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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 wan