The Art of Making a hit
Dec 6, 2012 12:36:45 GMT -5
Post by mirth on Dec 6, 2012 12:36:45 GMT -5
So I've been thinking a bit lately about music and people's perception of it. The people I'm referring to are the everyday non-musicians who seem unobstructed in their love for the same progressions and same melodies. This got me wondering, what do you think it is that makes these songs popular, and how easy is it to write said songs?
In general, I find myself shying away from sameness. At work, all these engineers always park their cars the same direction, it drives me crazy, so I park the other direction, which drives them crazy. It's childish, but I kind of enjoy messing with them a bit, and it really does drive me crazy. I think this is some kind of psychosis or something in my being that constantly wants to fight against the pack mentality. So I think in music, if I've heard the chord progression before, I change it to something else. This is obviously not a recipe for success in the music world (I've come to notice). People don't seem to cherish individuality as much as I do (even though I'm hardly that different from most), so that pushes into the arts.
I wonder, as a general rule, whether completely writing towards the pack is a way of manipulating the pack, even though you've basically conformed to the pack? Saying that, I'm kind of interested in the challenge. Some basic things I was thinking were to....
1.) Make sure there is vocals, horrible vocals is still better than no vocals when it comes to popularity. Even though most don't like James Labrie's voice that I talk to, if they played only instrumental music they would be only about 1/20 as popular as they are today in Dream Theater (for instance). Even beyond that, not carrying a pitch and not even being able to sing doesn't seem to detour from what is popular, especially compared to instrumental music.
2.) Steal the most common chord progressions, over and over again. I mean, there's not many really used in Pop music. I think that's the reason I don't like it mostly, is I feel like I've heard the song before, because all I hear is the progressions these days (not the riffs or the electronics). So as a practice, just blatantly steal from other songs.
3.) Steal the melodies. How many times have you heard a song with nearly identical melodies, and you think, man they totally stole that from xyz, but the song is still ridiculously popular.
4.) Steal the catchiest hooks you can find, seriously.
5.) THe lyrics are generally inconsequential, as long as you can add some relationship nonsense, and love, etc... in the lyrics. Politics, dragons and other non-love oriented songs are never as popular. There are few exceptions to the non-love popular songs.
Instrumentation isn't super important, however, the riffs and grooves have to be simple. The kick drum can literally play quarter notes every beat. Straight rocks grooves over any mess of things.
6. Only virtuosity in the singer is allowed in the truly popular songs with only a few exceptions. If there is a guitar solo, it needs to be as cliche as possible and short.
So I wonder....how hard would it be to write 12 songs in this style? I was thinking about taking on the challenge. Just blatantly steal, make the lyrics about love and relationships, everything super simple with a really overcompressed push to the max mix. Could I write songs that were so catchy people would curse my name forever?
I also think it would be fun to make the lyrics about love, but have the sort of chorusy chanty part be some ridiculous phrase, like "when I think about you I touch myself" so that if they ever did get popular, people would get some sickly catchy melody and ridiculous words stuck in their heads for eternity. That's a pretty good way to mess with people.
I was thinking about releasing them under some other name too, with backwards letters, and "z"s where "s"s should go, or the number 2 instead of "to". Make a really artsty modern cover/page look and see if people can get sucked in or not. Maybe it'd still be the 100 people who look at my videos now, but maybe it got popular. I'm curious how to get 1 million views on Youtube, maybe this is a way to do it. Playing to the rules of society, can you manipulate them into liking you? Not sure....
In general, I find myself shying away from sameness. At work, all these engineers always park their cars the same direction, it drives me crazy, so I park the other direction, which drives them crazy. It's childish, but I kind of enjoy messing with them a bit, and it really does drive me crazy. I think this is some kind of psychosis or something in my being that constantly wants to fight against the pack mentality. So I think in music, if I've heard the chord progression before, I change it to something else. This is obviously not a recipe for success in the music world (I've come to notice). People don't seem to cherish individuality as much as I do (even though I'm hardly that different from most), so that pushes into the arts.
I wonder, as a general rule, whether completely writing towards the pack is a way of manipulating the pack, even though you've basically conformed to the pack? Saying that, I'm kind of interested in the challenge. Some basic things I was thinking were to....
1.) Make sure there is vocals, horrible vocals is still better than no vocals when it comes to popularity. Even though most don't like James Labrie's voice that I talk to, if they played only instrumental music they would be only about 1/20 as popular as they are today in Dream Theater (for instance). Even beyond that, not carrying a pitch and not even being able to sing doesn't seem to detour from what is popular, especially compared to instrumental music.
2.) Steal the most common chord progressions, over and over again. I mean, there's not many really used in Pop music. I think that's the reason I don't like it mostly, is I feel like I've heard the song before, because all I hear is the progressions these days (not the riffs or the electronics). So as a practice, just blatantly steal from other songs.
3.) Steal the melodies. How many times have you heard a song with nearly identical melodies, and you think, man they totally stole that from xyz, but the song is still ridiculously popular.
4.) Steal the catchiest hooks you can find, seriously.
5.) THe lyrics are generally inconsequential, as long as you can add some relationship nonsense, and love, etc... in the lyrics. Politics, dragons and other non-love oriented songs are never as popular. There are few exceptions to the non-love popular songs.
Instrumentation isn't super important, however, the riffs and grooves have to be simple. The kick drum can literally play quarter notes every beat. Straight rocks grooves over any mess of things.
6. Only virtuosity in the singer is allowed in the truly popular songs with only a few exceptions. If there is a guitar solo, it needs to be as cliche as possible and short.
So I wonder....how hard would it be to write 12 songs in this style? I was thinking about taking on the challenge. Just blatantly steal, make the lyrics about love and relationships, everything super simple with a really overcompressed push to the max mix. Could I write songs that were so catchy people would curse my name forever?
I also think it would be fun to make the lyrics about love, but have the sort of chorusy chanty part be some ridiculous phrase, like "when I think about you I touch myself" so that if they ever did get popular, people would get some sickly catchy melody and ridiculous words stuck in their heads for eternity. That's a pretty good way to mess with people.
I was thinking about releasing them under some other name too, with backwards letters, and "z"s where "s"s should go, or the number 2 instead of "to". Make a really artsty modern cover/page look and see if people can get sucked in or not. Maybe it'd still be the 100 people who look at my videos now, but maybe it got popular. I'm curious how to get 1 million views on Youtube, maybe this is a way to do it. Playing to the rules of society, can you manipulate them into liking you? Not sure....
