looks like this:  Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus/Bridge/Chorus. I like short intros, since there’s no time for the listener to change the dial (did I just date myself?  I was talking about radio…should I say click the mouse?).  Anyhow, there’s nothing to say here other than the most common song structure was used – this is neither good nor bad.  Its just usually an appropriate way to present a problem and a resolution.

Theme:  The song is about Miley’s move from Nashville to Los Angeles and her anxiety about that move and how she was able to overcome her feelings.  Generally speaking, I don’t think its too wise to make a song too specific about your own circumstances but Miley is still fairly young and probably doesn’t have enough autobiographical experiences to draw upon.  However, the song quickly segues from her feelings to “partying in the U.S.A.” so I guess that’s where the song gets universal.

Melody:  Overall, I liked this song from a melodic standpoint.  The only part that I wasn’t sure about was the end of the lead-up to the chorus where she sings three straight lines (“and the Jay-Z/Britney song was on…”).  Not sure what happened there – did the songwriters get lazy or did they actually like that?  I liked how the most important part of the chorus (“hands up”) was the highest note in the song’s range and that it hit on the downbeat at the beginning of the chorus.  The songwriters put that phrase in the best piece of real estate in the song and its effective.  I can see visualize her fans putting their “hands up” going crazy at that moment in the song.  In the 8-bar bridge, there is use of call and response, which I always like and which I think always adds excitement to a song, which is important for a track like this one.  There is always a lot of variety about where phrases start in this song (another thing I always harp about), which makes the song unpredictable and exciting.  Overall, there’s nothing to pick at here…its solid as a rock.

Lyrics: Let’s start with rhyme scheme.  The beginning of the first verse tries to rhyme, which it does using really loose rhymes (LAX/excess and cardigan/in) for the first four bars, but from there on, there really aren’t rhymes to be found in the rest of the song.  I’m beginning to think rhyme scheme is pretty irrelevant these days.  As long as it doesn’t detract from the song’s feel and flow, rhyme scheme is not a very important factor in a song.

The lyrics aren’t fantastic or profound, but I think they’re appropriate for the age group/audience and they present a problem and the resolution in a straightforward and easy to understand way so it works.  I’m not sure about “dating” the song with references to Jay-Z and Britney, so its no major revelation here that this song will not likely be a classic tune one day.  Please take a lesson here and try not to do that to your song if you hope it will generate income from a number of sources now and in the future.

Production: Dr. Luke’s production as usual is amazing and appropriate – he says out of the way and le’s the singer carry the tune and Miley does a good job carrying the ball.  For a Dr. Luke production, its actually rather understated.  He does an incredible job (its harder than you think) of blending rock and synth instruments into the song – he’s just a master at this – look at all the great pop/rock songs he’s produced and you’ll see what I mean.  To create contrast between sections, he brings out a few new instruments in the chorus (very large synth sound and a jet airplane take-off sound…whatever happened to the good ‘ol cymbal?  The jet airplane sound is the new cymbal, one day someone will bring back the real thing and it’ll sound revolutionary just like the vocoder). The only other thing that I thought I’d mention is that in the bridge, where she sings “flight”, the production is very airy and I’m sure that was probably deliberate.  Overall, a strong effort by Dr. Luke although there’s nothing particular revolutionary or original about his production in this song.

Summary:  I started enjoying the song more and more as I started listening to it during the writing of this article.  There are not a lot of songwriting or production gimmicks in this song and I think overall it works.  However, I’m not sure whether the song is popular because the song is great or because its singer is the most famous teenager in the world.

Does New Technology Change How Hit Songs Need to be Written?

With all the new ways that people can discover new music (usually online), the music consumer is now in full control of the listening experience.  These new technologies usually no longer “push” music to the listener but instead allow listeners to choose what they listen to.  This blog talks a lot about the characteristics of hit songs in the traditional sense, but do our songs need to evolve in order to compete in this new environment of music discovery?  I think it might be important to consider the following factors when writing songs for the future (please let me know what you think):

• Its always been true that the introduction of a song needs to be special, but this will be even more true in a future where listeners usually start listening from 0:00 and a listener may only give you 3-4 seconds to grab his/her attention before hitting the forward button.  Without a spectacular intro (especially from a production standpoint), you have no chance.
• Traditional song structure (such as 16 bar intros plus long verses) should be considered out the window.  You better get to the good parts (the hook) FAST.
• Those production and songwriting techniques that we will talk about on this site to keep people engaged are going to be even more important (tension and release, contrast, etc).
• Consider how new music services that push music (like Slacker.com, Pandora.com) will prioritize which songs are played or promoted.  How they have pay for the content will drive what songs get played or promoted.  If they end up pay royalties on a per song basis or time basis, they will choose songs that are longer in length because they will end up paying less per day/per period.
• Established acts have all the advantage in this environment; new acts will probably have to work even harder to get discovered.

Hit Research – Common Characteristics Between #1 Songs

There was a study of #1 songs a few years ago and they found that these songs all shared the following characteristics:

1.  Genre:  Pop or Country

2.  Subject Matter:  Romantic, sad, heartfelt, humorous

3.  Lyrics:  Tells a clear story and/or relates a strong opinion

4.  Narrative:  First person or second person

5.  Melody:  Linear melody in verse and soaring melody in chorus

6.  Harmony/Chord Progressions:   Few chord changes in verse and (significant chord changes in chorus

7.  Song Structure:  v, c, v, c, b, c, out

8.  Tempo:  Mid- to up-tempo

8.  Time Signature:  4/4 time

9.  Intro:  No longer than 13 seconds

10.  Songwriters:  Co-written between artist and another professional songwriter.

This study must have taken place a number of years ago (note that the genres represented don’t include hip hop songs), but regardless it is instructive.

Report From West Coast Songwriters Conference 2009

About two weeks ago, I attended the West Coast Songwriters Annual Conference at Foothill College in Los Altos, CA.  I thought I’d share with you some of things I learned in the song screenings I participated in.  Here are some of the comments I heard over and over from the various music publishers and A&R reps about people’s songs (including mine) over the weekend:

1.  Every song must have “tension and release”.  Learn the songwriting tools which allow you to create that tension and release.

2.  Your theme should be universal, but your lyrics cannot be generic.  The lyrics you write should present a universal theme, but in a unique or fresh way.

3.  Your job as a songwriter is always to “tell the listener how to sing your song” by halfway through the song.  This is the primary goal of a hit songwriter and not necessarily personal expression.  I’m sure some of you will disagree with this, but the topic of this blog is hit songwriting and I think this is true to large extent.

These pointers seem pretty self-evident, but after I had a chance to digest everything I learned at the conference, I could not agree more.  If you are able to accomplish all of the above in a song, it should have a great chance of getting some notice.

Mariah Carey’s New Album – Will it be a Hit?

Yesterday, I noticed on Billboard.com that Mariah’s new album “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel” was just released.

(Side note:  And its available in its entirety for free (legally) for anyone to listen to.  This foreshadows a potentially bleak future for songwriters/producers.)

(Another side note:  I read here that Def Jam is bundling other content (a mini-magazine with ads) with the CD.  I don’t see anybody rushing to stores to buy the CD because of a mini-magazine (which is filled with ads for that matter), do you?)

Anyhow, I took a quick listen tonight.  Who out there thinks its going to be a hit? We’ve all heard “Obsessed” a thousand times by now, but are there any other songs on the album that will find its way up the charts?  As much as I have enjoyed many Mariah’s past songs and wanted to give this new album the benefit of the doubt, I hard a hard time pinpointing one song that I felt was a sure-fire hit.  I could be wrong, but it doesn’t look good.  With many industry people hoping this album is the launch pad for a new exciting business model, I’m not sure if it is.

The Charts (Week of October 3rd 2009) – Five Songs about the Same Thing?!

Sometimes, you can garner some insight into the common characteristics of hit songs by taking a look at the top charting songs in a given period.  For this week, I guessed that most of the top songs would be uptempo.  Intuitively, it seems uptempo songs should be more popular.  However, of the top six charting songs this week, three are uptempo but the other three are not, so clearly this theory doesn’t necessarily fly with such a small sample size (I’m curious to know however, what percentage of top charting songs throughout history are uptempo…anybody know?).  So, is there a common characteristic that can be deduced from these top six songs?

#1 – I Gotta Feeling (Black Eyed Peas) – 128 bpm

#2 – Run This Town (Jay-Z, Rihanna, Kanye West) – 85 bpm

#3 – Down (Jay Sean) – 132 bpm

#4 – Empire State of Mind (Jay-Z) -87 bpm

#5 – You Belong to Me (Taylor Swift) – 130 bpm

#6 – Party in the U.S.A. (Miley Cyrus) – 96 bpm

I haven’t analyzed any of these six songs in detail, but of the six songs, five of them are virtually the same from a thematic standpoint (all but #5).  They are either about living life in the moment and/or living large, or some variant of these themes.  Indeed, this is a truly universal theme that everyone can relate to or aspire to.  I’m sure there will always be songs about this topic.  Now can you address it in a new and fresh way?