Songwriting Techniques

I love listening to songs and dissecting what little tricks are being use in them. That helps me and songwriters I mentor identify what techniques to bring into new material. So, here’s a few techniques that can help elevate your songs. 

Plosive Alliteration. A Plosive is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal that is blocked so that all airflow ceases - letters like p, t, k, b, g can be used to make plosives. They have a real push and forced to them. Alliteration is the reoccurrence. of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. A great example of plosive alliteration is in Cardi B’s “Up” - “Big bag busing’ out the Bentley Bentayga. The repetitive B is so satisfying and cuts through the air like a machine gun. I highly recommend using plosive consonants to get an exciting point across. 

Onomatopoeia followed by its origin sound. Typically a poetry term, Onomatopoeia is the formation of a word from the sound associated with what Is named. Words like zipper or pitter-patter are examples of words created from an origin sound (the zzzipppppp of a zipper and the pitter-patter of rain outside). It can be extremely satisfying when you use a word like zipper at the end of a line, cut out a track, and then hear a zip sound as a production ornament. Its a nod, a breaking of the fourth wall that pulls the listener back in.

Rounds. A round is a composition in which three or four voices follow each other in a perpetual canon. One of the more recent examples I can think of is Ingrid Michaelson’s recording of The Chain. Rounds are meditative, a wondrous compositional technique that is rarely used today. Let’s bring it back.