►► Download the 20 Ways To Start Writing A Song Cheat Sheet here: http://songwritertheory.com/freeguide/   In this episode of the new format of the Songwriter Theory Podcast, we're learning about Hook Writing, 3rd Verses, Wordplay, and more off of the song Everything You Want by my favorite artist,  @VerticalHorizonMusic  . We'll be covering what we can learn about hook writing, lyric writing, song structure, and more in this episode. Let's talk about it!

►► Download the 20 Ways To Start Writing A Song Cheat Sheet here: http://songwritertheory.com/freeguide/

►► Download the 20 Ways To Start Writing A Song Cheat Sheet here: http://songwritertheory.com/freeguide/

►► Download the 20 Ways To Start Writing A Song Cheat Sheet here: http://songwritertheory.com/freeguide/

►► Download the 20 Ways To Start Writing A Song Cheat Sheet here: http://songwritertheory.com/freeguide/ In this bonus episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast, we're talking about your biggest songwriting struggles. We're going to talk through and attempt to give the solution or some advice as to how to get past the struggles you're having in your songwriting. Transcript: We're back with another bonus episode of the Songwriter Theory podcast. It's going to be part eight of addressing your biggest songwriting struggles. No, I didn't forget about this series. Just didn't have time for a hot second, but we're back. We're going to finish out responding to these, not necessarily in this episode, unless actually, almost certainly we're not going to finish in this episode. No, it's not important to have watched the other ones. If you're thinking, Oh my goodness, part eight, do I have to go watch the other ones? No, they're all self-contained. Each one is me addressing different of your responses to this survey that I sent out. And whether you are somebody that actually responded to this and you're waiting to hear specifically what I have to say about your songwriting struggle and maybe the advice I give or whatever it might be. But also you might be somebody who shares a struggle with another songwriter out there. In fact, in going through these, I've realized, wow, there are a lot of themes that come up over and over. So there might be something in here to help you as well. Let's talk about it. Hello, friend. Welcome to another episode of the songwriter theory podcast. Another bonus episode talking about your biggest songwriting struggles. If you haven't already, be sure to grab my free guide. 20 different ways to start writing a song, starting songs and finishing songs or some of the recurring themes that come up here. And this free guide will help you with starting songs. It's a cheat sheet now. It's much shorter. It's very easy, practical to apply. Great way to stay creatively fresh. And just it's good to have a variety instead of being stuck in one way to start a song, especially because sometimes the one way to start a song isn't actually what's best for us. Maybe you've always started a song writing lyrics first and you haven't even contemplated that maybe an easier way to write songs for you is actually starting on the music side. Maybe something specific like a bass line or a guitar riff or chord progression. Regardless, it's a great way to mix things up. Songwritertheory.com slash free guide. Let's dive into question or feedback, I guess. Response. There's the word. Number one, lately I've been having trouble getting into the flow and starting a project and or staying focused. It's a big problem in today's society. Yes, yes, it is. Also, I have trouble finishing projects and following through and letting them out into the world. I'm not very experienced at the mixing process, but I know what sounds good, at least to me. I know I can figure out how to use the mixing tools in Ableton Live 11 Suite, which I recently acquired. Not an EDM artist, however, Ableton is perfect for the kind of music I want to play and I'm playing with all of its tweakable sounds and effects and features. But I feel like my music is so far removed from the mainstream that there's no point in putting it out there because A, no one is going to like it or listen to it. And B, I want people to hear it. But that's not the most important thing.(...) I like I make music because it's what I've always done. I'm originally a singer songwriter and trying new things with Ableton on keyboard guitars, bass drums. Do I need an attitude adjustment? Should I go back to busking on 9th Street with my classical guitar in harmonica? What do you think? 0:00 Intro 3:26 I Have Trouble Getting Into a Songwriting Flow! 8:41 I Have Trouble Staying Focused On Songwriting! 16:44 Who Will Even Care About My Music? 24:19 I Struggle Writing Melodies! 33:06 I Struggle with Metaphors In My Lyrics!

►► Download the 4 Pillars of Music Theory For Songwriters Guide here: http://songwritertheory.com/musictheoryguide/ In this episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast, we're talking about how I'd learn songwriting if I had to start over. After writing songs and continuing to learn for around 20 years, I'd certainly do things differently if I had the chance to do it all again. So, in this podcast I'm going to walk you through exactly what I would do in what order if I had to learn songwriting from scratch. What I'd do if I wanted to learn songwriting but had never written a single song before. The ultimate "songwriting for beginners" guide if you will. So, let's talk about how I would learn songwriting if I had to start from the beginning.

►► Download the 20 Ways To Start Writing A Song Cheat Sheet here: http://songwritertheory.com/freeguide/ In this bonus episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast, we're continuing to respond to your biggest songwriting struggles. I asked you all what your #1 biggest songwriting struggle is, and you answered! And now I'm going through each of your responses to try and help you out! So, let's talk about your biggest songwriting struggles and how you might overcome them!

►► Download the 20 Ways To Start Writing A Song Cheat Sheet here: http://songwritertheory.com/freeguide/ In this episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast, we're talking about another factor leading to or signpost indicating how good a song is. This time we're talking about honesty. A song doesn't have to be literally true, but it definitely should be communicating truth. Often, our songs are touching on themes and exploring different stories to try to glean some meaning from life. Our songs, like any other art, should represent reality. Again, not literal reality, but the reality of the nature of the world and creatures with free will. Just as Tolkien used fantasy characters to explore core human truths, so should we be writing with core human truths in mind. Are you characters consistent? Do your stories represent what is likely to happen in the real world? Do your characters seem like they would or could be real people? A part of what makes art great is the illusion of the lack of the hand of the artist- but yet art is completely created by an artist. But if the art feels honest and real, we don't see the hand of the artist. We do see the hand of the artist when the artist makes characters do things out of character so the rest of the plot can happen, or when they present a world that bears no resemblance to what we know of the reality around us. So let's talk about honesty as a factor leading to great songs! Transcript: In this episode, we are continuing our conversation about what makes a song great. It's a difficult conversation to have. It's not something that is super easy. It's not something that can just be made into a simple math equation. But we all have this sense that there is such a thing as one piece of art or one song being better than another. We all think, "How do I make my song better?" Which implies the existence of better. So, it's important to talk about what are the factors that lead to that. When I say that I want to make my second verse lyric better, what are some of the underlying principles or factors that go into making it better versus maybe making it worse? And we can apply that to all different parts of any given song. So, we're going to talk about things philosophically today, but we're talking about what makes a song great. But to... Hello, friend. Welcome to another episode of the Songwriting Theory Podcast. I'm your host, as always, Joseph Adala. I'm honored that you would take some time out of your busy day to talk songwriting with me. I could be listening to Rogan, but instead, you are here. And I'm sure that Joe Rogan is more entertaining than I am, given that, well, we are talking about things that are largely informational. So, as entertaining as I may or may not be as a human being, this podcast is no Joe Rogan show. Joe Rogan experience, I'm sorry. What's wrong with me? Goodness. That being said, I know that, you know, probably we have time for one, two, maybe three podcasts to actually keep up on in the fact that any podcast talking about songwriting, the craft of songwriting, and learning more about songwriting makes the cut for you, means that songwriting as a craft is really important to you. And that pumps me up, because it's important to me. That's why I do this. That's why we're 251 episodes in, something like that. I care about the craft of songwriting, and the fact that there's anybody out there listening at all, of course, means that other people care about the craft, too, which is the best. So, thank you for being here. I appreciate that. If you haven't already, be sure to grab my free guide. I always do always to start writing a song. We're talking philosophical today. So, makes sense to offer you something for free. That is purely practical, basically. It is, if you want to start a song, do this, or this, or this. And it's not a comprehensive list. But I think too many of us just kind of default to one way to start writing a song and never even entertain the idea that there's a bunch of different ways to start a song that can inspire us in different directions creatively, or can get us out of our creative rut. Too many times, I think we think that, "Oh, the muse hasn't visited me," or, "My creativity's just run out. I just can't write a song right now." But it's not because our creativity ran out. It's because our creativity with that specific thing has run out. Maybe right now, if I were to try to come up with a piano riff, I've just kind of run out for now, because I've done too many in the last several months. And I just need to go try to start a song with a bass line, or start a song with an interesting drum part, or perhaps start with a song title instead, something on the lyrical side. Start with what I think is a compelling story, and then figure out, "Okay, how do I tell that story via song?" So if any of that seems interesting to you, be sure to check out that guide, songartethery.com, slash, free guide. We guide 20 different ways to starting a song, whether from a lyrical standpoint or from a musical one. So in last week's episode, if you missed it, I would encourage you to go back and probably go back to the episode before that as well. In general, if you're new here, this probably isn't the episode I would recommend you start with. Probably start with something that's a little more hard teaching. This is, again, getting kind of philosophical, which I think is important sometimes. And here I think it's super important because this is foundational. If we can't even begin to have a conversation about what some of the factors seem to be of making art in general, things in general, but particularly songs better, then we can't really talk about how we can make our songs better, right? How can we possibly even have the audacity to say anything or ask any question about, "Well, how do I make this verse better?" Or, "How do I write better songs if we don't agree to some premise that better exists and then therefore there are factors that lead to whether something is better or not?" When I write the first draft of my lyric and I think this is deeply flawed, but, you know, hours of work later, rewrites, edits, and then finally I'm like, "Oh, this version compared to my first version is better." And most of us could look at the A and B and be like, "Wow, yeah, the edited version way better." How do we know that? And that's sort of the question that we're trying to answer with this series, where we're getting into what I think are some of the central factors. And last week we talked about sort of the cohesiveness or cohesion or synergy, if you will, of all the different parts in a song that they're all moving in the right direction, that theoretically there is no such thing as a perfect song, but if the perfect song existed, the melody alone would tell you the whole story. And then the lyrics would tell you the whole story perfectly. And also the music, the background music, just if you heard the chord progression alone, it alone would tell you the story. Now, of course, that's impossible, right? We can't have a chord progression tell a whole story. But the closer we can get, where just by listening to the chord progression, just by listening to the melody, just by reading the lyrics, they all are in agreement and push us towards feeling the same emotion and telling the same story, such that if you just heard the melody and you were to write down what you think the song is about, you would be correct. Again, that's impossible. Perfection is always impossible. But I think the closer we get to that, the closer we are to at least in one factor making our song better. So we're talking about a second factor today. And don't think this is in any particular order. For example, I'm not sure that I probably don't think that this is maybe even a top three factor. We'll see as I work through the list. But I do think it is an important factor. And I think it's one that's not talked about enough. And that is honesty. Now, when I say honesty, I don't mean honesty about literal truth. Literal truth, I think, doesn't matter much at all. For instance, if you write a song about something that happened to you, and you take artistic liberties and make adjustments to what acts you're doing, and you think that actually happened in your real life, or you're singing a song that's loosely based on your life, it's not factually accurate, who cares? That doesn't matter. Unless, of course, you identify who the person is and then you throw them under the bus publicly and say, "This song is about this person who broke my heart." That's crappy, right? But that's more of a moral issue than anything else. But it's important that it gets at real truth. And so, we can utilize real truth to tell a lie, and we also can tell the truth through fiction, which you could see as a lie, but it's not really a lie, right? Because it's not pretending to be literally true when it's fiction. Think of a parable would be an example of something that is factually not true. Whatever the parable is about, it's not even claiming that that thing literally happened. The purpose of the parable is a story to teach you a lesson, right? So, let's say the tortoise and the hare, right? It's a fable, right? But a fable and a parable are essentially the same thing, but a fable is designated for kids is maybe the difference. But essentially the same idea, right? The tortoise and the hare communicates a core human truth, even though the actual story, of course, never happened. Never in the history of the world has a tortoise and a hare talked to each other and raced. That's never happened. But the core truth of that, which is the idea that steadily making progress and not being arrogant, even if you're less talented or you're slower in that case, right? If you stick with it and you're the one who's more dedicated and take it more seriously, you can win. And then on the other side, you know, the hare, there's a bunch of different ways to interpret it, right? Which is a part of what makes it great, whether it's, you know, the talented versus the untalented, literally the fast versus the slow, sticking with something. And it being more important to be consistent than it is to be good or talented, or I feel like I'm going back to the talented thing. But there's many different ways to take that in a way that is communicating a core human truth. Or the boy who cried wolf, right? Why do we still talk about that? Because even though that is not a real story that happened, I'm sure it has happened in some form somewhere in the world, but it's just a story, right? That is meant to communicate a core human truth, which is absolutely true in your life or in our lives. If we ever do something where we claim something over and over again, and we've shown that when we say it, it's not true, then eventually people don't trust us. That's how it works, right? If you, this is maybe a weird direction to go, but if you falsely sued five, six people on the seventh time you sue, nobody's going to believe that they actually wronged you, right? Because you just keep making up reason to sue people, so nobody's going to trust you. And they shouldn't. They're right to do so. Because the evidence is what the evidence is. Or if you're on RoomMate 10, because none of them worked out, probably the problem is you, right? You had ten different people that you could live with? It might be you probably, right? Same thing with relationships, right, Taylor Swift? But I don't know why I did that. I actually planned on giving a compliment to her in one of these episodes, so I don't know why that, but also seriously. If I had a friend that had literally a third of the significant others of her, I would have an intervention. But it's a celebrity, so I guess slightly different rules, but silly. Anyway, not the point. So we're talking about real, core human truth, not factual truth. Now, factual truth, of course, becomes important if you're telling a story that is presenting as if it's actually true, especially if you were naming names or something, which you should never do in a song. It always comes across like classless at best. Whenever there's like diss tracks, it's always like, "This is gross." It's so petty and pathetic. I don't know. Anyway, so you can tell a fictional tale about anything and get at a human truth much better than some literally true stories. One example of this would be Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings is literally in a fantasy world that does not exist. It has creatures of all different kinds that do not exist. There's no such thing as elves. There's no such thing as hobbits or dwarves or orcs, right? None of those things are real as presented in Lord of the Rings. And that has nothing to do with whether Lord of the Rings is communicating this core human truth. And part of the reason, I think, that Lord of the Rings is like one layer beneath legend status of... And when I say legend status, I mean stories that at this point are going to probably last for the rest of time because it lasted for so long. So if you take Arthurian legends, right? Or Homer and the Iliad and Odyssey, those stories are so just... Or anything Shakespeare, basically. Those things are so entrenched in culture and have been for so long, or even like Aesop's Fables type stuff. A lot of that is so entrenched in culture and has been for so long, there's no reason to believe it would ever fade away. It's just so entrenched. Lord of the Rings, I think, is that level right below where, you know, there's other fantasy series that I really enjoy. I'm a big Brandon Sanderson fan. I think he's a great author. But I don't know. Are people going to be reading Mistborn 200 years from now? I hope so. But I don't know. People will absolutely output tons of money that people will still be reading Lord of the Rings 200 years from now. Absolutely. So it's in that, like, status right beneath clear legend that is at this point just a part of the lore of humanity, basically. Which things like Arthurian legends and things like that are already in that category. So the question is why. And there's a bunch of reasons why, of course. But one reason, and a very important one, I think, is that it communicates core human truths that will never go out of date. So talking about, you know, redemptive suffering, the idea that Frodo to do the right thing to save all of Middle-earth had to suffer, right? There was no, oh, he just prances into Mordor and is like, "See ya!" to the ring. No. Like, he had to go through a lot. He bears a great burden on his soul because of the draw of the ring, which does affect him. And there's just, I mean, we could talk for hours just about the core, like, human truths that Lord of the Rings gets at. But, you know, the real pull of humans to, like, this lust for power is a core thing. That, like, Frodo has to be the one to go do it and be the hero, even though he's the most unassuming, right? We have powerful elves, we have powerful cool dwarf guy. I forget his name. Gimli? Is that his name? I'm sorry. To all the Lord of the Rings fans, I probably take it. Is Gimli his name? I feel like that's right, but I don't want to double down because everybody's gonna be like, "Ah, Jesus, that's from a different thing!" But... That's gonna bother me. But I'm also now worried, like, are all these names of these different species correct? But it's a Hobbit, right? Not the magical elves or humans, which seem to be portrayed as sort of the, like, the best middle ground sort of, like, they're pretty average for power, they're pretty average for intelligence. Elves are always super OP in all fantasy, for whatever reason. I'm always like, "Why are elves..." Like, shouldn't the elves be the bad guys who are in charge of everything? Because they're, like, smarter, live longer, more powerful, both magically and, like, just somehow it seems like there's... I don't know. Anyway. But it gets a human truth, right? This, this, this, this, the allure of power. That even Frodo, who is good, has a draw to. And Frodo has to be the ultimate hero, rather than say Aragorn, who seems like he would be the traditional hero we would all think of, because he's a man who's drawn to that power. So it requires Frodo, somebody who's much more unassuming that nobody would think of when they think of a hero. Right? And no hero poster, do you imagine somebody that looks like Frodo, you imagine Aragorn. And yet he's the one that has to actually be the hero, which communicates a core human truth, too, right? Like, sometimes heroes, or the hero we need, is not what it appears. And even Frodo, in the end, wasn't totally strong enough, because he needed Sam to save him in the end, his friend. But Sam's not the real hero. Some people say Sam's the real hero of the... No, he's not. Because he didn't bear the burden of the ring the way Frodo did. Frodo needed help because he spent this whole journey bearing the burden of the ring. So anyway, there are so many, like, core human truths that are communicated in Lord of the Rings. And it's not preaching anything, right? It just is telling a story that feels like, yes, this has a lot of truth in it. Not that Tolkien sat down and was like, "Oh, I'm gonna make the hero be not the human because of..." Like, it's not preachy, it just is getting at core human truths via fantasy. Maybe a better example. I just decided to start with one that, like, is obviously not true, because it doesn't even take place in the real world. And it has species that literally don't exist, elves don't exist, much to all of our chagrins, sort of. But it's a wonderful life. It's a wonderful life is probably the epitome of what I'm talking about here. And don't worry, we'll get back to songs. But movies is an art form that I think everybody can relate to. Even if you're new to songs, you've never heard a song before. Like, it's just in the West. And any form, if you're anywhere in Western culture, movies, for better or for worse, are sort of the art form of the time where everybody tends to know some of these core movies. Whereas that's probably not true for paintings or sculptures or even books. But it's a wonderful life. So George, the main character, in the end, does not get what he wants. You might have watched that movie every year of your life and you could be 70 years old and never picked up on that because it doesn't make a point of it. But he doesn't get the thing that he spent basically the whole movie wanting. He wants to get out of that darned town of whatever it's called, Bedford Falls. And he wants to go be an architect and do amazing things, building huge, impressive buildings. That's who wants to do. I'm pretty sure that's right. He wants to be an architect, right? So he wants to go out and do great things in that sense. He wants to get out of Bedford Falls. But his whole life, they show us how he puts other people before himself. And we could go through all the different things, right? He risks his life to save his brother, loses his hearing. Which, by the way, even right there is getting at a core truth. It's not a Hallmark movie where he saves his brother and pays no consequence for his sacrifice. He actually sacrifices something. Hearing out of one ear. That's pretty significant. I don't know about you. I've actually, for a variety of reasons, I've had this ear blocked for the last couple of days. It's the worst. I hate it. It's the worst. That guy lived his whole life like that because of a sacrifice for his brother. Now, of course, any decent person would still do that all over again to save their brother's life. But still, he actually suffered a realistic consequence of doing the right thing. And the same thing happens with his boss when he's a kid at the drugstore or whatever he works at, where he saves his boss from essentially unintentionally committing manslaughter because he's sad about, I think, his son had died in the war. And this trend continues, right? He takes over the family business, not because he wants to, but because it's the right thing to do and it would help his family. And his father passes unexpectedly. And he puts his brother through college, and the deal was supposed to be that after that, his brother would support him so that he could go to college and go off and be the architect and get out of bed for falls and fulfills his dream. But because of the father passing and all these things, he ends up basically just sacrificing for his brother again. And his brother gets to go do the great things that he wants to do. If memory serves, I might have that part wrong. But regardless, again, he's sacrificing. The whole movie is him making sacrifice after sacrifice, putting other people before himself. And the Hallmark movie version, which would be intellectually dishonest, would be in the end, not only is all his problems solved, but somebody comes in from New York or Chicago or wherever he wanted to be an architect and says, "You've got a free, free ride scholarship to go learn what you wanted, go to college, learn that architecture stuff, and I want you to design the new tallest building in the world because I heard you're a good man." That's the Hallmark stupid, probably half of Hollywood movies today would do that sort of ridiculous thing. But that's not reality. Reality is sometimes even when you do the right thing, life doesn't turn out the way that you thought it would. Or you don't get this, you know, sometimes the dreams you receive are not the dreams you had in a way. He's shown that he has lived a wonderful life or a meaningful life, might be more precise. He is shown that the whole town he's from would be in shambles if it were not for all of his different sacrifices. That's what matters, the fact that he touched all those human beings' lives via unselfishness or selflessness. Not like, "Oh wow, you built a tall building, congratulations." And I'm not diminishing that, of course that's great and cool. But he doesn't get the thing he wants in the end, he doesn't. He evades going to jail for a crime he didn't commit because people give him money that frankly they owed anyway or that he had given them before. But he just avoids going to jail, his life still looks the same otherwise. Nothing about the life that he was miserable about changes in the end, he just learns to see it differently. And to know that he's blessed with the life he has, even though he didn't see it that way before. So that movie is fiction, right? But it communicates a lot of human core truths. It's an intellectually honest movie, it doesn't give us the hallmark, "ridiculous ending." That would actually really undermine the whole movie. It doesn't get or Potter, right? Portrayed as the bad guy. You know, it's one of those where like, when you really think about it, is he that? He's just kind of a business guy doing what he's doing. He's a little overly greedy and all that, sure, but he's a little caricatured admittedly. But generally the bad guy, right? And he doesn't get any comeuppance. Didn't think I was using that word today, but... He doesn't get punished for the fact that he's a selfish bad guy. He gets nothing, right? And he actually stole the money, if you remember, basically. And he was going to put George in jail basically falsely. And did it intentionally, and he could have bailed him out. And should have, because he knew that he took the money. That was like, he's the bad guy, and he doesn't get any punishment for it. And that's also reality sometimes. So that movie, through and through, seems like it's concerned with truth. What would really happen? Not with a "wouldn't it be nice if", which to me is that core, one of these core factors, that separates great art or good, better art versus worse. To go to songs, I think a great example of that would be "Casts in the Cradle". Where, again, it's something where the story itself is not true. It's loosely based on the songwriter's stepfather. It's loosely based on the songwriter's wife's stepfather. It's some, like, connection. But it's not overall a true story, nor is it pretending to be. But it gets that core truth, and it doesn't back away from the most likely consequences. Basic summary of that song is, man keeps putting off prioritizing his son until it's too late. And then son shows him largely the same amount of care and respect as he got. Or, you know, basically the son does back to him what he did to his son. Which is, most of the time, probably what would happen. The Hallmark version is the son just unconditionally is like, "Oh, but I'm still gonna put all this effort into spending time with my dad anyway." And sometimes that happens, and I think there's even a way to write the song in an intellectually honest way where that happens. You probably would have to tell the story from the son's perspective, and maybe the son has a specific reason, perhaps a religious belief or some other moral belief where he believes that despite what my father did, the right thing for me to do is to be a better son to him than he was a father to me. That could make sense and would be intellectually honest. He could be intellectually honest to explore it from a standpoint of the son feels that maybe even for his children's sake, he wants his children to have a relationship with his grand- with their grandfather, his father. So despite the fact that his father doesn't deserve it, and despite the fact that a little part of him resents that he's giving this to his father, but he knows it's the right thing to do so he doesn't anyway. So I think there's different ways to end the story differently that are also intellectually truthful and honest. You know, this isn't- this isn't- don't hear me say that like, oh, everything has to have a semi dark ending for it to be intellectually honest or true. I don't think that's the case. Although I do think that almost all true, like happy endings of like happily ever after, almost all of those are artistically not good just because it's just not- that's never true. I just as a side point, I have the side theory that you can have great art that is on the spectrum anywhere from like super depressing sad all the way to- if it's a spectrum sad happy and then in the middle, you can have art that's all the way- all the way to the far sad depressed and you can have real art that gets pretty decently into the happy, but still acknowledges, you know, that things aren't perfect. But I don't think you can have a 100% just straight up happy song that has any merit at all. Just because it's like- it's not real. There's no real thing in this world that doesn't have some level of sacrifice had to be made or- I don't know. This is just a side theory. That's not what we're talking about today. But I do think there's something to be said for like, I don't know, has anybody ever seen like truly just happy happy movie that everything's happy and great and there's any substance to it at all? Because even the happiest things in life are this conflict, right? The best thing ever happened to me is my daughter. But the idea that it's all positive is ridiculous. No, I now have new worries that I don't- that I didn't have before, right? I have a young life that I love more than anything in my hands. That's a burden to bear. It's a burden I'm super happy to bear. But it is like it's not all rainbows, right? I love her so much. Anytime away from her sometimes is excruciating and I hate it. But like I have to, right? I have to work out. So even the most blessed things, there's a bit of ying and yang to the thing. But anyway, so Castle in the Cradle to me is just intellectually totally honest. Fast Car would be another example. It's a bit tragic, right? The person that was supposed to be her ticket out of a life of, you know, poverty, essentially, and hopelessness does sort of end up being the ticket out, but then he doesn't complete the ride with her, right? He ends up becoming a deadbeat just like her dad. And, and, you know, that's tragic, but also makes sense. It's alluded to from the very beginning. That that's probably where that story is going. And it doesn't just have this, oh, and it miraculously turned everything around and everything worked out and happily ever after. Which maybe can be done in a way that's artistic and intellectually honest to a degree, maybe. But it's just harder to do. When you when you see, when you read Fast Car, you feel like this could be a real story. This feels intellectually true. It feels like if these characters were real people, this is more often than not probably more or less how the story would go. And a part of this, a big part of this, I think is, well, let's talk about the opposite. The opposite of this is if we ever are prioritizing message over truth, that basically by definition is propaganda. And propaganda, I think, is basically just anti art. It's like the antithesis to art. It's the opposite because art usually should be some form of exploration, right? You're exploring a theme, you're exploring a topic, you're exploring a character, you're exploring a what would the consequences be of X. It shouldn't be you sit and you're like, how do I convince people of my worldview? Or how do I convince people of certain political thing, I believe? Or how do I convince, you know, and obviously, when you think of propaganda, you mostly think of the most overt form, right? People think of things like from, you know, Soviet Union, that would portray like, oh, life is great here, even though like 100 million people died of starvation because, you know, we took out all the farmers and the productive members of society in the name of, you know, whatever. So we took away all the producers, so then there was no production, so then everybody died. Like, that's the reality. But, you know, in the propaganda, it possesses like, no, we're the good guys and the whole rest of the world is evil and horrible. And that is propaganda, right? But I think there's two things that people forget about propaganda. One is propaganda is still propaganda, even if you agree with it, or even if it's, I don't know if propaganda is ever true, per se. I think you can even have true propaganda, and it's still be propaganda. And you certainly can have propaganda you agree with, that is propaganda. In fact, probably most of the things I could throw onto the bus that I think are propaganda, not most of the things, a lot of things, are things that I might actually agree with some, a lot of the premise of the thing. But at the end of the day, I feel like it's approached in an intellectually dishonest way. And therefore, it's propaganda, it's not art. And so the opposite of pursuing something honestly and trying to get at the truth and being exploratory in nature is for you to be exploitative sort of, and to purposefully wield your art as a weapon to manipulate people essentially, and to presumably your way of thinking about any given thing. And I think something that's misunderstood is something can be true and be propaganda. Just like you can tell something that's true, like whenever people say numbers don't lie, like, well, that's partially true. But true numbers can be used to lie. Right? So just by omitting certain elements of the truth, you can effectively lie, even though you did tell the truth. Let me give an example. Let's say JFK. Right? JFK. You can make a movie about JFK that, you know, tells something about the story of his life, or how he got to the presidency, or, you know, maybe a Lincoln-esque movie where it ends with the assassination. I don't know. Maybe that even exists. And you could address him as a person and as a character in a way that appreciates the good parts, or shines a light on the good parts, which of course there are plenty, and also shines a light on the not-so-good parts. So for instance, if a movie portrayed JFK as a great husband to Jackie Kennedy, that's just a lie. Right? Like, he was an awful womanizer. I mean, he makes Bill Clinton seem like a decent dude when it comes to women. Maybe. Heavy maybe there, maybe. But JFK is like, and this isn't like, well-known. Right? Well-known. I think I saw a number that he might have cheated on his wife some like 20 times just while he was in the White House. Something ridiculous. That dude was not a faithful husband. And it has nothing to do with, you know, how much you like him as president or any of that other stuff. But it would be intellectually dishonest to have a movie that portrayed all the good parts of him, again, of which there are plenty. But not also, but you also, I guess, could just omit that part and be intellectually honest. But if you do show him as a husband and kind of pretend like, oh, he's just a great loving husband. No, no, that's just not true. And you can say the same thing and we'll keep it the same era with Martin Luther King, right? One of the greatest historical figures in American history. Super important. Great guy. A great man. Great guy. I feel like has different connotations. We're going to get to that part. But like, he also is like any other historical figure. We're all, we all have pluses and minuses, right? The greatest people often have some of the greatest flaws as well. And he's no different, right? I mean, again, for some, we're keeping with the cheating, but like also cheated on his wife. I think a lot. Certainly he did. And seemingly a lot. So yes, it's true that he was a very important historical figure. Did a lot of great things for the United States. One of the most important non political figures in the United States history, right? Non like politician figures. I Have a Dream is one of the greatest speeches certainly in American history and presumably is one of the great speeches, maybe of all time. All of that is true. Also true, terrible husband when it comes to faithfulness. So if we had a movie where we're like, Oh, but Martin Luther King was a great guy. So we have to like, a great man. So we have to portray him like he's flawless. No, no, that's intellectually dishonest. Just like with the JFK thing. And this can be applied to basically any historical figure, right? You got to take. Be honest about the whole person. That also makes it more compelling, right? It makes him a good thing, right? But in the context of a movie, it actually makes a more compelling movie when you're a little split about like, Hey, this Martin Luther King guy did a lot of great stuff for the world. But he did a lot of bad stuff for his family, namely his poor wife. You know, that's actually a really interesting conflict. That's more interesting than just hero for the world. Like, okay, that's good. But like, it's not as compelling as this interesting juxtaposition that you can play with of like, you know, his own family. Not good, especially faithfulness with his wife. But for the world, great. That's just it's interesting. That's way more interesting, way more artistic. And again, honest. It's honest. So what's an example of a dishonest song? A lot of you are gonna love this. Imagine. Imagine is overt propaganda. Overt. Like, it doesn't even remotely pretend how it is that this isn't just accepted reality that everybody agrees on is so beyond me. I think it's because people don't pay attention to lyrics. A lot of people just don't pay attention to lyrics. But, but before you are like start typing some hate comment about how it's not, let me read you a quote quote from John Lennon to help you avoid embarrassment. It's a quote from his biography. Again, by John Lennon himself. So he talked about imagine as is anti religious, anti nationalistic, anti conventional, anti capitalistic, but because it is sugar coated, it is accepted. Now I understand what you have to do. Put your political message across with a little honey that this is what we do to try to change the apathy of young people. He literally is saying that he is sugar coating and in the other quote, using a little honey with his political message specifically targeted at young people. This could not be more. The short version of that is it is propaganda. It is. It's also not. It's one of those weird like it's like the worst form of propaganda ever, but also like so many people buy into it. That's like, I guess it's effective. But boy, if you read the lyrics, it's like laughably bad and ridiculous. I mean, the whole thing is just absurd on its face. He's basically the whole lyric is wouldn't it be great if there were no countries and nothing to live for except today and there was no God and there was no religion and there was like, oh, so like before all those things became a thing, partially because back when it was just a bunch of tribes or different human beings without even a tribe, tribalism. Yeah, that resulted in me right now would have to be nervous that my next door neighbor was staging a coup right now and there would be no punishment for it because it's just anarchy like dude, this is why we made society because it's horrible. It doesn't work and we know that and that's what like that doesn't mean there aren't flaws in what exists now, but the idea that it would be better without those things is nutty. It's nutty. It's like even the core says you may call me a dreamer like no, John, I'd call you a moron like you're basically saying wouldn't it be great if for a bunch of things where it's like if you know anything about humans or human history at all or about like how things have gone in different countries, you know for a fact that everything you just outlined is no, it's horrible. It ends horribly 100% of the time. So no, it's not like I'm not going to imagine and be like, Oh yeah, wouldn't it be great? Not to mention always hilarious guy who who passed being worth 200 million, which would be 620 million in today's money. So over half of a billionaire talking about specifically mentions wouldn't be great if there were no possessions. Well, John, you were more than welcome to give up all of your money in possessions. Little thing, though, notice you didn't do that with that in today's money over half a billion net worth classic do as I say, not as I do, which of course doesn't reveal an overt hypocrite or anything. Also, he could have moved the USSR, but he didn't. Can't imagine why. Can't imagine why. So regardless of how you feel about the message he's trying to put across, it's propaganda, right? Like it's not even slamming it to call it overt communist propaganda. It literally is that he actually says it. He actually says it. So it's like, I'm sorry, it's just the idea that we're supposed to all buy. It was a brilliant. No, it's not. I could write a song that's like, wouldn't it be nice if fairies floated through the sky and just gifted us with pixie dust that always kept us high? Like, that's the level of delusion in that song is just like, what's no, not to mention, sad thing, because this drives me crazy. So if you're one of those people, I just want you to reconsider this. So many people will say in a discussion as if it means anything at all. Like, wouldn't it just be nice or we just need to get along? Would it be nice if everybody just left each other and got along? Yes. What is your point? Like, do you think if you just say that loud enough, everybody will be like, oh, you have a good point. And it will just like all turn out. Like, have you been alive on the planet? Like, just just as a frame of reference, if you're watching this, you probably can scroll down if you're on YouTube and see a bunch of hate comments, because I dared to like call out the obvious truth that like imagine is is straight up a communist propaganda song. You can like it, but that is what it is. And people are going to be so mad about and these are probably the people that are like, Oh, peace, love, man, wouldn't it be great if we had no and these are the people that are probably calling me cussing at me in the comments because I dared to point out that a song that they like is exactly what it is that the guy who wrote it himself admits it is right. So anyway, don't be that person that's like, wouldn't it be nice if we all just love each other? Like, yes, of course, we all agree that as nothing to the discussion. Of course, everybody thinks that would be nice. But that's not reality, which goes back to the main point here. Honest, right? Gonna be honest about how humans actually are. Most people, I think, generally have a pretty good flag of when when something is being presented to them, that's not real. Admittedly, in today's world, I'm starting to question that because there's a lot of stuff. It's like, wow, that's overt. Just the world is not like that. It's just not. But people are like, exactly how my life is. Just speaks to me. It's like, what? What kind of delusional fairyland do you live in? The world is not like that at all. So there is a lot of that, unfortunately. But I think I think most people I think most people have a firm, a decently firm grasp of when something is presented to them. That just is not true. And, and whether people have that sense or not, I think it's just irresponsible as an artist to we should be explorers of thought, not people who try to shove our message, no matter how good the message might be, no matter how important we think the message is. It's irresponsible to weaponize art, because it's just propaganda, then. Right? That's exactly what you're doing. And even if you think it's propaganda for the good, everybody who makes propaganda thinks it's for the good. Right? Like the USSR thought it was for the good. So, you know, it's the whole like everybody thinks that the good guy, right? They're the hero. So that doesn't make an aim better. So last point on this. I know this one's going long, but highly connected to this idea is the idea that I think as you approach great art, the hand of the artist should disappear. Which means a lot of art, I think, could come down to the premise of you start with a premise, you start with a character, you start with a situation, and then you ask what would actually happen from here. Right? Start with a premise and then tell the truth. Cast in the Cradle seems like a good example. Starts with a premise and then tells the truth about what probably would happen. What makes sense. This is why the Star Wars sequels in general suck, and especially Episode 8. It's obvious, if you know anything about the character of Luke Skywalker, that the director, the writer, just decided that Luke Skywalker would just be a totally different human being that operates completely out of character with the Luke that we knew from three movies. And he's just like, well, this is a story I want to tell, so I'm going to shoehorn Luke into a character that just isn't Luke. He didn't start with what would Luke do, which is what you should do. We already have the character of Luke. It should be intellectually honest about what would Luke do. Because a part of art, and I think the tension that is inherent within art, is of course art requires the hand of the artist. We're literally creating something from nothing. But I think a way to look at art and somewhat measure it, to a degree, is how much you don't see the hand of the artist. Propaganda would be an example of you can see the hand of the artist all over it. But a part of what makes something great is if a character in a movie or something feels like that would be a real person. And it feels like the decisions they make are an actual human making decisions. Not that the writer is like, I need this to happen in the plot so the character makes that decision. We've all seen the movies where somebody makes a totally out of character decision, and we can tell and are immediately bothered. We're taken out of the fantasy of the thing because we saw the hand of the artist being like, well, I need the plot to happen. So even though we established that this girl is brilliant, it doesn't make this sort of mistake. She's going to make the single dumbest decision in the whole movie just so I can make the rest of the plot happen. And we're all like, no, that doesn't make sense. You showed that she's super smart for like two hours, and then you decided all of a sudden she's going to do the dumbest thing imaginable. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. So the hand of the artist is attention that I think is just always there. It's an interesting one. But art is of course the hand is there. We're creating something from nothing. But a factor, I think it's connected to this honesty thing, is theoretically you need to let the story go. You need to let the song go to a degree where we can maintain the illusion that the story you're telling in your song is a true story. And that character would actually do or that character would actually say, Luke Skywalker would do this thing, you know, based on what we know of the character of Aragorn who would make this decision in the third movie. These are the important things because it allows us to continue the idea that the hand of the artist isn't actually there. That's an indication that it's well done and it's being honest and truthful. If we can see the hand of the artist, that's an indication that it's not being honest and truthful. And we certainly don't like it in movies. We shouldn't like it in music either. Anyway, hopefully this was helpful to you. I know that these are philosophical and all that. But again, I think it's important to talk about because philosophical matters. This is the underpinning to everything we talk about, really. So if you haven't already, be sure to grab my free guide, 20 Different Ways to Start Writing a Song. I appreciate every single one of you. And I will talk to you in the next one.

►► Download the 20 Ways To Start Writing A Song Cheat Sheet here: http://songwritertheory.com/freeguide/ In this episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast, we're talking about 1 factor that seems to be one of the factors contributing to a song actually being good. We're talking about how every part of the song working together to communicate what the song is about - aka the COHESION of the song. If your lyrics are about something tragic, but the melody sounds playful and the harmony sounds like a grand romantic piece, is that any good? No. The song may be made of different parts and song sections, but it also is a singular song. So let's discuss the COHESION or..... I'll say it, synergy of songs. Transcript: As songwriters who are seeking to constantly improve at the craft of songwriting and write better and better songs, I think we are constantly on this quest where we're asking ourselves, "How do I write a better song? How do I write a better chorus? How do I write better melodies? How do I write a bridge that's more emotionally resonant?" And yet sometimes we don't actually take the time to think about, "Well, wait a second. When I say better chorus, when I say a better song, what does that even mean? What are the things that we're looking at? What are some of the factors that lead into this idea of something being better in any piece of art?" This is a difficult thing for us to tackle, but as I mentioned in last week's episode, we're going to try. And I realized very quickly that this probably would take more than one episode to even begin to do this justice and not have it be multiple hours long. So this is going to be part one in our Who Knows How Long series about trying to tackle what actually makes a song great or what are some of the common factors to what sort of leads to a good song. Let's talk about it. Hello, friend. Welcome to another episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast. I'm your host as always, Joseph Vidal. I know that you would take some time out of your busy day, your busy week to talk songwriting with me. If you're listening to anything and instead you're listening to something that you're hoping is going to help you and hopefully me talking about it will also help me become better songwriters so that we can all become better songwriters together, at least be striving in that direction so that hopefully both you and I are better songwriters next year than we were this year and much better five years from now than now and etc. So on, so forth. Don't want to bore you. It's just going through random numbers. I think you understand. So that's the goal. But in today's episode, we're tackling something heavy. Not heavy, maybe emotionally, but something that I feel like most people aren't even willing to start to discuss. But I think it's important to discuss because if we can't define or talk about here are some factors that seem to lead to a song being better or more good or great, then, you know, how can we possibly talk about here's how to make your lyrics better? Like we'll define better if we can't have some idea of some of the factors that go into an element of the song or the song as a whole being better, then we can't actually answer the question what would make this better. So I think it's an important thing to discuss. I think it's something that artists in general don't talk about enough. And it's just one of those things that I think it's a net negative for all of us. Yes, it's a hard discussion, but that doesn't mean it's not one worth having. Most important discussions are difficult and don't have clear answers, but that doesn't make them not important to have. So we're going to do that. It's going to be part one because I realized there's no shot that I could even begin to do justice to this in one part. So we're breaking it up. Let me know in the comments down below if you're on YouTube what some of your ideas are and please back them up. Don't just be like, "I think a great song is X and you have no reasoning as to Y." I mean, you can, but it's kind of hard to... it's not really making a point if you just list a thing and don't justify why it's a thing. But that being said, I am very curious what other people think is meant to be a discussion. I again do not pretend to have the answers. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this pretty much throughout my life, but that doesn't mean that I'm right. It doesn't mean that I'm right. But hopefully it's at least well thought out and has some merit to talking about, hopefully. But I guess that's up to you to decide. So if you haven't already, be sure to grab my free guide. 20 different ways to start writing a song, especially if you're like, "All right, we're talking philosophy and getting real deep into what makes something good today." But where's my hard just go do this songwriting advice? There it is, songwritertheory.com slash free guide. It gives you 20 different ways to start writing a song because I'm personally of the opinion, at least for me, it has been very helpful to have a bunch of different ways that I know I can start a song because sometimes if you start a song the same way every time, sometimes the results in the song start to sound the same. And whether or not that's a problem, certainly a problem that comes up, I think, is writer's block. I've done too many piano riffs for weeks or months. I'll sit at the keyboard or piano and be like, "I just don't have anything." But it's not that I'm out of creative ideas, it's that I'm out of piano-based creative ideas. So just going over to my guitar, or writing a bass line with the keyboard, or starting with lyrics, or starting with what I think is a compelling symbol, or going to find artwork on Google Images or an art museum that I find inspiring that I'm like, "Ooh, that can make a good song." All those sorts of things can be really helpful to jump-start your creativity even when you think it's gone or currently the muse isn't visiting you or however you want to look at it. But again, songwritingtheory.com slash free guide. The first factor that I think we're going to talk about is cohesion or unity or, if we want to use the word, if you're in the corporate world I'm sorry, you're probably about to get triggered, but synergy of parts. Every element of our song should be in agreement on what is being communicated. Your melody, or for a great song or a good song, the melody shouldn't be communicating or sounding like it's communicating love. It's like a love song in the melody. Well the chord progression sounds like you're angry. The song is angry. And then the lyrics are actually telling a tragic and sad story of losing a close relative. Right? Because those three, those don't go together. They're not all on the same page communicating something. Even if the chord progression is great and the music is great and then the melody is great and the lyrics are great on their own, but when we put them together they're a mess because they don't actually work together. It's one of the classic, you know, the whole is not a sum of its parts. The idea that a team is not just how good each of the individual players are. It's how well they work together is a part of it. This is why more talented teams often lose because they just don't have the cohesion or synergy that a team that technically is less talented has. And I think the same thing is true for, well, anything. We could talk about how this is true for movies, right? You can have the greatest actor of all time. Missed cast in a movie might tank a movie. But you think like, oh, we got the greatest actor of all time, whoever you think that is, in a movie and most of the things about the movie are fantastic, but yet that actor is so wrong for the role that it just ruins the movie. It's a real thing that can happen, right? Because it's not just a sum of its parts. No piece of art is simply a sum of its parts. There's more to it than that. The parts all need to be on the same page. Think about something ridiculous. This would work in comedy to comedic effect. But generally in a movie if the soundtrack is communicating something wildly different than what's going on on screen and it's not giving the quote unquote right emotional cues, that would ruin the whole movie. There's a way to know this. You can look it up. There's tons on YouTube and they're hilarious, right? But if you think of it as being in the real movie, it would ruin it. So there's one that I think is like Seinfeld music to The Shining. And it makes it hilarious. But of course it would have ruined the actual movie. And this applies. They do things like adding a laugh track or taking away a laugh track from something. It totally changes how the scene feels by having a soundtrack where it did or having a laugh track where it didn't before or not having a laugh track where it used to. Soundtrack, same idea. Obviously different because laugh versus not laugh. It's a little binary and soundtrack really hits at all the different emotions. But you know you couldn't just take the Star Wars soundtrack and then put it on, I don't know, Dune and it'd just be like oh it's perfect because the Star Wars soundtrack is great and the Dune movie's fantastic. So like no, no. Because they might not fit together. They might not work together. In fact I think they wouldn't. I think the Dune soundtrack's fantastic. It's perfect for that movie. And Star Wars soundtrack is perfect for Star Wars. And the Dune soundtrack of course is Hans Zimmer and the Star Wars one of course is John Williams. And those two are both all time great film composers according to most people and I would tend to agree that they certainly have the longevity and the peaks that you want to look for in greatness. But I would never want to trade those two. I would never want to trade those two. I would never want anybody but John Williams for Star Wars and I would never want anybody but Hans Zimmer and his styles for the Dune soundtrack. Because things including art are not just a sum of their parts. It's how they all work together. Are they working together well? So an easy way and practical way in my opinion to sort of test this with our own songs. Because even though we're talking sort of we're getting very philosophical today. But I think it's important that we be able to connect it with okay but what do I do with this? And one of the things I think we can do is we can test this by isolating each of our parts and then testing to see do they all evoke the same emotion? They all seem to be on the same page for what's being communicated. Now obviously lyrics are always going to be more precise than music and what they communicate. We're probably going to at best we're going to get into specific emotions when it comes to music. You're not going to be able to listen to a piece of music with no context and be like this sounds like my parents just passed away due to cancer and I live in X country and my income is X amount of dollars. Lyrics of course can communicate more factual information than music can. But we're looking for something like the lyrics elicit this idea of wistfulness. And the melody sounds wistful so that even if I just listened to the melody, if I were just hum the melody to someone or to myself, I think it sounds wistful. It sounds deeply connected to what the lyric is communicating. Such that if I just read the lyric alone as poetry with no melody to help it out, no background music, no chord progression, nothing, does it still elicit the same emotion that the song is going for? Does it still communicate the same thing that the song is going for? The lyrics alone. And then the same thing with the melody. Sometimes I'll call this the theme test, which is a nod to themes in movie soundtracks. And there are a bunch of different great examples of this. But take something like the Jaws theme. The Jaws theme is a great example of this. Like two notes, John Williams, very well conveys the idea of something's coming for you and it's a scary thing. You wouldn't have to watch Jaws to hear that Jaws theme and it elicits some sort of look over your shoulder like what's coming for me emotion. Which fits perfectly with what it's trying to communicate in the movie. And that's just, you know, we could talk about the orchestration, but just the "melody" of that part alone communicates that. It doesn't need all the orchestration and all that in order to very well communicate what it's trying to communicate. And so anyway, so I call it the theme test for that reason. It's the idea that is your melody approaching, communicating so clearly the central emotion of the thing. That if it were just a theme or a motif in a movie where there were no lyrics and it just was this melody, does that still carry that same emotion that your lyrics and then your chord progression or just general harmony are going for? There's a lot of examples of this, right? Imperial March, which is Darth Vader's theme, is another example of this. You know, the depth to that one I think is even more because it also is a theme that depending on the arrangement can be sort of adjusted to lean into different elements of the theme. Meaning like in its full orchestration it very well evokes this idea of this relentless unstoppable army coming for you and this unstoppable force in the form of Vader and very sort of just powerful, nobody can touch this. But then in different orchestrations with the same melody it evokes this tragedy of the character as well, which you see in episode six when Vader is, spoiler alert, dying, but dying as Anakin Skywalker. And it has a tragic element to it and not just because of that scene but just the music alone does. It has this element of a broken former fallen hero. And a part of that is masterful orchestration and a part of that is writing a melody that well fits with both of those things. And just one last example because some of you are probably like, "Yes, we get it, you like Star Wars." But the ring theme in Lord of the Rings is maybe even the best example of this in a way given that that ring theme, if you just think about the melody, if you've ever heard it, and if you haven't after this podcast go listen to it. But that melody and the whole sound of that ring theme evokes this wonder and sort of the seduction of this mysterious item. Like it has a sort of like, "Ooh, what is that? I want to swim closer. I want to touch it. I'm just drawn to it. I feel like it's ee ee." Like if you told me it was a siren song, it feels like it matches the same sort of, it appears beautiful. It's something that you want. But deep down you know it's bad for you because the ring of course, I'm not going to explain Lord of the Rings. I don't know how you can be alive on the planet and not know the basic premise of Lord of the Rings and what the ring is and represents. So I will spare you telling you what you almost certainly already know. But it's perfect for what the ring is. Absolutely perfect. And to a degree because what those melodies have in their favor versus ours is they don't have to be "singable" because they're played by instruments. So you less have to worry about singability which limits their melodies less. So probably most of our melodies aren't going to be able to reach the heights that a theme that's played with an organ or with a flute or you know with a violin can reach. But I think the closer we get to that the better it is. And the same thing is going to be true for the harmony or chord progression or arrangement, however you want to look at it. All sort of sides of the, not exactly the same coin, but basically all of the music that isn't the melody. Is that something where if you played your song for someone and it had no vocals in it, so none of the melody and none of the lyrics, would somebody still gather from that song? Roughly what the core emotion of it is. And I think I implied this when I used the word "wistful" earlier, but we're looking for more than like "oh it sounds sad." I mean that's the baseline that we should go for, right? But we want to be more precise than sad. Because sad is basically 50% of all emotions roughly fit into sad. That's not very precise. We mentioned this in last week's episode, maybe you weren't here, but "wistful" is something like sadness for because of no longer having something that was a happy thing. So sort of this combination of you're glad that you had this happy thing, but you're sad you don't have it anymore. It's way more specific than just sad. Because bitter is sad, it's sort of a hybrid of sad and angry. Especially if you had a Venn diagram of angry and sad, the part in the middle where they meet is bitter. There's maybe a little bit more to it, right? But at a high level it's something like that. So that shows those words are more precise. Because bitter is a form of sadness. And so is wistful. But wistful and bitter could hardly be more different. They're very very different. They have similarities, right? They both kind of share the idea that you're probably looking back at something. Bitter is more like I'm just ticked about how it ended or something. Whereas wistful is more like, but I'm glad it happened. And maybe I'm not mad about any element of it. There's no anger in wistful usually. There's a lot of anger in bitter. But anyway, the emotion that we're talking about here should be something more like the words bitter or wistful. And less like the words like, oh it's like kind of happy or sad. I mean, you might be able to do something as simple as major versus minor key. We'll accomplish happy versus sad. That's the baseline requirement. Which although let me point out that it's not true that you put something in major key and it's automatically happy in minor and it's automatically sad. There's plenty of poppy, happy, catchy songs that are in minor and plenty of super depressing songs that are in major. But we should be going for something with our chords, our background music that elicits a more specific emotion than just sad versus happy. So this is one of those things where like perfect is unattainable, right? But I think philosophically speaking, a perfect song would be one where if a thousand people all listened to the melody alone, no lyrics, just the melody. Maybe it's hummed, maybe it's played by a violin. I don't know. And a thousand different people just read the lyrics as if it were poetry. And then another thousand people just listened to all the background music. And then they were pulled after and they were asked what was that song about. They all would have the exact same answer and it would be correct. To me that would be like one, this first factor we're talking about, that would be perfection. Again, obviously that's unattainable, right? So we're trying to just get as close to that as we can, which is still going to be pretty far from that, right? But to me that's the goal. Perfection is something you can never actually achieve. It's a direction to be pointed in. I think that's the direction that this factor is pointing in. And by the way, this is also something that should apply across each song section, right? So it's more than just the three parts of melody, harmony, and lyrics. It's also the synergy or the cohesion of your verses with your choruses and all of that. We could even dive way deeper into sort of the specifics of like what does musical cohesion across song sections talk about. And of course there's going to be a lot of variety there, right? But like one obvious example would be if between each of your song sections there was a crazy key change that made no sense, was super disjointed, not intentionally, it didn't like fit with the lyric or like it makes sense that the lyric would have the disjointed. But like just in a song that is pretty straightforward, it has this disjointed key change between every song. That would be an obvious, like that's not as bad as weird for no reason. It doesn't fit with the lyric of the song, right? So moving in the opposite direction of that to me would be the key there. But again, we could probably spend this entire year's worth of podcasts just diving into different ways. We could apply this one factor to songs, but I don't want to put you through that. So we're not going to do it. But I'm just throwing out there that there's way more to this factor than just the cohesion of those three parts. We could talk about song sections. We could talk about viewing the song as a whole versus viewing the song as a sum of parts, which is not, I think both can be helpful. Ultimately, the whole is the most important. But but obviously it is made up of parts, right? So if your song has a terrible chorus, but the rest is great, probably the song is going to be sunk. So there's a lot to this factor. But I think we I think we have established the central idea that across all things, I think, certainly all artistic things, and certainly for songs, I think this cohesion of all the parts is all moving in the same direction, just like you would expect the soundtrack and the script and the cinematography and the acting of the actors to all point to the same thing. Now before somebody comments this, I'm going to just throw out there that let me take an example that I think is pretty commonly done. And I personally think is fine and great. And on the surface, it may seem like it's in conflict with this, but I don't think it is. And that's when you have a song that sounds happy. But when you listen to it, it's actually kind of bitter and sarcastic. So it sounds like it's a nice, oh, happy song. But if you really listen or pay attention or read the lyrics, you realize, oh, no, this is like, you're just slamming this person with sarcasm. You might say, wait a second. So shouldn't it sound angry? Shouldn't the melody sounded because that's the core emotion? No. Well, I think it can. I think it can in that work, because that is true. But it also is true and makes sense that it would sound happy because what is sarcasm? Sarcasm literally is verbal irony. So then what is irony? Irony is saying something that is the opposite of what you mean. So if you say to somebody like, you know, no, I care about your opinion so much. If you're using sarcasm, what you mean is I don't care about your opinion at all. Right? I couldn't possibly care less about your opinion. Something like that. So it makes sense that if it's the opposite, that sarcasm is essentially your words, if you read it like a script, what they actually say versus what you actually mean, insert it with the tone, are actually opposites. So it makes sense the music would follow that, right? Where the music sounds like it's happy. Yeah, go you. But really, it's no, screw you, you suck. That makes sense that it would have that. So your lyrics are where you're communicating the you suck part. And then the music is what's adding to the irony by sounding happy. So that's actually an example of on the surface, maybe it seems like it breaks this rule, but actually it's a perfect example of this rule applied in some ways where the song is actually essentially utilizing music to double down on the sarcasm. And there are other examples like that, right? And of course, there's multiple ways to do this factor. Again, this is a thing where we could talk about this for the rest of the year. And some of you are probably thinking, it seems like we're gonna, because you're still talking about it. But no, we're down. We're down with this point. So that being said, I now realize that I thought that this episode would have time for two factors. But we had time for one. So we're gonna have another episode where we're gonna tackle what I think is another factor that is something to consider, something to look at, that I think is common to certainly all art at least, and certainly songs where this is just a factor to something being more good or better versus another thing that has less of this factor. But hopefully this was helpful to you. Hopefully it gave you something to think about whether it be in the form of, huh, maybe I should run my songs through some of those tests of does this melody communicate without the lyrics and without the background music? The same thing that the lyrics are trying to communicate or the music or to the last sarcastic song point. You know, is there a way that I can have my melody and my, let's say, lyrics intentionally conflict but in that conflict it actually sort of elevates the main idea in the way that like angry lyrics plus happy music sort of adds to the, like that sarcasm in the combination of things. You know, it's not just sarcasm that can be used that way. There are many emotions where we could toy with, let's take wistful. I said earlier that wistful is something like a combination of happy and sad, right? You're sad that you don't have the thing anymore but you're happy that you had it. It's a fond memory. So in that case, you could communicate that maybe by the music and the lyrics both being wistful or perhaps you could communicate that in a different way where the music just sounds sort of happy but the lyrics have this sad sort of I miss you element to it or maybe the opposite would be the way to go but there's many different ways to break this down and apply this I think. And you know, getting creative with it I think can be a good idea for whatever that's worth. But let me know what you think. Does this seem like something that like yeah, okay, that seems like a good starting place at least for that factor generally seems to be a factor to whether a song or really any piece of art is good or not or more good, right? Basically if you have two songs that are exactly the same but one is more obviously cohesive in all of the different parts communicating in one direction the same thing versus another one where it's like yeah, but the melody kind of has a different emotion to it that doesn't really fit with the lyrics. To me, I think yes, yes, obviously, it would always be better for all of the parts to be working together rather than one kind of going rogue communicating something that really the song isn't trying to communicate so it just kind of feels out of place. But next week, factor number two. Hopefully this was helpful. Hopefully that will be helpful. If you haven't already, be sure to grab the free guide songartatheory.com slash free guide. 20 different ways to start writing a song. These episodes are admittedly philosophical. Don't worry, we'll get back to hard teaching. But in the meantime, this hard teaching or maybe not hard teaching but hard go do this uber practical in that guide, which hopefully compensates for the fact that these podcasts are admittedly at least during this series where we're getting away from that a little bit. I think ultimately this is in some ways the most practical thing we could talk about because what else is there even to talk about if we can't begin to discuss what makes a song great or what makes this song great, right Rick Beato? But yeah, Rick Beato is great. I love Rick Beato. I'm just throwing that out there. If you don't know who Rick Beato is, first of all, how? Second of all, check him out. I certainly don't agree on some things. But to his credit, he admits that he doesn't consider lyrics when he's talking about what makes a song great. My pushback to him is how could you possibly claim a song to be great if you don't even think about the lyrics? Like, that's such an important part of whether a song is great. To talk about the music production as a reason that the song is great to me also doesn't really make sense. It's like, well, it makes the production great. So the track, that specific arrangement of the song might be great. But that doesn't make the song itself great, which is basically just the combination of lyrics, chords, and melody. But alas, I still love Rick Beato. He's the grandfather slash godfather of music YouTube as far as I'm concerned. And he's just super awesome. Also he's done great things for the world because I feel like I was the only person on the planet that was like, guys, of course music theory is helpful as musicians and songwriters. You know, I wasn't on YouTube at the time, but just as a human, I felt like half the time was like, how do these people... does everybody like pretend like it's worthless? That knowledge? Rick Beato came on the scene and everybody was like, oh yeah, how about that? It's actually deeply practical. And for that, he will always be a legend. He'll always be a legend. Rick Beato's the best. Anyway, have a great week. I'll talk to you in the next one.

►► Download the 20 Ways To Start Writing A Song Cheat Sheet here: http://songwritertheory.com/freeguide/ In this Bonus episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast, we're continuing to address your biggest songwriting struggles directly by responding to more of your responses to my survey. We'll be discussing struggles such as: - I Can't Get My Rhythm + Rhyme Right! - I Struggle To Write Lyrics That All Work Together - Opinion: Songs Shouldn't Have A "Message" - I Struggle To Connect Verses + Choruses - I Struggle To Pick The Right Chords For The Right Feels - How Do I Start A Song? - How Do Intentionally Write Songs With Certain Emotions? - What Kind of Songs Should I Write First?   Transcript: This is part seven of responding to your answer to my question of what your number one biggest songwriting struggle or challenge is. Let's talk about it. Hello friend, welcome to another episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast. I'm your host as always, Joseph Galla. Honored that you would take some time out of your busy day, your busy week to talk songwriting with me. And welcome again to another bonus episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast where we are talking about your answers to the question of what your biggest songwriting struggle is. If you haven't already, be sure to grab my free guide, 20 Different Ways to Start Writing a Song. This is a struggle that comes up. We might get to this question today actually, but somebody asks about, "Hey, I struggled figuring out where to start with songs." Not sure if we'll get to it in today's episode or not, but whether you're just somebody that sometimes wants to get out of your creative box a little bit more or you're somebody who struggles to actually start writing songs and not even just being original with starting songs but just starting in general, this is the guide for you to kick writer's block to the curb because writer's block sometimes comes from staring at a blank page, staring at your instrument and just being like, "I don't know. I don't know what to do next." But starting our songs in different ways can be a great way to overcome that, and this free cheat sheet gives you 20 different ways to start writing a song. SongwriterTheory.com slash free guide. First response for this bonus episode. Dear Joseph, songwriting is a very excellent form of literature and philosophy. I agree. As a result, I enjoy English literature such as short stories and memoirs. Songwriting is very special to me and my friends. The tricky part is the rhythm and rhyme. So let's address that first. So when it comes to...so with rhythm and rhyme, because you paired them together, I'm mostly going to assume that you're talking about the rhythm specifically of words and or the melody, aka meter. So the tricky part is meter and rhyme. First thing on that, because I've seen enough lyrics and had enough questions where I know that I think I need to say this, probably more often than I do, but your lyrics should not exist or not be made to serve an arbitrary rhyme scheme. Your lyrics do not serve a rhyme. Your rhyming or lack of rhyming should service and serve your lyrics. So you should never be, for instance, let's say you decide on a rhyme scheme that is A-B-A-B. You should never be significantly altering your lyrics or using corny words you don't really want to use. I'll pick on Night and Light. I've used it in one of my songs. There's nothing wrong with Night and Light. I've used it at some point, but you don't want that to be a constant go-to. If every single one of your songs has Night and Light, it's like, all right, come on. So if you've picked that as a rhyme scheme, A-B-A-B, and you're significantly changing what you actually want to say just in order to fit that arbitrary rhyme scheme, I think we've lost the plot when that happens. Because ultimately, nobody gives a rip whether your song rhymes or not. Just in general. I would argue in the scheme of all things lyrics, rhyme is towards the bottom of what's important. So to your tricky part is the rhythm and rhyme. Worry way more about rhythm, aka meter, than rhyme. Because to take it to the extreme, which is a good way to test any form of logic, but to take it to the extreme, if you had a song where every single, you did not rhyme at all, or a poem where you did not rhyme at all, not a single thing rhymes, not even family rhymes, or consonants rhymes, no rhymes at all, but you paid attention to meter, you could have a great lyric. You could have great lyrics. But if you reverse that and pay no attention at all to meter, your meter is just all over the place. But your rhyme scheme is perfect. Nobody will notice or care that your rhyme scheme is perfect because nobody will be able to see past or hear past the fact that your meter is all over the place. Now when I say meter is all over the place, I don't mean that you have some slight alterations in places. I don't mean that your syllable counts aren't exact, even though your emphases counts are exact so just for instance, take common meter, has four emphases three, four, three, which often comes with a syllable count of eight, six, eight, six, but doesn't have to. We talked about this in a previous podcast. I think the example I used was I have to go to school has the same meter as I have to go to the school. Now I tucked another word in there that's unemphasized to the school instead of to school, but that's the same meter because the emphases are still the same. They're on the same syllables, the same number of emphases. There's just one unemphasized syllable tucked in, which in the scheme of a song, totally fine, totally fine. It happens all the time. It's not imperfect. It's great. It can work marvelously, especially if it needs to be there. If your meter is all over the place, you might as well be speaking the way I am in basic prose where there's no real sense of meter at all, then your lyrics, they're not even lyrics. They're not even lyrics. I guess my first recommendation is don't pay attention to those two things equally. Get your meter right and if you can, use rhyme as a supplemental part to your lyrics where you make your lyrics even better because of rhyme, great. Because rhyme, I think should be viewed that way. Number one is say what you mean to say in your lyrics and get the meter right. And again, meter right does not mean exact with syllables and everything, but try to be as exact as possible with emphases or at least really close and you're good. And then for rhymes, to actually find rhymes, especially if you're looking for perfect rhymes, which would be like night and light where both the consonants and the assonance or the vowel sound and the consonant sound both match, rhymezone.com is a great way to go. If you're looking for lasso-vert rhyming, like family rhymes or things like that, I don't have a website recommendation that's going to just be on you. Although my recommendation is lean, for the most part, I would argue that ABAB rhyme scheme, especially if it's throughout a song, is too much. If maybe in the chorus of your song, one of the main points of your song, you have an ABAB rhyme scheme, great. The rest of your song, do like XA, XA at most because if there's too much perfect rhyming going on in a song, that's usually where it starts to get cringe and feel like everything is just serving the rhyme. So get the meter right. Worry less about rhyme. Moreover another problem is chaos, such as theorizing and being absent-minded. The challenge is that there are a lot of romantic lyrics and there's pain and sadness. However, rock and roll and blues are archaic. That's interesting. Rock and roll and blues are archaic. I don't think any musical genre is archaic and even if it is, you can bring it back. There's that new movement of like, Bardcore, which is like Bard style music. I don't even know what era that's from. 1500s, 1400s, 1200s, I don't know. Really old style music. Old European style music. But they do it for like, Down With The Sickness. It sounds like that. So any genre that gets archaic just comes back. So don't let that, I don't know if this is what you're saying, but don't ever let, "Oh, that genre's played out." Or, "That genre's heyday was 30 years ago." So bring it back. I mean, right now, seemingly half of pop music is just 80s round two. I mean, a lot of Dua Lipa stuff is like that. A lot of the weekend stuff is like that. We're getting towards the end of my pop knowledge here. But I've heard so many songs when I do have the, unfortunately I'm subjected to what is now pop radio. So much of it is, even, I like the 1975. They're a guilty pleasure of mine. And a lot of their songs are very 80s inspired. So anything that you think is archaic, it all comes back. You can breathe new life into something that maybe is actually archaic. But anyway, as a result, the time of day and such saliences as, wow saliences, big word, as country and folk music make poetry pretty. The melodies are always the fun part, but the saying is valid that genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration, for sure. Nevertheless, these forms from the 1980s forwards are very popular. Making money has been new investments. Moreover, I think new songwriters are cool. Yeah, okay. So I think that was the end of the question, implied question part. So Rhythm and Wrath. Yes, get the meter right, get the rhythm right. Mostly paying attention to emphasize syllables. Easy example again is forever. If you just listen to the word forever, you can hear which syllables are emphasized and which ones aren't. It's forever, not forever. It's hard to even say that. Or forever, it's forever. So the emphasized syllables, that middle one is the ee, ee, right? It's for, not emphasized, ee, emphasized, and ver, not emphasized. So just listen for the natural meter in your words and try to match that up. Just another tip on this. If you write melody first, that can help you worry a little bit less about coming up with an arbitrary meter or rhythm because it's already contained in your melody. Any melody has a meter built in because it has number of syllables in the form of number of notes. And yeah, sure, you can maybe stretch out a syllable or shrink a syllable. Yeah, you can do that. But generally speaking, the syllable count of your line and the melody note count of your line is going to match. And then there's natural emphases within your melody, right? There's a natural meter within your melody. So if you write melody first and then just write lyrics that match with the natural cadences, the natural emphases of the melody, then you're good and you don't have to worry about coming up with an arbitrary meter. As I mentioned in a previous episode, if you're really, if you're starting with lyrics and you're just looking for a place to start, common meter is a great place to start at least where you have four emphases, three emphases, four emphases, three emphases. If you want an example of that, Amazing Grace is a perfect example of exact common meter. Writing good verses. I never struggle with coming up with a chord progression, melody line, or rhythm for choruses. But writing good verses that stick in your head and make you experience something is a mystery to me. I always imagined verses to be more of the story writing section of the song containing some kind of message, but that mindset tends to leave me writing super generic verses that lack the feel I loved about the chorus. I struggle to connect choruses and verses. It's like I'm writing two songs that happen to be in the same key, but have very little momentum and flow connecting the two. I hope that makes some sense. So it sounds like this is mostly coming from a lyrical standpoint, given the emphasis on not knowing what to say and story writing section of the song. And first I'll say, not every song has a story. Sometimes I'll refer to this as like point in time songs. I think that's what I call it. But it's basically this idea that some songs don't really have a sense of time progressing. For every song that like Cats in the Cradle, which has a clear progression over really a man's entire adult life almost, right? From a kid all the way to his son, you know, him being very old and his son having kids of his own. Or 100 Years, which goes from 15 years old to 99 years old. For each one of those that has a very clear story time progression, there are other songs where the whole thing could be taking place in a moment. And it's just all the different feelings you're feeling in that specific moment. There's no clear progression of time. So it's not necessarily the case that it's a story in the sense that you or I may think about it, but very often it is. In which case, an easy way to... There's several easier ways to look at it. One is, one of the tried and true ways of doing things is to have present tense in the chorus and then have your first verse be the future and your second verse be the past. So you talk about the future you hope for or the future you dread or whatever it might be. Then you talk about here's where I am now in the chorus and then in the second verse you go back in time and say how did we get here? Or you can reverse past and future so it's actually an order past present future with first verse, chorus, second verse. Other things you can do is just see the chorus as something that's either a so or therefore or a but. So let's say your chorus will keep it really simple. Let's say your chorus is "I love you." The very main idea. Hopefully it's not just that you say "I love you." I mean I guess that could be okay. The basic premise is "I love you" is the thing being communicated in the chorus. So in your first verse and then second verse you might opt to make it so the chorus is a so or therefore. So in your first verse you could be like you know "You're so pretty and beautiful and you make me smile." So or therefore "I love you." That's the chorus. And then the second verse is "Wow you're such a great mom and you take such good care of our family and you're so kind." Whatever. "Therefore I love you." So have it be that each verse is something that supports the main idea of the melody. Where you could take the main premise of the melody and say "Therefore I love you." "Therefore I love you." First verse "Therefore I love you." Second verse or second idea "Therefore I love you." Or so. Same idea. Just less pretentious way of saying it I guess. And then you could also have "but." So you know we'll keep with "I love you." "You're awful to me and you left me for someone else but I love you anyway." You know and then the second verse is some other piece of evidence about how this person is awful and you probably shouldn't love them. "But I love you." That's another fairly easy way to go. And then for the, this might be nitpicking on something that you don't mean, but I always imagine verses to be more of the storywriting section of the song containing some kind of message. So I don't think, it depends what you mean by message, but generally speaking I feel like songs should, any form of message in art should be accidental via discovery. Meaning there's a difference between a theme and a message. A theme are ideas you're exploring. So a theme would be something like good and evil or love. A message is something that is more opinionated. So it's more like you know love is a lie would be a message or love is antiquated now or something silly like that. That would be a message, right? That's an opinion. The theme of love is not an opinion, it's just what we're talking about. So it's probably not what you mean by this, but just in case. I want to argue don't really think about what's the message of my song because that's where we quickly go from art to propaganda. And even if you think it's positive propaganda, it doesn't change those propaganda, right? We write a song specifically to get a certain message across, it's propaganda. And generally, if not always, I think that should be avoided. Again, your worldview is going to influence your songs. That's totally fine. But there's a difference between your worldview naturally influencing your art and you sitting down and being like I'm going to tell people X or I'm going to convince people of Y. Which at least now is sort of what message usually means. That's probably not what you mean. But yes, the verses probably should generally be the story portion of the song or the... You can think of it like if your chorus is the thesis, your verses are the pieces of supporting evidence. If you remember back in the day with essays or whatever, you may have had to write a paper where you have a thesis and then you needed three supporting pieces of evidence to support that thesis. You can think of that as your two verses and your bridge or something like that. So I struggle to connect choruses and verses. It's like I'm writing two songs that happen to be in the same key but have very little momentum and flow connecting the two. If you're talking about music, I think we already talked about that in a previous episode. I mean I guess we're recovering many things in some of these because we do have some of the same sort of stuff popping up which makes sense that people would have similar struggles. So I don't want to go too deep into that because I think we feel like I remember covering that for if anything too long in a previous episode. So that's something to think about and this is going to be in a YouTube video coming out pretty soon where I talk about how to finish songs chord progression wise. But something to think about is where, what's the last chord of say your verse or conversely what is the first chord of your chorus and then figure out the last chord of your verse based on the first chord of your chorus thinking about how well does one transition into the other. Because a lot of times I think people don't think about that they just think in wholesale chord progression so they're like one five six four and then they think oh so for my chorus I need another chord progression one six five four not really paying any mind to okay but does the four at the end of the first progression actually connect well into the one at the beginning of the next progression. The answer to that question is actually yes four to one is a great relatively powerful transition so that would be a good way to transition to a chorus generally but sometimes people don't think about that all I think that's worth thinking about. I'm struggling with understanding how to use the right chords to raise emotions slash feeling in the song or conversely to lower the feel not sure if that makes sense but I hope so. So I think I know what you mean by this and in which case I would say the right chords is just a part of what you're looking for. If you're talking about you have a verse and then you want the the pre-chorus to sound like it's sort of upping the ante and then from there you want the chorus to feel like it's upping the ante even more like there's a main point of the song. There's a lot that goes into that. I have specific videos on each of those things I believe. So right chords is always a difficult thing but just as a general answer to your question is it's not just in the chords. The chords are going to be a part of it but a lot of times how a song really feels like it's raising the emotion or feeling in a song is not just the chords it's in the arrangement. So for instance the pre-chorus may sound like it's upping the ante or raising the emotion as you word it not mostly because of the chords that are there but because the arrangement is changing. Maybe the arrangement is getting a little thicker that's when the bass comes in or some other instruments come in and it's elements of the arrangement that really help it pop up a little bit more. And so that's a very general answer but this is a difficult question because there is no one way anytime somebody says right chords it's always a struggle. There is no because sometimes people will be like oh just give me the right chords for the chorus. That doesn't exist. There is no is a creative thing right there are general guidelines for instance a great way to go is to avoid a one chord in a pre-chorus that way when you probably have the one chord in your chorus it makes it so that the pre-chorus is obviously not the chorus because you didn't have the one chord you didn't have that home center of gravity chord. So that's a really good way to make sure that your pre-chorus doesn't overshadow your chorus. So we have things like that but for the most part when it comes to right chords to raise emotions or feelings in the song that's not really a thing so much as it's very context dependent. Alright so if you have a three chord in the context of C major and E minor chord from a three chord going up to a four chord an F major chord it's probably going to sound like it's raising the emotion feeling partially because it's going up which by the way if there's an easy answer to this it's chords that go up or sound like they're going up which is going to be easier if you're a pianist because if you're going to be really specific when we say chords going up chords don't really go up or down because chords are just it depends on how you arrange it right so I can I can have an E major to an F major that actually goes down in pretty much every way even though E major to F major you would think is going up but anyway but going up is a great way to feel like you're sort of rising up and raising the ante and then you know going from minor to major will feel like rising whereas major to minor will feel like it's a little more deflating but those are super general right we're not even we're not even touching how inversions can affect this and how how every chord sounds is very much dependent on what came before it for instance when people talk about like oh major chords are happy and minor chords are sad by themselves that's probably true right if I just play this out of the blue that is sadder than than that which is E minor versus E major but depending on the context and and what chord came before it you can actually have major chords that sound really dark or really sad and you can have minor chords that sound happy depending on where it comes from especially when you get to borrowed chords and all that advanced stuff all to say that if there are some some things that we can glean from this for raising emotion going up and then you know thinking minor to major would be rising generally and then falling would be major to minor and and and going down super general that is not always going to be true you have to do it by ear and a part of it too is just doing it more and more so that you get a little bit more of a sense but I don't know that there's necessarily a science to it there's probably more of a science to the arranging side of how you raise emotion and feeling in a song or conversely lower the feel my biggest struggle is to come up with an idea of a song and how to begin to write it I keep hearing advice that I should write a couple of songs that would introduce me as a person as an artist my point of view my lifestyle etc also I'd like to write some happy joyful positive and energetic songs but all that comes to my mind is sad and depressing my main goal is to be a live performing artist and the songs that I wrote and write right at the moment are not the type that I would see myself performing live in a way that I cover that I perform cover songs so for my biggest struggle to come up with an idea for a song how to begin to write it first of all free guide again cheat sheet really now because it's shorter but has way more actually ideas of how to start a song songwritertheory.com slash free guide but to me I like to break it down into categories which is really you can start a song from a lyrical standpoint which is really anything that's based on words right whether it's a song title specifically and you reverse engineer a song from a song title or you just come up with a specific lyric or line that really resonates with you which sometimes is the same right there's a song that I I guess I'm writing technically I haven't finished the second verse yet or the second verse lyrics but it's called here until you leave and it came from the the idea for a line I'm here until you leave which struck me because it to me it well reflected that very specific feeling where you are in a relationship and you know that it ends one of two ways because you've decided that you want to be with this person forever but you know deep down that they're going to leave you so you know that the only way this relationship ends is with you being brokenhearted and them choosing to not love you anymore so the idea of I'm here until you leave it's sort of it's that right it's this idea that I'm not the one who's gonna leave it's you that's gonna leave because I'm here until you leave so that whole song which is probably my at this moment it might be my favorite song I've ever written even though it's not 100 written literally just came from the idea of that phrase and there's nothing revolutionary about that phrase either it just it just happened to strike me and from there I reverse engineered a song if you will or I ask more questions about like okay what's the story here what are the different symbols I'm going to use so so you can reverse engineer from a song title from a line idea that you like those two can end up being the same sometimes they're not you can have a compelling symbol that you want to use if you think of you know a specific symbolism that resonates with you preferably something that is a little more original than you know dark represents bad things but if you come up with a more specific symbol I don't know purple tiger like to you you think the representation of a purple tiger is something particular or white whale that's a great example right the white whale is actually something that already has symbolic meaning because ofI'm now like 20 000 leagues under the sea is that that one no that's that's the whatever the white whale mopi dick thank you I don't know who I'm saying thank you to I'm saying thank you to my own brain apparently for bailing me out from embarrassingly for getting mopi dick for a hot secondbut the white whale would be a reference to mopi dick right so the white whale is a symbol that white whale in general means nothing right but because of mopi dick the white whale has come to represent a lot so you can do the same thing with your own song right where whether it's a creature or anything else where you come up with a symbol idea and then imbue it with meaning because not symbols don't naturally have meaning you give them meaning and then ideas can start on the other side right musical this could be in the form of a baseline a killer bass line a really cool drum rhythm that you like a piano riff that resonates with you a guitar chord progression or a guitar finger picking pattern or pick picking pattern so there's so many different ways to start a song from a musical standpoint or from a lyrical standpoint and really you can end up doing both right you can come up with a bunch of lyric ideas by coming up with ideas from a lyrical standpoint and then come up with a bunch of music ideas and then mix and match them sort of mix not mix and match them but match them where you know you hear a piano riff you came up with and you're like oh that actually matches really well with this new lyric idea i have before i didn't know what that song was going to be about but now i have an idea of what it could be about because it actually matches really well with my song title here until you leave or whatever so that's that's there's so there's no one way to begin a song i would highly encourage you try a whole bunch of different ways grab the free guide try all of them and at least a couple of times and then from there you know maybe try to try to figure out what you think your bread and butter ways are which ways result in the best songs for you personally and then keep the other ones in your back pocket as ones to use once in a while to mix it up but i think having bread and butter is is a good a good thing i've said this a million times so i'll make it quick but you know for me bread and butter tends to be i start with the piano riff very often if not i tend to start with a bass line of sorts sometimes it's just a piano bass line so it's kind of starting with the piano riff still just in a different waythe best way for me to write catchy songs is actually starting with rhythm because i'm not somebody who can just sit at a piano and write something catchy almost always i'll do something that's a little more you know romantic sounding or emotional sounding sad uh so this also connects to the point that was it you that made no yes it is you that made this point right i'd like to write some happy joyful positive or energetic songs but all that comes to mind is sad and depressing uh finding ways in certain ways to write songs that can sometimes nudge you in different directions than you normally would go can be a great a great way to handle that so again for me i don't know if i would ever write a catchy song on the piano ever if it weren't for starting with drum patterns and drum loops it can be even really simple ones in fact the most simple drum patterns a basic funk beat or something or basic pop beat can be the best for inspiring you to write something that's catchy and more happy sounding perhaps but also uh to address i keep hearing advice that i should write a couple of songs that would introduce me as a person as an artist my point of view my lifestyle etc i don't know who's giving you that advice i don't know if that's bad advice but it kind of sounds like a business person giving an artist advice right it sounds like what a record label would tell an artist and i'm not saying there's no truth to it from a practical standpoint but i would say you need you don't know who you are as an artist yet because you're just starting so so the idea of your first songs introducing you as an artist is doesn't even really make sense because you don't know who you are as an artist yet you maybe have a decent idea you know generally but you know that and we constantly evolve as artists so i wouldn't worry about that is really what my answer to that is i would just write what's coming to mind which connects to with the i'd like to write some happy joyful but all that comes to mind is sad and depressing write what is coming to your mind right if you're inspired in a certain direction follow it when you're not inspired work anyway but if if all your inspiration is towards sad songs then lean into that write sad songs don't just arbitrarily be like oh i should write happy songs why why should you write happy songs especially if you if that's not the way you're naturally leaning and that's not to say that there wouldn't be value if you've written 10 songs and all of them are sad to say okay now i'm gonna try to force myself to write a happy song just so i can expand myself as an artist that's fair enough but if you've written basically no songs or very few songs which reading between the lines sounds like maybe is the case very few um which maybe i'm wrong but it sounds like very few in that case don't don't worry about any of that just write what is most inspiring to you right now lean into that and probably ignore the that and i don't even know what some of this means introduce you as a person as an artist my point of view my lifestyle nobody cares about any of those things except artists right like your songs introducing you as a person uh like does that is that something people are looking for like when i listen and i care deeply about lyrics i've never listened to lyrics in my life and thought i want to know this you know i i want to get to know this artist as a person no i want to know who they are as an artist i don't really care who they are as a person within reason you know there are some artists that are pretty terrible people one of whom is in jail for uh yeah r kelly type people rightso i i guess i care a little bit but for the most part you know i care who somebody is as an artist i don't know who cares who an artist is as a person or their point of view or lifestyle lifestyle is the maybe the most intriguing of those four because nobody nobody cares like you know nobody cares what your lifestyle is uh nobody cares what my lifestyle is in fact you might be somebody who's been listening to this podcast for a long time and you've never once thought what is joseph's lifestyle i don't even know what that means really but like what is joseph's lifestyle nobody cares right now nobody listening to this podcast right now watching this video gives half of a rip what joseph's lifestyle is you don't right and you might say it's not the same because you follow me for information is but i don't know just to me right right what is coming to you and don't worry about forcing it in all these different directions um and and be careful whose advice you listen to myself included uh just because i don't know i i'm trying to round my mind around who on earth or what kind of artist would tell another artist to write songs that introduce you as a person your point of view which is maybe one of the more legitimate ones next to artists and lifestyle lifestyle like that i don't need it nobody cares nobody cares and again this is not an insult to you right nobody cares about my lifestyle i don't care about any of my artists favorite artists lifestyle don't care at all i care about their artistic identity that is it right what kind of songs do they write what subject material do they cover things like that that's what i care about don't give a crap about the restin fact if anything if they shove any of the other things in my face like for example i feel like any pop artist that i get to know at all i like them even less than i did before right like i i don't know but i kind of get a kick out of dua lipa total total uh you know i don't pretend like it's great music at all uh but for whatever reason some dua lipa songs just do it for me uh but i bet and i've seen little clips but i bet if i watch interviews of her i would like her less and less and less and soon i would be like i don't want to listen to dua lipa soyeah it's kind of like actors right the more that not all actors but a lot of actors the more they're interviewed and they talk the more people are like you know what i mean like like brie larson is maybe the perfect example of this i don't know if there's any human being who has seen her in any interview in the last like five years who has thought this this person is incredibly unlikable i mean she's so unlikable that her co-stars can't even pretend to like her when they're promoting a movie with her like they're obviously annoyed and you can tell why too because she's like condescending to her more popular than her co-stars in an interview like wildly unlikable so anyway that long rant just to sayi'm sure you're way more likable than brie larson i'm sure literally every person who's ever listened to anything i've ever done is probably more likable than brie larson butdon't you know nobody cares about your your lifestyle or any of that just concentrate on making art concentrate on that worry less about the other stuff all right that's been so long than that one we're gonna cut this episode off here we'll be back for part eight to cover more of these songwriting struggles thank you so much for listening remember again if you haven't already grab my free guide 20 different ways to start writing a song song writer theory.com slash free guide thank you so much for listening or listening and watching if you're on youtube and i will talk to you in the next one