How Chords Can Enhance the Power of Your Lyrics.
Special Guest Writer to Songbay Gary Ewer
This month we are honored to receive a a fantastic article written for us by Gary Ewer, a true Songwriting Advice expert.
Gary is a former senior instructor in the Dalhousie University Dept. of Music, Halifax, Canada. He is a composer, arranger, conductor and music clinician and regarded as one of the foremost authorities on the art of modern songwriting. He is the author of “Beating Songwriter’s Block: Jump-Start Your Words and Music”, as well as a suite of songwriting eBooks and other materials. He writes daily songwriting articles for his blog, “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting”, which you can read at http://garyewer.wordpress.com
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How Chords Can Enhance the Power of Your Lyrics Written by Gary Ewer: http://garyewer.wordpress.com
“It’s easy to see how chords and melody go hand-in-hand, and most songwriters will often work them out together. But can chord choice have an effect on lyrics? Can you enhance the impact of a line of lyric by changing the chord that happens at any given moment – at any given word?
We know that we can affect musical meaning with chords, and that’s not new. Classical composers have known for centuries the effect of harmony and chords on how listeners perceive musical meaning. For example, we’re all familiar with how choosing a minor key over a major one can darken the mood of a song, at least in the music of most western cultures. The second movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony (https://youtu.be/vCHREyE5GzQ)
Chords might effect the mood of a moment in a film scene. Most people feel terror in the theme music to the movie “Jaws” (https://youtu.be/lV8i-pSVMaQ) even before they see anything sinister happening. But that’s every bit as much to do with the disjunct melodic shapes and orchestrational technique as the discordant chord choices that happen at the same time.
But what about examples of specific chords affecting lyrical meaning at the word level? They’re hard to find. What is easier to find are examples of how chords can enhance the mood that is portrayed by those lyrics.
A great example is Carole King’s hit song, “You’ve Got a Friend.” (https://youtu.be/UlDI4g5ab1g) If you track the mood of the lyric as the song progresses, you’ll see that each verse starts with a statement of some kind of sad circumstance, followed by a chorus that offers friendship and dedication.
To partner with this lyrical structure, King chooses the key of F minor with accompanying minor progressions for the verse, and then switches to the brighter key of Ab major as a backing for the more upbeat choruses. It works perfectly.
“When you’re down and troubled/ and you need some loving’ care…“
Fm C Fm C7/G Fm
“You just call out my name and you know wherever I am I’ll come running…
Ab Db Ab Db/Eb
Carole King’s technique of choosing major for happy and minor for sad is the most common and obvious way songwriters use chords and harmonies to enhance lyrical meaning. But there are other things you to can be doing when you put chords together, things that are less obvious but every bit as powerful:
1. A rising bass line can enhance hopeful, happy lyrics. So choose chords that result in successive bass notes that move higher. This works best when you mix root-position chords (i.e., chords with just a letter name) and inverted chords (i.e., chords with a slash, signifying that the bass note is different from the chord.) Example: C Dm C/E F C/G G C.
2. A descending bass line can enhance melancholy lyrics (if it sticks to naturally-occurring chords within the key) or determination/aggression (if it includes non-key chords, like bVII and/or bVI, etc.) So choose chords that result in successive bass notes that move lower. Examples: 1) C G/B Am Am/G F G C. 2) C Bb Ab G C.
3. Inverted chords (i.e., “slash” chords), particularly at the ends of song sections, can enhance a sense of indecision, or make a line of lyric sound like a question. That’s because an inverted chord puts a note other than the root of the chord in the bass, and it has a way of sounding less stable, as if something should follow it. Example: C C/E F F/A G/C G7 C/E.
4. Altered chords are ones that change the pitch of a note to be a semitone lower or higher than the one expected. They can powerfully enhance the power of a line of lyric, but it will take some experimenting. Take, for example, the following progression: C G/B Am F F G C. If you take the second F and make it Fm, it adds a strong sense of sadness or melancholy to the progression, and is a perfect choice for lyrics that are tending in that direction. Look at the following two examples, and try to get a sense of what changing the Dm to Ddim does to the mood of the music. 1) C F Am Em Dm G C. 2) C F Am Em Ddim G C.
The best way to proceed with all of this is to write your song, then go back and play through the chords as you say your lyric. Then make changes to individual chords that might have an effect on how people perceive your words. As mentioned earlier, it takes some experimenting because the effect of chords is often quite subtle.
All of this goes to prove the songwriting principle that nothing happens in a vacuum in music. Everything you do, whether it’s with regard to chords, lyrics, melody, performance style, tempo or any other element, effects the overall sense of the music. That’s what makes music composition so interesting. If you’re looking for ways to make a bigger impact with your lyrics, it may have as much or more to do with the chords you’ve placed in the backing instruments.”
Gary Ewer
For more details on Gary’s work, please see:
“The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” at http://garyewer.wordpress.com
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