Production Workshop: What Makes A Song Bad?

Welcome to my first Production Workshop post. Every week we’ll look at a different aspect of music, recording and performance, all with an eye on improving your songs and recordings. Speaking of songs, that’s a good place to start since if you don’t have a good song, not much else matters.

We all know it when we hear a great song because we can’t get enough of it. It makes us move, it makes us listen and it draws us in. But it’s a lot harder to write a great, or even good, song than it seems, as anyone who’s ever tried to write one knows. We can analyze great songs all day long to see what makes them tick, but sometimes can learn just as much by analyzing the ones that aren’t that great as well.

Here are a number of common traits that stick out when an artist or band that’s inexperienced at songwriting and/or arranging first play me their songs. Keep in mind that we’re talking about songs from any genre of music. No matter what it is, from rock to country to goth to rock-a-billy to alien space music, you want the song to be interesting to your particular audience, so most, if not all, of the following will usually apply.

• Too Long – One thing I hear a lot are songs that have sections that are way too long. Two minute intros, three minute guitar solos and five minute outros are almost always boring. The idea is to keep everything interesting and to the point. You are always better off to have a section too short rather than too long. The only exception is if you can actually make a long section interesting, which usually takes a lot of arranging skill and even then still might not keep the audience’s attention. One really long outro that does work, for example, is the outro to Lynard Skynard’s classic Free Bird, (which everyone knows or has heard) with slight arrangement changes, kicks and accents every 16 bars. A great band, great performance and great arrangement keeps the listener’s attention to the very end, and that’s your goal after all.

• No Focus – Beginner songwriters often have no focus to their songs which means that the song meanders from chord to chord without an apparent structure and no clear distinction between sections. This is usually the result of not honing the song enough and thinking it’s finished way before it’s time. Sometimes there’s really a song in there if you peel it back a bit, but usually the only way to fix it is to go back to the drawing board for a major rewrite.

• Weak Chorus – In a lot of songs I hear, it’s hard to tell when the verse stops and the chorus starts, they’re basically the same. An interesting chorus has something different from the verse. It may be just a little different, like just adding background vocals or another instrument, or an accent or anticipation to the same chord changes and melody (like Robert Palmer’s 80’s hit Addicted To Love with the harmony vocals, or Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Crossfire with the horn hits and guitar fill, or Michael Jackson’s Don’t Stop ‘Till You Get Enough with the string pad and horn fill). Or it will be a lot different, like a different set of chord changes or melody combined with the arrangement changes previously mentioned like Vertigo by U2, This Kiss by Faith Hill, or The Eagle’s Hotel California. Either way, something has to change in the chorus to lift the energy and keep the song memorable.

In part 2, we’ll look a few more traits of a bad song.

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A long-time veteran of the music industry, Bobby Owsinski has produced and composed for records, motion pictures and television shows along the way. Currently a principle in the DVD production house Surround Associates and content creator 2B Media, Bobby has also penned hundreds of articles for many popular industry trade publications and has authored many books that are now staples in recording programs in colleges around the world including “The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook”, “The Recording Engineer’s Handbook”, “The Audio Mastering Handbook”, “The Drum Recording Handbook”, and “How To Make Your Band Sound Great”. Upcoming books include “The Studio Musician’s Handbook,” “Music 3.0 – A Survival Guide For Making Music in the Internet Age,” and “The “The Music Producer’s Handbook.”

A frequent moderator, panelist and program producer of a variety of industry conferences, Bobby has served as the longtime producer of the annual Surround Music Awards, and is one of the executive producers for the “Guitar Universe” and “Favorite Music of the Stars” television programs.

Visit Bobby’s Blog at http://bobbyowsinski.blogspot.com/ and his website at http://bobbyowsinski.com

Related posts:

1. What Makes A Song Sound Bad – Part 2
2. Dubspot Workshop NYC: Ableton Live 8 Tour
3. The Importance of Using Scratch Tracks in Recording and Music Production
4. Recording Your Indie Album: a Pre-Production Checklist
5. NYC Workshop: Stripping Down Your Demos & Getting Them Cut

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