sure that your writing experience is as positive as your audience’s listening experience? What can you, as musicians do, to eliminate aspects of your songs that may alienate, confuse or just plain bore your fans?
The following are a few tips that may add success to your songwriting experience:
1.) After Four Minutes, It Becomes Background Music—Music aficionado’s aside, the average person has roughly the attention span of a young adult hummingbird. As a songwriter, you need to grab your audience’s attention and hold it until the end of the song before they flit off to something else more interesting to them. Although four minutes (or less) may seem like the blink of an eye when a songwriter is storytelling, it’s a very long time to expect your run-of-the-mill club-goer or web-surfer to stay fixated on your music.
2.) Tell Your Story As Directly As Possible—We all love allusions, allegories, vague references, and subtle metaphors but use them sparingly or become a beat poet. A little abstractness goes a long way when writing a popular song. Song lyrics fly into people’s minds as quickly as the bassist plucks out quarter notes. If you make your lyrics too complicated, then your audience may still be trying to figure out the verse when you’re already playing the chorus. This could prompt the average listener to tune out your masterpiece, order another beer and switch on their Ipod.
3.) If English Is Your First Language, Use It In Your Song—It’s great that you’re an educated, cultured, artistic intellectual sponge. But remember that most people who hear your music are not book worms or art whores. Big, involved words make for memorable song