Do you struggle to create a strong, memorable impact to your song’s chorus?
The chorus is a song’s main payoff. It can be a vocal chorus, an instrumental drop or a repeated hook that gives the song its most memorable section. This section is often the loudest and most dense part of a mix. Today I’m going to share a simple principal to making your choruses appear bigger and achieve a greater impact to the listener.
Principle: Human ears have Poor Memory
It can be very difficult for our ears to remember what sounds occurred just a minute ago. We may remember the lyrics or the melody, but often have trouble recalling the overall frequency content in the previous section. By leaving a gap of energy before the chorus, we are able to trick our ears into thinking the chorus has a greater impact.
Technique #1: Hi-Pass Filter Sweep before the drop
As you build your song you will add in elements to keep the listeners interest and draw them into your hook. One method to maximizing the impact of a big drop is to sweep a Hi Pass filter across the instrumental mix (maybe even the entire mix) right before the transition to the drop. Then, ‘drop’ those low frequencies by bypassing or sweeping open the filter as soon as the chorus hits.
This plays into our ear’s strange flaw of being unable to discern frequency differences over time. The Average listener won’t be able to remember if there was actually anything bass heavy in the previous section and they won’t be too concerned about it because they have a catchy chorus to enjoy.
Ex 1. I Took a Pill in Ibiza – Mike Posner (SEEB remix)
Notice how the filter sweeps across @0:57 cutting out low frequencies right before the chorus. This is a popular technique for creating a greater impact and works to trick our ears into thinking the chorus/drop is much bigger. It works so well that they use it again @1:15 to accent the song’s vocal hook.
Technique #2: Leave a Gap before the chorus
The other way you can exploit our poor ear memory is to leave a gap on information right before the chorus. Often it will be done on the last lyric before the chorus, just like our last technique. This is often done with good arrangement. If your song or mix is really heavy in the transition to the chorus use your best judgment and see whether you can mute some or all of the instruments to create a gap of energy that will improve the impact of the chorus.
Ex. 2 Chandelier – Sia
Listen to how the instrumentals cuts out @0:33 during the last line of the pre chorus. This works to focus attention onto the vocal and is a great transition to set up an explosive chorus.
Technique #3: Start Big and Think Subtractive
I used to struggle with arranging EDM, there are so many subtle pieces that all come together into an unbelievably catchy genre. I would always ask myself how to approach the development of the song. How do you get from something simple to a huge and complex drop?
I like to approach this a different way, Instead of figuring out how the transition and grow the song, I start with the biggest part and work backwards.
The Yes Phase:
Start by building up a super loop. This could be a 4 or 8 or 16 bar progression. Often Pop music is based around a repeated chord progression so you can loop your progression and add anything your heart desires, with our main goal being to fill the frequency spectrum.
I call this the yes phase because were not in the editing stage yet, we want to ignore the resistance in our mind to edit; to doubt what we are doing. The resistance to progress. Just let your self go wild and add in whatever you feel contributes to this massive chorus loop.
Layers of percussion and drums, Bass, Harmony instruments (guitars, keyboards) Melodies, Weird Trippy Arpeggiators. Yes, Yes, Yes, AWESOME!
Once your have something that is pretty dense and fulfills all the necessary pieces of a song it’s time to entertain the editing part of our brain and move on to the next phase. I would recommend starting this phase after a short break.
The No Phase:
Start by Looping your Super loop for like 5 minutes.
As you listen to it, remove anything that does not contribute to the rhythmic groove of the loop. This is really important, if our pieces are fighting against the groove it won’t sound good. MIDI can be fixed with quantization, but audio loops but have to me removed, replaced, or cut up all together.
Once you have a cohesive rhythmic groove, its time to build up to the full loop by subtracting elements towards the beginning of the song so that the song can grow and develop.
Usually anything that is doubled is unnecessary leading up to the chorus and can lead to a bigger impact when those instrument groups are doubled.
This is a great approach if you are new to arrangement or otherwise get stuck while producing. Working backwards and approaching the arrangement subtractively can be a lot of fun and can save you from getting frustrated. All the pieces are in front of you and now you can work on the path your listener will take to the chorus payoff.
Ex. 3 Don’t Let me Down – The Chainsmokers ft. Daya
This is a great tune that uses a four chord loop throughout most of the song. They keep building up the loop with new information to build interest. They use the same guitar melody throughout the tune and drop the octave in the pre chorus. The song uses ‘the gap’ technique @0:59 to focus the listeners attention and accent the drop, which is the only section without this four chord progression. After the second drop, they add in extra percussion and horns and build the song back up to keep the tune sounding fresh.
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