Originally Posted by Andrew Dee
Hi forum folks!
I am guilty of writing and recording songs that plough on verse and chorus with no change or development. More recently, I’ve been thinking about how I can develop the arrangement of a song so that it keeps a listener engaged. I’ve listed some ideas I’ve used to achieve this, but wondered if you have some ideas to contribute as well?

  • Build up - starting off a song with minimal instruments, then building up e.g. drums and bass come in on verse 2 etc.
  • Unpack - the opposite of the above - withdrawing instruments as the song goes through the outro
  • Add more instrument layers - particularly for the chorus to provide ‘zing’. ELO we’re good at this back in the day.
  • Add backing vocals or harmonies to the chorus or subsequent verses
  • Modify the chord progression by adding chord variations e.g. swap major chord to the relative minor; add chord extensions; add quicker chord changes by using new chords from the same key. I first came across this device in a song by English group Stornoway ‘Zorbing’.
  • Use a pre-chorus or a bridge to create tension/release or variation respectively
  • Add a solo over a verse
  • Use a breakdown - a stripped back verse or section, then ‘pow!’ when the full band comes back in.


Any other suggestions or techniques?

Andrew
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The problem with all such formulas is that they are useless. For every one song that may be interesting, there are three million others every month that are not. The 3,000,000 number comes from Spotify—that’s the number of songs that are uploaded monthly. How many are using formulaic—or worse, AI generated formulaic—composition and arranging? Nearly every single one.

Your recipe is no better or worse than any other, I suppose, but it’s predictable. Predictable=boring and always has.

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