Tag Archives: home studio

Songwriting & Recording

Deciding Song Structure

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I mostly enjoy writing songs on the basis of arrangement/sequence of  the following elements.

  • Verses
  • Chorus
  • Instrumental

A typical song structure might be

  • Intro
  • Verse 1
  • Verse 2
  • Chorus
  • Verse 3
  • Chorus
  • Instrumental (perhaps over chorus chord sequence)
  • Verse 4

A typical arrangement for the above structure might be

  • Intro – just acoustic guitar and organ, panned right and left around 50%
  • Verse 1 – vocal begins
  • Verse 2 – bass guitar and minimal drums (perhaps just hihats and bass drum at this point) begin
  • Chorus – introduce snare to drum part
  • Verse 3 – change snare to side stick
  • Chorus – return to snare, thicken snare sound with claps,  add cymbals, introduce electric guitar
  • Instrumental – bring in lead guitar to play melodic solo – perhaps a simple interpretation of the chorus vocal melody
  • Verse 4 – strip back everything

Normally before I record anything I would have the whole song mapped out in terms of structure and how it builds. … read more

Songwriting & Recording

Playing and Recording Acoustic Guitar

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I find this works for me

  • I thank Graham Cochrane / Recording Revolution (pictured above) for his tips ‘Recording Acoustic Guitar (My Foolproof Method)‘ … position microphone directly in front of sound hole, but angled toward the 12th fret, which works like a dream for me.  Before I adopted this approach I would spend a huge amount of time with eq adjustments simply trying to get a half decent sound from my take – in this connection see my article Adventures With Acoustic Guitar EQ here.
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