Music in the Making (How to Write a Pop Song)

Note: This is the eighth article of a new series I'm writing titled In the Making. If you enjoyed this article be sure to check out the previous seven articles and stay tuned for all future articles.

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Introduction

Welcome to my final article in 2020! To be a little bit different, I will be teaching how to write a basic pop song using all of the overused elements.

We all think it’s amazing when someone composes a piece of music, and it is. However, modern pop musicians have created a formula that fits at least 75% of all pop music. Let’s dive into the specifics

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Before We Write the Music…

Every musician must take the following elements into mind when composing:

1. Dynamics (Volume)

2. Tonality

3. Timbre (Instrumentation)

4. Texture (Layering of sound)

5. Rhythm

6. Melody

7. Harmony

8. Form (Structure)

I’ll go into elements five to seven later on, let’s first focus on one to four as well as eight (giving fair warning that eight is a little bit different).

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Form (Element Eight)

We first want to start with the form of the piece. There are many different ways to structure a song, the standard for pop being verse and refrain. This is a structure with numbered verses separated by a common chorus. An example would look like this:

1. (Intro)

2. Verse One

3. (Verse Two)

4. Pre-Chorus & Chorus

5. Verse Three

6. Pre-Chorus & Chorus

7. (Bridge)

8. Chorus & Outro

The bracketed ones indicate not as necessary to the structure

In most pop songs, they group the first two verses together, allowing for more buildup into the pre-chorus and chorus. Sometimes an introduction is also added for the same reason.

The pre-chorus consists of a hook (small musical phrase that’s catchy and impactful) and usually a faster buildup into the real chorus, the catchiest, flashiest, most memorable part of the song.

After the chorus after verse three, instead of going straight to the outro, sometimes composers will add in a bridge. This comes in the form of either an instrumental solo or a musical phrase performed by the lead that’s different from the rest of the song. It adds variety and a bit of spice to the song, not to mention duration length.

The outro is usually linked either to the final chorus or the intro, serving as an echo and a farewell to the song.

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Dynamics (Element One)

Dynamics control how loud and soft the piece is. It is fairly straightforward, we essentially use piano for soft, and forte for loud. Usually, the song starts out at a piano or mezzo piano (moderately soft), by the pre-chorus it’ll be a little louder (mezzo forte, moderately loud), and then it climaxes at the chorus with a forte.

The bridge is likely to be the quietest part of the song (pianissimo, very soft) and the final chorus is likely to be the loudest part of the song (fortissimo, very loud).

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Tonality (Element Two)

This determines if the song is major or minor. Major is often used for happy and positive type songs (High Hopes, Panic at the Disco; Happy, Pharell Williams), whereas minor is often used for sad and dark type songs (bad guy, Billie Eilish; Something Just Like This, The Chainsmokers & Coldplay).

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Timbre (Element Three)

Timbre is which instruments you decide to include in your song. Traditionally, you’d maybe have guitars and drums and a bass, along with vocals and sometimes a piano. However in the modern day, with all the new opportunities and possibilities provided by electronic music, a lot of musicians in today’s day and age use synths and artificial sounds instead as it allows for more creativity and space for innovation.

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Texture (Element Four)

Texture is how many layers of sound you have going at once. In the introduction, you’d maybe have a solo instrument (a guitar usually) playing, with everything slowly layering on top as the song progresses. The voice (if any) comes in at the start of the verse and the drums usually come in then as well.

The chorus is where most of the instruments play, as well as an instrumental bridge. The standard for modern pop is to layer the instruments in a rainbow type shape (instruments increase until the climax and then decrease).

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Bass, Chords & Arpeggios

Now we start writing the music. You could either start with a melody or start with a bassline and chord progression. It really doesn’t matter which one you start with but for simplicity reasons, I’ll start with the bassline and chords.

Chords are notes played at once to make a thicker texture. Three note chords are called triads. Chords played in a sequence are called progressions. In modern pop, there are

specific chord progressions that musicians like to use when writing music.

They are:

• I, V, vi, IV (Major)

• I, I, IV, V (Major)

• IV, V, vi, V (Minor)

There are more but to avoid redundancy I’ll stop here.

Those roman numerals represent the chords in the major/minor scale. For example, in a C major scale, chord I would be C major, chord V would be G major (fifth note in the scale), chord vi would be A minor (because it’s in lowercase numerals) and chord IV would be F major (fourth note in the scale).

Once you have the chords, the baseline is simple. It’s usually the tonic (first) note of the chord repeated an octave (whole scale) lower.

Arpeggios and broken chords are chords except spread out over the length of the bar (unit of measurement in music). These can be used in place of chords if you don’t like the block sound.

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Melody & Harmony (Lyrics?)

If you understood the above as a beginner, I applaud you. It’s not easy. I will now talk about creating melodies using unique rhythms.

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Rhythm (Element Five)

Rhythm is the progression of notes consisting of different durations.

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Melody (Element Six)

Now that we have that out of the way, generating melodies. The easiest way to come up with a melody is honestly to sit down at the piano and record yourself tinkering with the notes. Once you find a phrase you like, review it in the recording, save it and use it. Melodies usually vary in pitch within one octave (whole scale) and can sometimes use accidentals to jazz it up (accidentals are notes in between the notes in a scale).

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Harmony (Element Seven)

Harmony is arguably the hardest musical element to accomplish. You need a bit of musical knowledge and sense to master creating them, but essentially it’s creating another line supporting the melody and making the result sound even better.

Harmonies usually use notes a third, fourth, fifth (and sometimes sixth) away from the melody notes. This means that if the melody is playing a C, then the harmony would play an E (third up) for major, or an A (third down) for minor. Following those guidelines, developing harmonies shouldn’t be too hard for you, and if it is, omit it - it’s likely you’ll only have one singer anyway.

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Conclusion

If you made it to the end, I’m genuinely proud of you. I just attempted to teach years worth of composition to you in five minutes, so if you got it then good on you. If not, don’t be discouraged, this is not meant to be a masterclass, but merely a behind the scenes as to what goes on in the music industry.

If you are still feeling discouraged, I highly recommend hiring a music teacher to teach it to you clearly, because once you understand it, it becomes really fun.

I hope you enjoyed this roller coaster of writing and my congratulations to you on getting through 2020, I sincerely wish you all the best for you in 2021. Cheers!