by Kevin Thomas
Photo provided by: Kevin Thomas
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Finding the Hook
For the last couple of months I have been a judge at the Sandi Shaner Songwriting competitions. It has been an eye opening experience to listen to songs in the same way that music publishers or A&R record company executives might listen to them. During this time I noticed two things: one, there are a lot of good sonwriters in San Diego, but two, there are only a few of them who focus on writing a hook that would make the song strong enough to potentially become a hit.
I feel that there are several reasons why good songwriters often miss developing the most important part of the song. One reason, obviously, could be that they never thought it was important or even understood what a hook really was. Another problem, for those who do see the value in writing strong hooks, is that finding someone who can teach songwriting is much harder than finding a guitar or piano teacher. And even finding a useful book on the subject can be a challenge. Furthermore, if a songwriter is lucky enough to have access to a good teacher or mentor, letting go of creative control long enough to learn something can be another barrier to development. A much more insidious roadblock to developing good hooks is the cheeze virus. "I'm afraid that if I write something catchy it will sound cheezy and too pop." A great songwriter sooner or later has to confront and overcome the cheeze factor. A related problem is that in an attempt to be artistic and express individuality many songwriters try to avoid writing hooks or anything that would make a portion of their song sound less cryptic and more obvious. This one is a big mistake. If you want to sound deep do it in the verse and use a simple chorus to connect those ideas in a memorable way to your audience.
As songwriters we all have the inspiration and passion to write, otherwise we would have become accountants or corporate executives, but what we are often missing is the craft of songwriting, the techniques that so many hit songwriters know and use on a daily basis. Many of these hit songwriters learned through years of trial and error or from mentors and friends. They basically learned the hard way. Even the writers who seemed to have a natural intuitive ability to write great songs often lack the understanding of the things that made their songs so good and as a result they often have trouble duplicating their own initial success. At a time when I was feeling very stuck with my writing and wanted to take it to a much higher level, I discovered that Berklee College of Music was the only music college in the world that actually had a major in songwriting. They demystified many of the techniques that hit songwriters use, and they put them together in a teachable academic format. I jumped at the chance to shortcut my success, moved to Boston, undertook on a dual major in Performance and Songwriting at Berklee, and now I'd like to share a few tips that I teach my songwriting students here in San Diego when we discus writing hooks.
1) Start a list of titles. Keep a notebook handy and throughout your day write down ideas that you think could become good titles to songs. Make them short and simple, sometimes just a word or two. The titles should potentially encapsulate a concept that you could develop later with a story or secnario in the verses. You won't use them all, but if you have twenty titles to choose from one of them could really grab you when you start writing.
2) Start with the hook. Many songwriters are good with words and write well-crafted verses with interesting rhymes, symbolism, phrasing, and imagery, but the problem often arises when the chorus sounds just like another verse. If you know you can write a good verse, don't worry about that section at first, start writing the song from the title and if you can't develop a good hook out of it then move on to the next title.
3) Put the title in the chorus. There were quite a few bands in the nineties that had titles that were not even sung in the song. There can be valid artistic reasons for this, but in general it makes it harder to remember the song, and harder to find the song and purchase it. It has also been becoming clear with many of those nineties bands that not having a strong and catchy title in the song itself has made it harder for the songs to attain longevity and survive the decades.
4) Repetition, repeat the title at least once in each chorus.
5) Sing higher in the chorus. Occasionally it works better to sing lower or in the same general pitch area in the chorus as you do in the verse, but for the most part the opposite is true.
6) Long notes. Holding out notes is not necessary to create a strong hook but it is usually something you would want to try to see if it brings out your title a little more. Also, if you keep your titles short as I recommended above, they will lend themselves much better to longer notes.
7) Space, keep it simple. Where a verse usually tells the story with more conversational like phrasing, the section with the hook should sum up the ideas with short and simple phrases that have more space in between the lines.
8) Change up your phrasing. Where the verse section begins its phrases before the downbeat of the section, after the downbeat, or right on it, start the chorus on a different beat. Of course if you are starting with the chorus you can do the opposite when you get to the verse. This is also the most effective way to differentiate sections of a song and maintain interest from section to section.
9) Experiment with length, phrasing, and pitch. When you start working with a title, even if it seems good just the way it is, it is very useful to try every other possible way to set the title musically just to see if it can be taken to another level. I usually experiment in this manner and more than half of the time I find a better way to develop the hook than what I origianlly had in mind. An effective approach is to experiment with the following three parameters: 1. Sing the title in short, medium, and long lengths. 2. Begin the phrasing at three different points, which are before, after, and right on the downbeat. 3. Finally, whatever direction the pitches go in the melody, try variations of it. If the pitches start low and go up, try the opposite.
10) Rough drafts. One of the biggest mistakes beginning songwriters make after they write all the sections of a song is to say, "I wrote a new song." Hit songwriters say, "I've got a rough draft" and then they spend weeks editing it using many of the techniques listed above for developing the hook. They also employ many other techniques for the other sections of the song to take it to the highest possible level before they consider the song complete.
To write a strong hook you don't need to employ all of these techniques, but if you don't use any of them you probably will have a pretty weak song. If you find these ideas valuable save the list and pick a few to focus on with each song that you write. In a couple months I think you will find yourself getting closer to those monster hooks that create hit songs that live on for years.
Kevin Thomas
kevinthomasmusic@yahoo.com
http://www.stratospheremusic.com
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