Writing Hit Songs - Myths

[Casey H]

Hey ChitsI find BIAB to be a useful tool. A the minimum, you can quickly change keys and tempo, insert/delete measures, etc without having to record a whole backing track. It sounds like you've learned a lot about it! I find their manual pretty bad like you do so I only know the basics. Maybe you can teach me about patches and stuff! I also find it useful for a poor man's drum track, easier than drum loops. Sometimes I turn off (or way down) all the instruments except drum (and maybe bass), record that to mp3, and then record my guitar in Cubase on top of that. That way I keep time and have some drums...I didn't know about those youtube tutorials... Gonna check them out!! Casey

[ggalen]

Chits,I listened to your song, and I like your style! You also used BIAB to good effect for your situation. It lays down a very competent background. And I have heard that A&R people anyway usually start thinking of what they'd do, production wise, so rather than having a studio band do a specialized, polished and involved (and expensive!) backing track...I think BIAB is fine. Especially some of the newer styles in 2008. They do seem to be getting better all the time.I wouldn't sell your voice short. It has an expressiveness that I expect will come out more and more as you gain confidence and relax more as a result.And thanks for your comments on my song as well.--- Glenn

[squids]

Quote:I wouldn't sell your voice short. It has an expressiveness that I expect will come out more and more as you gain confidence and relax more as a result.Yeah!! Glad you said that, I know she's sick of listening to me. Traveling by Night is beautimus.

[ggalen]

squids,Thanks! Glad you liked it. I am impressed by your stuff as well. Should have told you earlier."Traveling by Night" was rejected for a soundtrack listening asking for "dramatic" film music. I could see it on a dramatic night shot of the actor driving down a foggy road.But the screener (who liked it) said they were looking for "high action" dramatic. It speaks to learning to understand the listing language better, as others so often point out. If there had been "ala" artists I think I would have understood better.

[jchitty]

Casey, sure, I'd be glad to teach you how to utilize the patch feature....I'll e-mail you when I get a chance...I also owe Squiddy a mail, but I'm headed off to do some weekend things with the hubster. Glenn can probably help you with the patch feature as well, and when I get a chance, I'll find that BIAB You Tube tutorial that helped me.Glenn, thanks for the compliments about my style. Yeah, you and Squiddy are right....I need to learn to relax more when I'm singing....I'm getting a little more confident, but it's hard. I only want to sing for my demoes anyway, so if I keep that in mind, it calms me a bit. It's not like I'm singing in a crowded room or anything, hehe. I once took a few voice lessons, and I know there are exercises to help you as well. I've never cared about being a singer, but it would save me some money not having to hire vocalists.Anyway, you folks have a good day!

[DesireInspires]

Has anyone here learned how to write a hit song?

I probably could write a hit song if I had the right connections to release and market the song.

Songs themselves are not hard to write. To me, the important thing seems to be the delivery ans marketing of the song. The craft of it seems easy after a while.

[mojobone]

Whoah! Zombie thread. Guess it's apropos, for Halloween. Props to DI for being so curious/driven as to dig up a thread so old I didn't weigh in, LOL.

My take on hit songs is that there's really no such thing, or rather that there are tens of thousands of potential hit songs that never became hit records. Having a hit record is a lot like being struck by lightning; (hackneyed comparison, I know, but it's for a reason) you have to be in the right place at the right time, and under a particular set of conditions, which include the "hit" song, an impassioned performance by a viable artist, adequately captured, with a given amount of promotional wherewithal, and you'll still have to get at least a little bit lucky, before you can know if your song is hitworthy.

So how do you learn to write a hit? You can study theory and you can analyze other hit songs, but it does little good in isolation, because the result of all of the above effort has to fit a market; a genre, a radio format, and it has to have a function, by which I mean it has to do something for the listener. (make her wanna slow dance, bump'n'grind or sing along during her commute) You can learn how somebody else did all that, but it's difficult to do it yourself, because you need to be at least six months ahead of the market, so that ad buys and marketing line up with the release date.

You need to be so saturated in the zeitgeist that you can have a feel for where the market's gonna be; a prime example of this is Nashville, where at least ten thousand writers are writing at a very high level, collaborating with the best of the best, and only a few hundred will get a cut in a given year and a couple dozen will have a hit. Yes, you'll have to be lucky, but you'll also have to have the goods when the break comes, so you work at learning the craft and try to let inspiration and luck take care of themselves; the harder you work, the luckier you'll get.

[mojobone]

And as an aside, Muskrat Love is not really a song about two cute aquatic rodents; they're a metaphor for another kind of furry critter common in the 1970s before the invention of explicit lyrics, 'manscaping' and the 'Brazilian wax'. I'll let y'all figure out the rest.