The Minimalist Arrangement Mini-Challenge
Feb 04, 2020
What’s the first thing you do when you sit down to write a song with your guitar or piano?
If you’re like us (or Andy Samberg), you probably gravitate towards something familiar and comfortable, something that you know like the back of your hand. You might strum those “cowboy chords” (C, G, Am, D) or you might play a simple pattern on the piano that you know by rote.
Don’t get us wrong . . . there’s nothing wrong with that! Some of the best songs ever have been written with the most familiar instrumentation.
But switching it up can transport you to a different emotional space and open up new melodic and lyrical ideas. Studies show that listening to new music lights up the reward centers in your brain, so just imagine the benefits of that while you’re writing a new song!
But how do we switch it up?
A lot of times we think making our instrumental arrangements more varied means making them more complicated. While that’s one way to do it, it’s certainly not the only way! In fact, simplifying and subtracting what you play can be just as—if not more—effective.
We know you’ve heard it a million times before, but less really is more.
This mini-challenge is designed to help you break out of your arrangement patterns and get into a new headspace. And we’re going to do it with the most minimal elements possible.
Minimalist Arrangement Challenge.
Step 1. Write an 8-bar chord progression. This can be a 4-bar chord progression that repeats, or you can vary it up in any way you want. Write in any key, tempo or pattern that feels comfortable for you. Don’t overthink it.
Step 2. Take out everything but the root notes of each chord and play them as whole notes, or as simply as possible. Essentially you are creating a bass line based off of your chords.
Step 3. Give yourself 5 minutes (set a timer) and write a verse melody and lyrics over the stripped down single notes. The verse should be 16 measures long (aka 2 times around that 8-bar chord progression). Don’t overthink this either. You can refine it later. Just finish a verse within those 5 minutes!
Step 4. For the first 8 bars, sing over the single notes. For the second 8 bars, sing over your original pattern.
You can listen to our example here:
Give me time give me space
Gotta find my place in all this
Don’t know I’m going or where I’ve been
Show me right and wrong
I’ve been lost too long and now I
Feel like I’d do anything at all to win
You’ll see that writing over a bass line or one-note arrangement feels VERY different from writing over your go-to arrangement. It’s completely recontextualized and it really makes you go to a new creative space where you can write more varied melodies and lyrics.
AND by scaling back the beginning of the arrangement, you leave room for it to grow. The key to a good arrangement is for it to have dynamics and evolution. Stripping it down to the bare bones and building it back up is a super easy and effective way to give your song more movement and excitement without doing anything complicated!
Did you do this mini-challenge?
Comment below to let us know how it went for you and to share your work (either post the lyrics or a link to your audio) and you'll enter to win a 10% off coupon on any future workshop or Song Hang!
Happy writing,
Allie & Bess
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