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Nightwolf - clearly you can relate and I don't think this situation is unique by a long-shot. I think because music and songwriting can appear to be wizardry or magic - something other than a science - the minute a 'process freak' like me starts pointing at how there is a process we can follow to make music 'go up a notch' in that it can be made more broadly accessible - the first reaction by our 'inner artist' is that will somehow diminish it and make it 'formulaic' or 'less artistic'. I feel that is naive. Because writing and playing things from the heart "feels good" and actually working on it to take it to new levels can feel like "work" or in other words, not be quite as much fun, people shy away from that exercise and proclaim, "It's art, damn it! You should like it because it is art!". But I have been given an interesting opportunity with this project. Being that Mr. I and I are close friends and have a strong mutual respect for each other, he has given me permission to speak freely and to push him and his material around in an effort to make it more accessible to our small world of musical consumers here in St. Louis. I, in return for the opportunity to take already good material and try to improve upon it, have committed to be extra sensitive to the original intent - to make it a priority to ensure the 'art' does not get 'processed out'. It's a great project! Long, long timeline - no deadlines - only goals to make really good music, great music. Can ya beat that?

This topic - hooks, both lyrical and musical - is at the forefront of my current project. I am working with a friend (Mr. I for the sake of anonymity) who has been writing songs for years. I find his songs to be very cool - off the beaten path, but not so far off that they are "weird" or inaccessible. They all tend to be in common time and don't try too hard to be different, so I have always been interested in playing them. The trouble is that Mr. I is afflicted with "art is art" syndrome. He feels that his songs are very personal revelations and just because they are lyrically obscure, or metaphorically inconsistent, it shouldn't matter because they represent his feelings and that should be what counts. And it does, if you don't care that other people just don't get it. But when you want to invite more musicians to play with you - you have to offer them something to hold onto. The promise that you will be performing in front of people who will enjoy it, buy it and come back for more. To that, if you want people to enjoy it, buy it and come back for more, I think you have to reconsider the expectation that people will eventually get it or eventually find some way to connect to your very personal and symbolically/metaphorically ambiguous experiences - You need hooks. Now it is quite a different story if you are one of the rare few who automatically start with very hooky and catchy material. Another friend of ours (Mr. S) is that person. He cannot put pen to paper without nailing a hook! He plays an open-tuned guitar fretting chords with one finger and lays out hook after hook after hook - It is truly a gift - Mr. I is envious. But for the rest of us mortals, hook-crafting takes effort. Mr. I puts on one of his own songs for me and asks, "what do you think?" My answer is always the same. "I like it - what's it about? It has lots of potential! I can hear lots of parts for it..." I am a producer at heart - I always hear the potential - I almost always tell him that it's a "great start!" He is always miffed that it is not a finished product. "Sorry, man. I can't find what it's about and even though the chord changes are cool and that one lick is interesting, I don't get it. What's this one about? What is it about this song that you think I should dig?" Mr. I puts on one of Mr. S's pieces and asks me, "What do you think?" My answer is always the same. "I love it! That is a hooky song! It really goes straight to your brain! I am going to be singing that one on the way home tonight! Man, Mr. S has a gift for hook-crafting!" Mr. I is always miffed about that. I tell him that he has every right to be envious. It is not fair that Mr. S does it so effortlessly. But it does not change reality - you need hooks if you want people to like it. So I am pushing our project into an exercise where we take every singe one of Mr. I's songs (all of which we have been playing for years) and I make him answer two simple questions before we go further. Those questions are: What is the big hook? What are the little hooks? If the answer jumps right out, then good - we know have a shared understanding as a group of musicians of what he considers the thing that is repeatable and broadly interesting about the song. If the way we are playing or singing it is not rising up to meet that criteria, we have to revisit our approach to ensure the hooks are getting delivered. If the answer is not immediately forthcoming, we have some work to do. We must dig into the piece and see what sort of looks hooky and enhance it - or write new parts, unwrite old parts, recompile, reconfigure, we have work to do... Good topic here.

First off - sorry - I tend to ramble... My Setups: Computer(s) PC (XP Professional sp2 - 2.4GHz Pentium + 512mb RAM + 40 gig HD + SoundBlaster Live! soundcard) PC (Vista Home Premium PentiumD 820 (S) DC (2.8GHz / 800 MHz); 2MB L2 cache; Dual Core + 1GIG RAM + 320GIG HD + RealTek Soundcard) Laptop (Toshiba Satellite - 1.4GHz processor - 196mb RAM - 40GIG HD - integrated audio) Software Sonar PE 5.2 (on laptop) Sonar PE 6.2 (on both PC's) Reason 2.5 Ableton LIVE! (?ver) Soundforge 8 "Outboard" Gear (Laughable! 2 cheap-o mixers and a POD - but hey, they do what I need for now! LOL) Phonic MM1002 Compact Mixer Behringer UBB1002 Compact Mixer Bass POD XT (Kidney Bean) Mics and Preamps Church Audio PreAmp and Binaural Stealth Mics Oktava MC012 Cardioid Condenser Microphone Shure SM57 and SM58 mics An array of other mics similar to the SM58 Monitors Pair of Alesis Monitor ONE MK 2 near-field monitors (not hooked up cuz I don't have a power amp yet - BOOO!) so, for now I am using my cheapo Aiwa bookshelf-style component stereo, circa 1989 - yes, one of those CD/Tape/AM-FM tuner all-in-one pieces of junk you used to see in most dorms or first appartments. Sony noise-cancelling headphones Sony over-the ear, typical walk-man style headphones How I use my setups: I record every rehearsal of my project band and burn CD's for everyone after rehearsal. This is the best way to get songs worked up quickly! I have the stealth mics and the Oktava condenser capturing the room. I mix them through one of the small mixers and send that signal to my laptop where I record it all using Sonar. I then export each take and burn CD's for us all to have in our cars. That way, while we drive around town, we can listen to and think about our tunes. This seems to go a long way toward getting parts really refined and fixing stuff that does not work well. I use the best rehearsal recordings as scratch tracks for multitracking later. Because I do not have an AD/DA converter with multiple I/O - I have to make due with everyone tracking in mono/stereo - including the drums. I lay the best rehearsal track in as a scratch track in Sonar, mic up the kit, hand the drummer the cans, get him to lay down his part while playing along with the scratch track. Then on to the next victim - guitar, keys, vocals, me (bass) - the idea being that we take what we did live and re-do it multi-track style. Using the live rehearsal recording as our scratch track helps to retain the live feel for each individual track even though we are not actually playing the new tracks together. I have found that music that is constructed a track at a time can really lose that "human" quality. When people play together, there is a quality that is apparent and hard to reporduce in a 100% overdub scenario. After everyone lays down their parts I am able to mix out the scratch track and begin mixing the new tracks to get a much more "real" sounding version of our stuff. Using the cheap-o Aiwa compact sterero as my reference monitor with all of it's BS EQ presets turned off - no bass boost, no "ROCK EQ", I am able to mix these tracks and be relatively confident that they will sound OK on most boom boxes or car stereos. I can't wait until I can affort a half-way descent power amp for my good monotors, but until then, this seems to be doing ok. I am always very pleased when I plug the headpones in and have a listen - I get so used to the lo-fi quality of my cheap-o monitors, when I get to hear a more hi-fi version throught the headphones, it always sounds so much better! I have no delusions about fooling people into thinking our stuff is professionally recorded - I have too much respect for the pros - but there is no reason we can't have a half-way descent version of our stuff, right? Wish List Multi-I/O AD/DA converter (like a Delta1010) Stereo power amp for my Alesis Monitor ONE MK 2 monitors A large diaphragm kick-drum mic A few dynamic mics for the kit Outboard Gear - Compressor/Limiter - EQs (but I know very little about any of this, so I don't know exactly what I need or want) A headphone mixing system of some kind and some reasonable headphones for the band (7 total) Material to acoustically treat both the band room and my home mixing/mastering room And a partridge in a pear tree

Elvis Costello can tell a story and turn a phrase like no other! from "The Angels Want to Wear My Red Shoes": Oh, I said "I'm so happy, I could die." She said "Drop dead," then left with another guy. David Bowie - His lyrics create vivid pictures of strange people is strange places who happen to also be all around you where you are. That's just cool. Diamond Dogs, Jean Genie, Blue Jean. Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding (XTC) - clever, intelligent, cynical, satirical, hooky as hell - XTC's lyrics and hooks are irresistible to me! Joni MitchellCoyote REMOVED ON REQUEST DUE TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT PLEASE SEEK COPYRIGHT OWNER'S PERMISSION BEFORE POSTING MATERIAL YOU DO NOT OWN THE COPYRIGHT OF 'nuff said...

Thanks, man! And even though it's a rather broad and loose set of guides, it can still apply even to more rique or "adult" subject-matter. I am certainly not advocating asking kids to start chanting lyrics along the lines of Ozzy Osbourne's "Suicide Solution" or Trent Reznor's material - but you could can see how Ozzy's tune could play out as a kids chant... "Wine is fine, but whisky's quicker - suicide is slow with liquor..." or Reznor's "Head like a hole, black as your soul, I'd rather die then give you control" Apart from the no-so-kid-friendly subject matter, this little rule of thumb still works. LOL

I agree with everything here so far. I just wanted to toss my $.02 in for the sake of hearing my own head rattle... From what I have been reading elsewhere on the Internet on this topic, I have found these statements regarding lyrical hooks and what they have in common: Lyrical hooks often are found in song tiles, in choruses, as the climax or introductory statement of "what the song's about" phrases and so on. Lyrical hooks tend to be short, easy to say, melodically interesting (use chord tone intervals, 3rds, 5ths, 7ths...) and repeatable (by the listener) as well as repeated by the singer(s). Lyrical hooks commonly have an obvious rhyme scheme and meter. Lyrical hooks leverage commonly heard phrases and sometimes simply twist them slightly to make them stick out. For me, when I am trying to think if a particular phrase that might have "hooky qualities" I use the "Children's playground chant" rule of thumb to test it out. This rule of thumb is; if you can hear your phrase becoming the kind of thing you would hear kids chant repeatedly while jumping rope or playing those paddy-cake style clapping games, you probably have the makings of lyrical hook on your hands. "Eenie Meenie Minee moe, catch a tiger by his toe, if he hollers let him go" "I get knocked down, but I get up again, you ain't never gonna keep me down" "Ikka bikka soda cracker, ikka bikka boo... ikka bikka soda cracker, out goes you" "De do, do, do... De da, da, da... is all I want to say to you..." So if you can easily hear the playground kids repeating your phrase, go with it. Much of that playground philosophy carries over to melodic hooks as well. "Nah-nee nah-nee nah nah" "Rain, rain, go away, come again another day" A certain symmetrical quality or balance also needs to be there. It seems that, in short, a hook - even as short as it is - needs to start and complete a shape. "De do, do do, De da, da da..." = (up the first side of the hill) "Is all I want to say to you..." = (down the other side) Also - it seems that a good hook is one that you can mentally incorporate into a nice walk. So, ballads and speed-metal aside, a phrase that has a nice, up-beat pace that can be chanted as one takes a nice brisk walk on a warm summer eve seems to work well. So - in your mind, if you can: Hear kids chanting it Hear kids singing it Find it to be balanced Can use it to set a mental cadence for a nice walk ...you are probably working with a good pop hook. I think.