Dirty

For all of you MB members who make music. How do you go about starting your songs? Do you build verses around a chorus or write your verses and then try to add the chorus??

I'm curious to see which way you think is most effective. I usually write in the order of: Verse 1, Chorus, Verse 2, Verse 3.

I usually write the first verse and then write a chorus after that, and have the next few verses follow along those subject lines. Luckily some guy in the UK sends me sick beats with cool 90s samples for choruses so sometimes I don't even have to worry about it. I'd probably prefer to write a chorus and have my whole song revolve somewhat around it, but I usually don't even have a real solid idea about my song content when I start writing. I just pick up a pen and over a few days have some lines that I like and the song takes on a course of it's own, and I make a chorus later that fits well enough.

Scarlett O'Hara

Verse before chorus for sure. The verse is the most important way of beginning the story of what you song is about, introducing it so to speak. Chorus is the underlying theme.

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Stone Birds

usually i'll have ideas in mind for the verses but the chorus gets finished before.

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Janszoon

For me it varies. I make a couple different parts then I start playing around with how they fit together. Sometime what I started with ends up as the verse, sometime it ends up as the chorus, sometimes it ends up as some other part.

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Skaligojurah Rule of Thumb:

Verse chorus is for pussies!!!!

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I purposely avoid writing that way. It's a contrivance, and it forces a songwriter to get lazy, and write uninteresting rhythmic patterns. It also forces the songwriter to pad down a song with meaningless non-sense lines just to fit the shape of the structure damaging the poetic legitimacy of a song.

Really, My preference is to write the song from beginning to end not even thinking of words, play it over, and over, and over. I then improvise words over it depending on the theme it inspires in my head. ofcourse, doing this for awhile you'll end up with phrases, and clauses you like most. Furthermore, I don't write them down on paper. If they can't be memorised, they're not worth writing.

I actually would love to compel any future songwriter to entirely avoid writing in the verse-chorus structure. If you allow words to come out more fluidly than they don't interrupt the narrative of the melody, and can be consistently reworked. It makes your work more natural, unique, and interesting. The style is just beat to death, and it's especially sad that it's required as radio standard. Break the formula, free yourself from the mundane.

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Phantom Limb

Yeah, you should just do whatever seems natural, don't box yourself in.

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Mr November

If you have a good idea for a chorus you might write around it. But if I'm starting from scratch I begin with verse.

ParadoxQ

Always starting with the verse, but it really depends on how I want to set up the song. I can start a song with an important line from the chorus for example, to give strength to the central theme of the song, if you get me.

ThePhanastasio

I usually start with the verse, and sometimes, I don't even really have a chorus at all. It really depends on where the song goes.

I start from the first verse, work with that, and try to find where the song takes off. If it needs an intro, I'll usually work on that last, actually, which may be kind of weird, but usually how I do it.

Lately, I've been paranoid about being super repetitive, so I'll throw in a bridge to break up monotony, but verses are definitely my jumping off point. Usually, it's just from playing something, figuring out the inherent melody from what I'm playing, and figuring out the opening line. Where it goes from there varies.

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