>> [MUSIC] I'm going to talk about two ways that you can
create a memorable hook in your songs.
You can define hook as something that
hooks your listener and how do we do that?
Chorus is that involve something really fun and rhythmic,
or/and a leap or really create
something that you want your audience to walk off with,
and you want to actually write a song that they're
mad at you for writing because they
can't get it out of their head.
It's the song they just keep putting on
repeat in their head all day because you've hooked them.
When you give your listener something that's fun to sing,
we go back to a really basic level
as listeners and we just want to have fun.
We want to have something that's fun to
sing along to and we want to have
something that is fun to
sing with as far as just the melody.
If I go back to the lyric of
"I told you a thousand times",
I could either create some rhythm that repeats that.
[MUSIC]
You could even just build it with that.
[MUSIC] You just start
to build something that is fun for you to sing.
If you're having fun as a writer,
that's going to translate to your audience always.
Whatever you're feeling at the time that your writing
is going to be translated to your audience.
Let's create something now that has an interval
of a fourth or higher
to see if that could create a hook with,
"I told you a thousand times".
Maybe I'll start with
that first rhythm then I create a hook.
[MUSIC]
Those are some rhythms that you can play around with.
Let me just do a big leap,
I'll go up a seventh because that's
really a large interval and that
will get someone's attention
[MUSIC].
When you do a leap like that notice
how that's a hook now and you can
just use all of these different shapes
and repetitive ideas to create hooks.
Repetition is a huge part of creating a hook.
If I just sing it once,
you might forget it as a listener.
I want to sing it once,
I want to sing it again,
and maybe I want to sing it a third time.
There's the law of three repetitions,
how many times can I repeat
something before the listener goes, now I'm bored.
It's interesting that there's not a lot of
rules for songwriting but it tends to be that,
that one's a rule, it's the rule of three.
On the third time,
we need to change it in
some way and so let me give you an example.
[MUSIC]
Notice how you just went to sleep,
wake up because now I'm going to change it.
One of the things I can do is I could just change
my harmony or I can change my rhythm in some way.
If I change my harmony,
you'll stay with me and I can repeat that hook.
[MUSIC]
Now I can do it again
[MUSIC].
Just that balance of repetition and then
variation is really important
when you're creating a hook.
Again, think about the songs that you love that just
have a really fun rhythm [MUSIC],
and just work with those rhythms until you go,
I like that, that's really fun to sing.
You could also do a combination of
that high leap in the melody where I'm creating
a melodic hook in combination with
that other rhythm and you've really got something there.
Listen to the hit songs that you love
or your most favorite songs whether
they're a hit song or not and just
notice what's catching me about this song.
Maybe write down a paragraph of what you think
is working in that song and use that as
a blueprint for your own song and just try that like,
oh, that melody went up a
seventh then it did something really rhythmic,
let me try that.
We can use the blueprint of other songs to try out in
our own songwriting until we
feel comfortable trying out all of these ideas ourselves.
Try it out. Those are two ways to create hooks,
using a leap and creating
something really fun and rhythmic to sing along to.