When singing in musicals, you have to perform in a heightened manner in order to be able to launch from speech into song. You can’t speak at your normal level and then jump into song and expect it to be credible. In rehearsal, try muttering to yourself before your lines come up, so as to build up your energy levels before it’s time to speak. Then speak with more energy as you come up to a song. You’ll probably be speaking over a musical introduction, which will demand this energy anyway.

The old cliche is that you sing when speech isn’t enough, and on stage we have to believe that there’s a need, at a certain moment, to sing. Take the line from the musical Anyone Can Whistle: “Everybody says don’t walk on the grass/ Don’t disturb the peace/ Don’t skate on the ice/ But I say do.” What the character J Bowden Hapgood is singing is essentially “break the rules”. But, behind that sentiment, the actor should have a whole internal list of reasons for why he is singing this: because he’s lived life as a political dissident, because he sees the woman he’s singing to as stuck in her ways, because he fancies her too, because he genuinely wants this for her and because she probably could achieve it. All of that personal history and information about a character’s intentions should be in the performer’s head before singing the line “But I say do”.

The Songwriting Process

Songwriting is often intensely personal in content.  When you create music, you are capturing the moods and emotions that resonate with you and putting them into a musical form.

It is also a very personal process – everyone has a different way of getting from the first hint of an idea to the completed piece of music, and every song develops in a different way.

Sometimes it seems as though the song is writing itself, with one idea exploding after another in your mind until you find yourself (exhausted!) with a finished work in your hands.

Other times, the ideas can be frustratingly vague and timid – you know there is something there, but it needs to be delicately teased out, bit by bit.

Sometimes a song will lie half-finished for months or even years before you discover the missing piece of the puzzle that will allow it to be completed.

Usually though, you will be developing and refining all aspects of the song in parallel, rather than for example, completing the entire tune before you begin the harmony.

A fragment of a melody will suggest some words, or a chord, which will then give you an idea that helps you fill in the next detail.

There will be many times when you find yourself musically stuck, satisfied with what you have done so far, but unable to find a way to develop it further.

There are several techniques which can enhance the flow of ideas between the harmony and melody of your composition.  Throughout these tutorials we have stressed the idea that the musical structure of a song is created by its scale.

Once we know the scale of our song – at least in the area where we are working – we get a framework that will help to guide the development of musical ideas.

How do we discover the scale?  We can do it using either the melody (tune) or the chords (harmony) of our work-in-progress.

Understand the 8 Parts of Songs Structure

• Verse – What is a verse? The verse is the section of your song that tells your story. How many verses should you have in your song?
   
• Chorus & Refrain – I’ve listed these two sections together because they’re closely related. But they’re both uniquely different. Click the link to learn what each is and how both are important parts of your song.
   
• Bridge – What is a Bridge of a song? Learn why a Bridge is the essential section that links your song together.
   
• Hook – Understand why the Song Hook is so powerful and why it’s important to use this song element…wisely.
   
• Break – Taking on many different forms in music, learn why the Break is such an effective part of your song’s structure.
   
• Intro – Most of today’s songs have an intro in one form or another. Learn how & why it serves the same function as an introduction in conversation, but for your song.
   
• Outro – The Outro is the last section of a modern song’s structure. Learn how to emotionally affect your listener even after your song has finished.

Each section (except for Intro & Outro) can be arranged differently depending on your genre of music and style of storytelling.