A Guide To Critical Listening
Posted by Chen on / 0 Comments
When we study songwriting, we spend our time developing many different aspects of the craft. Melody writing, lyrics, arrangement, style, you name it. The side effect of studying all these different skills is the development of the most important tool a songwriter has: their instinct.
We want to make creative decisions from our gut, not our heads, and one of the best exercises we can do to help with that is critical listening. So today I’d like to walk you through an example of a typical listening exercise.
I love the song “Genghis Khan” by Miike Snow. I think it’s pure pop heaven. It does so much while doing so little. That’s why it’s the perfect song for our little study. If you haven’t heard it yet, you can listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_SlAzsXa7E
Most of us listening can tell when a vocal is playing, where the drum groove comes in, what the lyrics are, and the different moods and energies the sections have. But after one listen can you sing back the kick drum pattern? Can you pick out the vocal harmony at the end of the chorus? What about the rhythm the piano is playing? How many times did they repeat the bridge section? How many measures was it?
All of these aspects contribute to our perception of the song and the emotion it conveys. But as listeners, we can usually only discern three-four elements at a time. We might not identify the others, but they are all contributing to the big picture. If we want to get a deeper understanding of how the artist achieved the emotion, we must delve deeper and listen again. We must train our ear to separate between different elements. At first, it’s hard. But once you know what to listen for, you’ll always hear it. Let’s break down this song section by section, and list some of the different writing and production elements to listen and learn from.
First listen through and identify the different sections of the song. I’ll wait.
You done? Great! Does it look anything like this:
Intro/Verse/Chorus/re-intro/Verse/Chorus/Re-intro/Bridge/Chorus/Outro?
Excellent! Let’s delve deeper into each section, and identify just some of the elements you can listen for:
Intro: Let’s count bars. This intro (not counting the drum fill at the top) has four measures of four beats each. But it also has something else; a catchy 2 bar melodic vocal phrase that repeats. We like repeats because they help make things catchy.
What about instrumentation? I can hear a kick drum, a snare, and some hi-hat type instruments providing some subdivision of the beat. See if you can pick them out.
What’s the kick pattern? Try to tap it with your foot. What beats is the snare hitting on? I hear a piano/keyboard, what chords are they playing? (might need to be next to a guitar or piano for that) They are playing a specific rhythm. Try to tap it on the table with your hand.
Verse: The verse has two four-bar melodic phrases. The second is a repeat of the first with one glaring difference: it is one octave higher. See if you can spot the difference. This is a cool way of keeping the interest of the listener without changing sections, and while still maintaining symmetry in the melody (all be it an octave higher) with a repeat.
And how about instrumentation again? Did the kick pattern change? The snare? Notice that in the first four bars of the verse (before the octave jump in the melody) there is no kick drum or snare drum. The motion and groove are kept up by the hi-hat subdivision, and the rhythm played on the piano and bass. The drums come back in in the next four bars with the same pattern they played in the intro. They play a drum fill in the last two beats of the 8th bar of the verse.
With the introduction of the lyric we can also look for rhyme scheme, which is another type of form:
I know there’s no form
And no labels to put on
To this thing we keep
And dip into when we need,
And I don’t have the right
To ask where you go at night
But the waves hit my head
To think someone’s in your bed
Simple AA BB Rhyme scheme For the first 4 bars, followed by CC DD for the second 4 bars.
Chorus: This again is one four-bar phrase repeated twice, with a slight melodic variation, and an AA BB Rhyme scheme in the lyrics.
The instrumentation largely remains the same with some variations in arrangement and parts: The drum pattern stays the same, with a subtle drum fill on the last two beats of the first four bar phrase, and different drum fill on the last two beats of the chorus, leading us into the next section.
The rhythm the piano and bass are playing is now more involved and faster. The chord progression itself has changed as well, starting on the bVI major now, as opposed to the i minor the verse starts in.
If you listen carefully, you can also hear another layer of synth/keyboard sound playing a different voicing along with the same rhythm of the piano, which gives the chorus more depth and a new level of interest.
In the vocals, we have a double introduced here to thicken things up, as well as a harmony on the “Oo” and “Nobody else but me.”
Re-intro: Same melodic vocal form and bar count as the intro. This time, however, the Kick and snare are missing, and there is a counter vocal part introduced as well.
Verse 2: Like before, we once again have two four-bar melodic phrases with the second one an octave higher.
But here we have some arrangement variation from the first verse. The bass and drums disappear entirely from the first four bar phrase, leaving the piano/keyboard, and vocal to carry the section.
The drums and bass kick back in in the second four bar phrase, with a two beat fill at the end, to set up the next chorus.
Chorus 2: This section is identical to chorus one, with small vocal nuances, for interest.
Re-intro: Identical to the previous re-intro. The only difference is a drum fill leading us into the next section.
Bridge: Here we have a new four-bar melodic vocal phrase that repeats three times. Each repeat is a slightly different vocal arrangement. The first one is the lead. The next repeat adds a harmony on the “Oo” and on “I don’t know myself,” and the third repeat adds another harmony throughout the phrase.
The instrumentation and arrangement are identical to the intro. With drum fills connecting each repeat and one at the end leading into the next section.
Chorus 3: This chorus starts differently than the previous ones. The first measure is just the vocal and one sustained chord with the rest of arrangement (bass, drums, chord groove) coming in on the second bar of the section.
Outro: The chord progression, arrangement, and instrumentation in this section are identical to the chorus section, and repeat twice giving us sixteen bars altogether. This section is actually 2 eight-bar sections back to back. The first one has the re-intro vocal melody and counter-melody. The second part introduces a new instrumental melody which carries us to the end of the song.
There are, of course, other things we can listen for. The use of delays on the vocal, the darkness of the snare drum, the way the bass and kick interact, and a host of other production elements. With time and practice, and as you further focus your skill set, you will be able to pick out the important elements for you to learn from.
But listening and identifying elements is only part of the critical listening process. The next part is to make a connection between the feelings we get from listening, and the technical elements used to achieve that feeling. For example:
Having a hi-hat playing a subdivision of the beat (eights notes, or sixteenth notes) provides a feeling of groove and movement. It’s easy to hear the difference in this song. Listen to the re-intro going into the second verse: The hi-hat disappears, and the result is the following section immediately feels more static. One could use a similar technique when trying to provide more motion to their own works.
Or how about the feeling of openness, changing the first chord of the chorus provided the song? You could experiment with similar chord movements in your own songs.
This takes some practice, but through this, you will build an emotional vocabulary of writing, production, and arrangement skills you can always call on.
The last part of critical listening is drawing conclusions. Let’s draw a few from this one:
Symmetry is a big deal in this song. Almost every section is one melodic phrase that repeats twice, with some small variations. Repetition makes things hooky. A phrase by itself is nice, but it doesn’t become really hooky until we repeat it.
Simplicity. There really isn’t a lot going on here. 4-5 instruments playing at any given time, no more than four different melodic phrases introduced throughout the whole song, and two different chord progressions. Even lyrically there isn’t a lot going on as the chorus is the same phrases repeated twice, and the bridge the same phrase repeated three times.
And still, with so little, the song keeps us engaged the whole time. It does so with the arrangement. Bringing elements in and out to keep us interested. Almost every section has some arrangement variation in it, all the way to the introduction of a new instrumental melody in the last 20 seconds of the song. Somehow, with very few elements there is still always something new to listen for.
Every song we analyze will teach us something. Form, rhyme scheme, arrangement, melody. In time all these different lessons will sip into our creative subconscious and create the foundation of our musical instinct and taste, which at the end of the day, is what we are going for when we practice our craft: developing the instinct to make the right decisions for the song we’re writing.
Award winning and multi platinum selling songwriter/producer Chen Neeman's songs have been recorded by artists such as Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Joe Jonas, Zendaya, and The Muppets, among others. Chen is dedicated to helping aspiring songwriters learn how to write better songs through personalized one-on-one coaching sessions via Skype, FaceTime, or in person at his L.A Studio.
Find out more about Chen’s Pro Songwriting Coaching, at HitSongCoach.com