Free your arms and groove to it... wear it... and shuffle.

Recognition People will recognize song by just hearing chorus. But it works other way around too; they will recognize chorus as being part of that piece of music they accidentally hear when they enter a bar for example.

Recollection People will remember your song much more easily. Because chorus is an excerpt of song, they will only have to remember excerpt to remember song. Why not using old school-tricks when they work fine?

Strenght By putting elements of song together in your chorus, in fact you are just making a miniature of your song. When you do this right, it will result in a very strong piece of music. Producers will be pleased when they see you have skills to achieve this, because they usually want you to cut out all unnecessary stuff from your song. But what elements should you take? This in fact is completely up to you and depends on song you are writing. Generally it works fine to pick some of more melodic parts of your song, simply because most people remember a melodic piece of music better than a monotone piece. And that's about all there is to say on this issue, but there are some pitfalls to look out for.

These tips might help you avoiding them:

Don't copy too much While putting best elements of your song together into your chorus, you are taking risk of ending up with a chorus that unveils all secrets of your song making rest of song predictable and dull. Therefor it's better not to copy too literally but hussle things a little. Tricks like changing key of parts while played during chorus can help. Just consider all best parts to be some sort of colour-palette, which enables you to make various versions of same picture. Don't make chorus too long. Better leave out some good parts than desperately putting everything together in chorus! Good choruses almost never exceed 6 lines. As you can see, this part of writing songs can be very tricky. Don't forget your skills will grow after every song you've finished, even more technical skills that you'll need to write a good song, like evaluating your song and deciding what parts should be reflected into chorus. I deliberatly used term reflect, because this is one of most vague issues of writing songs, making it one of most difficult parts of it. But aren't things always getting more difficult when technique meets feelings?

Rule 3: a chorus shouldn't be an anti-climax The third important rule seems simple but, unfortunatly, is not. Just like second rule we discussed above, we will discover it's again a matter of walking on edge. You will have to carefully find your way between what's good and what is bad, and there isn't a clear path to follow. But again, experience is something you can't buy but which comes free with endurance and perseverance. So just don't give up when it's getting tough; your peaks will get higher and your downs won't be as low as they used to be! So a chorus shouldn't be an anti-climax. Clear! But why is this rule not as simple as it seems? I will try to explain this. If you follow first two rules you won't too quickly end up with a chorus that's an anti-climax, just because these two rules ensure your chorus will be more or less heart of song. But still your chorus can become an anti-climax, simply because another part of song attrackts too much attention. A very impressive instrumental break can easily put chorus in shadows. So if your chorus is an anti-climax depends not only on chorus itself, but on rest of song too. To avoid this disturbing effect, you will have to be very careful where to put that instrumental break, charismatic leadvocal-line etc. To make things even more complicated, you will have to watch out for chorus to become climax of song itself! This can be disasterous to your song, because you will end up with a song which repeats it's climax over and over again, with result that you end up with a song that doesn't seem to have a climax at all! So every time you write a song you will have to deal with problem to write a strong, catchy chorus but on other hand not to make it too strong... This virtual contradictionary is hard to solve, just listen to daily radio. But there are some ways to help you with this:

Distinction To avoid chorus and climax of song to interfere with each other, you can try to make a very clear distinction between these two rivals. You can do so by putting them apart from each other "physically" (give each of them their own space in song), or by making them sound as different as song allows you to. The clearer difference, less chance of interference. If you can't beat them... Another aproach is to put climax in chorus itself. This works best when done in final chorus. This solution requires you to change that chorus, otherwise it won't work, as we discussed earlier in this lesson. These changes can range from just changing key, adding additional instruments (like backing-vocals) to even changing lead-vocal line. When done right you will end up with a super-chorus, which won't be forgotten easily!

Taken from: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Marble/9607

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