A hook is any aspect of a song that keeps listeners coming back. In that
regard, hooks are usually short melodic-rhythmic ideas that are catchy and memorable. They aren’t usually “developed” in the same way that a motif might be. Hooks keep returning throughout a song pretty much as-is. It might be a word or two sung in an odd sort of way, like The Lumineer’s “Ho
Hey” (2012); it might be a sound effect like the “stamp-stamp-clap” at the
beginning of Queen’s “We Will Rock You”, or the guitar shot during the chorus of Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” (which is played during another famous hook, the sax solo lifted from a 1968 Larry Coryell tune, “Half a
Heart”.
By far, the most common type of hook, however, is the chorus hook, the bit that usually incorporates the title of the song. There are lots of contemporary examples of great chorus hooks – “Moves Like Jagger” (Maroon 5
Featuring Christina Aguilera), “Just a Kiss” (Lady Antebellum),
“Paradise” (Coldplay), “Rolling in the Deep” (Adele), and many others.
You know it’s a hook if the chorus repeats the song title at least twice, like “Moves Like Jagger” and “Paradise.” If you’re looking to create a hook for your song, you’re probably looking to write a chorus that features some melodic/rhythmic/lyric idea that repeats enough that it becomes the name of the song.
There are many ways to make a chorus hook work. In its simplest form, you just need to find a catchy, short melody that everyone will love and
immediately recognize, perhaps like Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi”. But for
something interesting and slightly different, here are two other ways to write a chorus hook:
1. Write a chorus melody and lyric that can be sung over a changing chord progression;
2. Write a chorus melody that gets partnered with a second hook, usually instrumental in nature.
Coldplay’s “Paradise” is a good example of the changing-chord
method. What you want to do is to
write a melody that can be
harmonized in a variety of different ways – at least two, anyway. The ”Para- para- paradise” melodic hook has two basic harmonizations that form the first 2 phrases of the chorus. The start of the chorus is harmonized with a Gm – Bb progression. The melodic phrase is then repeated, with the chords F – C. The first
harmonization repeats as a 3rd phrase, and the 4th phrase of the chorus is a new melodic fragment. There is something musically enticing about hearing a melody repeat while the chords change. It has a way of making that melody all the more memorable.
“Moves Like Jagger” provides a good example of the partnered hook
method. As mentioned in the
previous chapter, you know that the whistle song-intro hook is very prominent, very catchy. As the song moves from verse to chorus, that
instrumental hook gets partnered with the chorus hook – the melody that incorporates the song title. The title is then repeated 3 times: the first 2 times over an Em chord, followed by the chorus melody taking the whistling hook as its melodic shape. It is the melding of these two important hooks that makes the song so powerful, so effective.
It’s normal to think of the hook as something that gives rise to the rest of a song. But if you find that your song is missing that
“something special”, you can always consider taking a finished song, and working a hook into
it.
It’s relatively easy to do this.
Create an interesting
background instrumental idea
that draws a bit of attention to itself, something that can serve as a good intro. This needs to be interesting enough that it pulls listeners in, as hooks should do, but not so much that it pulls focus from the main voice when the singer starts. A perfect example of this kind of
“background hook” is used in
Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.”
The iconic bass line and drum opening, with the syncopated keyboard chords, identify this song even before Jackson starts singing.
Not every pop song has a hook, at least not the prominent “in your face” kind. But it’s quite true that many or most of the songs that make it to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 list do make great use of this feature.
Step-By-Step for Creating Two Other Kinds of
Hooks
TO CREATE A RHYTHMIC HOOK:
Keep a beat (tap your foot, or slap your knee)
1. Sing (improvise) a short, catchy 4-or-8 beat rhythm.
2. Create a 1-or-2 chord progression that repeats easily. (e.g., C-Fm7, C-Bb, C-Eb, etc.)
3. Create a bass line where the end of the line connects smoothly back to the beginning. Avoid using the same rhythms as the drum or other instruments.
TO CREATE AN INTRO HOOK:
1. Improvise a short melodic idea (4-to-8 beats long) that has a strong, catchy rhythm.
2. Focus mainly on notes from the pentatonic scale (for example, in C major, use the notes C, D, E, G and/or A).
3. Create 3 separate chord progressions that will successfully accompany the hook. Those 3 should be able to serve as verse, chorus and bridge progressions.
4. Allow the hook to appear and disappear as your song progresses. Intro hooks are great, but can get tiresome if the listeners hear it all the time.
Not every song needs an obvious hook.
An important principle to remember: adding a hook to a bad song gives you a bad song with a hook.
Hooks need to be short, catchy and memorable.
A hook reappears throughout a song in the same way, while a motif serves as a building block for other musical ideas.
The most common type of hook in a song is the chorus hook, which usually incorporates the title of the song.
Developing a hook can be a good way to start the songwriting process.
Once you’ve almost entirely forgotten a song, what remains in the memory is probably the hook.
f you visit YouTube on a regular basis, you quickly become familiar with a certain kind of statement that appears in the “About” field of a video for which the uploader doesn’t own the copyright. This statement, which reads something like a quasi-legal declaration, is meant to disavow any pretence to ownership of the video. Here’s an example of one I’ve seen recently, verbatim:
“I claim no copyright for the video clip's, and i claim no ownership for the video clip's. I claim no
copyright for the music and I claim no ownership for the music.”
Something tells me a lawyer didn’t write this.
Now, think about it. The person who uploaded the video has just stated that they don’t own the music or video, and have no copyright claim at all. They believe that by stating that to be the case, they now have the right to upload it for the world. It’s a bit like standing beside a car on your street, declaring in a loud voice that you don’t own it, then hotwire it, drive it across the city, and offer it to a guy at a corner store. And you believe you’re in the clear because you’ve made no claim to ownership.
At the time of the writing of this book, the phrase “My song was stolen”, when typed into the Google search engine, results in more than twenty thousand hits. And that just includes the people who chose to share their experience on the world wide web. Protection of any kind of intellectual property, as it is generically described, is a huge concern for artists of all genres; every country in the world has a copyright office for which the protection of music and other creations is the primary mandate.
There are several ways that your songs can be “stolen,” but the truth is (and leaving aside the possibility that someone will upload it to YouTube or other online sites), that it’s not likely to happen. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be concerned with protecting your music. After all, being in a serious
airplane accident also is not likely to happen, but flight attendants still show you where the flotation device is beneath your seat. For the people who do experience the unwelcome circumstance of having a song stolen, it’s almost
always by someone they know, almost never by a complete stranger. And
it almost always happens as a result of a misappropriation based on joint
authorship. We’ll get to that a little later on.
Copyright laws differ slightly from country to country, so you’ll need to contact your own country’s copyright or intellectual property office to get specifics. In every country, however, copyright is the same thing: your
right to do whatever you want with
your music. Copyright is a much-
misunderstood word, however. You might be surprised to learn that what you thought copyright is isn’t actually true.
If you’ve written a song with other members of your band, you
are all joint owners of the
copyright. It’s possible to come up with a unique percentage allocation of how any money you make from the song will be split between you, but as far as copyright is concerned, you are all co-owners of the entire
copyright.
Here’s an important note: As co-
owner of the copyright, you can record your own version of the song without needing the other copyright-holders’ permission. But if you make money from your recording, that money needs to
be shared with the other
copyright holders.