Author: Tamas Bodzsar

The chorus is obviously the most important part of your song. You want people to remember the song by remembering the chorus, and you want them to sing it. So it’s evident that we want to emphasize it, we want to make it sound big. Now, I saw many people talk about this topic online, and almost everyone wants to deal with this issue in the mixing phase when the song is already written and recorded. And of course, there are some ways you can enhance the chorus at the last phase in the studio, but the truth is, I believe that we can make the chorus sound bigger at the songwriting AND arranging phase. In fact, it’s even more important to compose your song in a way that the chorus is relatively bigger than any other part of the song. So let’s see some examples of how you can make your chorus sound bigger from a songwriting perspective.

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Regardless of the genre, the bass is an essential part of any song. There is no music (in modern popular genres) without a bass. Many people think that writing a bassline is the role of the music arranger or the producer, but I believe that all songwriters need to have a basic understanding, and ideally, all songwriters should know how to create a bassline because a good bass can make a huge difference in how the final song will sound.

This post will be in connection with the topic of music arrangement. So let’s take a look at some of the basics you need to know to start writing basslines.

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When we talk about vocal pitch correction, most people know only the famous-infamous autotune plugin. Autotune (or auto-tune) is an audio processor software introduced in 1997, but the truth is, there are many other similar or even better vocal pitch corrector plugins out there for a long time now. For example, I’m using Melodyne for 10 years now.

While these two plugins have a very similar purpose, Melody is actually a “manual-tune”, because of how we use it.

If you have never used Melodyne before, it can be intimidating to see all the functions, and it can seem complicated. But you just need to learn some of the basics and they are not complicated at all.

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I hear many times that “there is no formula for a hit song”. But I would add the word “YET” at the end of this sentence. After analyzing more than 2000 hit songs, and reading all the books and courses on songwriting, I found many answers to this question. For example, I discovered the hidden rhythmical system behind ALL hit songs, which I call the “Rhythm Code”.

So here are some of my answers to the question: “how to write a hit song”. Keep in mind that this is not a step-by-step instruction, but more like a cross-section of most of the hit songs. You can always experiment and deviate from any of these if you want to write a unique song.

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There are many different ways you can start to write a song, and every songwriter has their own process. Personally, I always follow an order which works best for me, and by the way, this is exactly the same order as John Legend writes his songs.

1. Chord progression
2. Arrangement (including a drumbeat, a bass groove, other rhythms)
3. Melody
4. Lyrics

But there are many other ways you can start a song, so let’s take a look at what other ways you can start to write a song.

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In our last blog post, we were talking about how long should a chorus be in terms of the number of bars, and the number of seconds. We were looking at several different songs to get the answer to that question, so we will take a look at the same songs in comparison.

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It’s important to know that the chord progression is not the best way to identify a music style. Or in other words: you can use literally any kind of chord progression, no matter the genre or the style.

In fact, one of the best ways to make your music more unique is by using totally different chord progressions than other artists in your genre!

However, if you are a beginner songwriter, it’s still good to learn what are the most commonly used chord progressions in successful reggae songs, so you can use them as a starting point.

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