Writing Effective Songs/Rock Album Arranging

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

From wikihow.com

So you are a musician and want to make a rock album? Well, here are some things you might want to consider!

Contents 1 Song types 2 Steps 3 Tips 4 Warnings

[edit] Song types

• A power song includes angry drums, distorted guitar, slap bass, and other components that make a song come in handy when you've had the worst day in the world, want to let out some aggression, or just want to wake up a bit.
• A dark song is the "bridge" between the power song and the slow emotional one. It is basically a gothic single without as much screaming.
• The slow emotional song is your classic rock ballad, with acoustic guitar, light percussion, and killer lyrics. You want it to make your daddy fall to his knees crying.
• The punk song adds some levity to the album. If you hate the idea of punk-rock, try to add some funny lyrics to a rock song. The chill-out song is basically the most poppy one on the album. Even if you're a rocker, you must not freak out when it comes to enlarging your audience.
• If you didn't understand what the electric guitar solo meant, listen to Steve Vai, John Petrucci or Paul Gilbert.

[edit] Steps

1. Define your trademark and intrigue the public. There must always be a connection between your message, your style and the public's expectations. In short, you need to find your own secret formula.
2. Choose your songs. This is an example of how a 10-song rock album could be organized:
   1. Metal song 1
   2. metal song 2
   3. Dark Song 1
   4. punk song 1
   5. Punk Song 2
   6. Chill-out Song
   7. Dark Song 2
   8. Electric Guitar Solo
   9. Acoustic guitar solo
   10. Power Song 1
3. Make sure you have a unifying theme.
4. Find an agent and/or publicist and begin to market your album. Play gigs wherever you can to get the word out.

[edit] Tips

• It's important to finish with a power song if you start an album with one. Why? it gives the impression of a brilliant album. The listener's mood must change through the album but return to where it was when he/she started to listen to it. This is more a psycho-effect-whatever. In 60% of the cases, listening to a vivid, vibrant song makes you want to listen to the next, in this case, to start listening to the album all over again. which is . . .well, exactly what you hoped for, right?
• When you ask someone for their opinion keep in mind that the same song does not relate to EVERY person in the world the same way. In the media, there is a rule when it comes to news: if it is confirmed by 3 different sources, then it is a valid newsstory. Choose at least 3 people with different ages,cultures, personalities or styles, to "test" the song on. It's important NOT to get discouraged if they have suggestions or just don't like it. Practice makes perfect, and even though you aim for the sky, you've gotta keep your feet on the ground.
• Don't treat this and other similar pages as a bible. The most important thing should be to make the album how you visualize it sounding, the rules should come as an afterthought. If your album still doesn't sound good, load all of the songs into itunes, put 'em into a playlist and hit shuffle and see what happens.
• The last song is always a chance to do whatever you want, experiment, add little snippets of miscellaneous stuff. Or, if you have the newest greatest rock ballad or ground breaking, moderately slow song, put it here. Basically, this is the place to put whatever song doesn't fit.

[edit] Warnings

• Don't make a solo that's longer than 5 minutes. According to some scientific studies, the brain stops being attentive after 5 min. so it's best to keep it short, or you risk boring your public.
• 15. NOTE: when you have two power songs one after the other, it is best if the styles are as different as possible!