Emotional Songs

Emotional Songs

Emotional songs, or “Emo” as they’re more usually known, stem from an earlier style of music known as punk. While punk can be more decadent, intense, aggressive, and have political references, emo songs focus on what else but feelings or emotions. Emo songs have more expressive lyrics that can easily strike a chord with listeners because they touch on relatable or even universal emotions, feelings, experiences, and situations. That’s also partly because emo singers and bands that write their own songs base the songs on their personal experiences and feelings. If you think you have something that can be turned into an emo song, here’s how to do it.

Decide on a song’s overall mood. Writers of emotional songs are usually inspired by emotions they felt during a significant experience or a specific event in their lives or someone they know. Whatever your inspiration is, hone in on a specific mood or emotion that you want to evoke from your song.

Write the lyrics. After gathering ideas or expounding on an inspiration and focusing on your song’s overall mood, now is the best time to write your lyrics. There are also times that the words may come to you first, but that’s okay. You can write the lyrics first, then let the mood or emotion come naturally to you.

Create basic chord progression. A common structure for chords is I-IV-V-I or I-I-IV-V. Chord progression is usually written using four repeated bars, with each chord being one bar long.

Come up with the verse instrumentals. A standard rock drum beat format is usually 1, 3 bass drum and 2, 4 snare. The standard guitar format plays octave notes or eighth note power chords straight. Standard bass format plays root eighth notes.

Create the chorus. The chorus in emotional songs is usually a more aggressive, intense, and louder version of the verse instrumentals. It all depends on your preference of intensity and effect. You can have the drums played more aggressively by adding fills, offbeat strikes, or going to double time. You can have the guitar played to a louder dynamic with the palm mute removed, while you can have the bass played as before or with a minor change in intensity.

Emotional songs are aptly named because they can evoke intense feelings from the listener, all the more when he can identify with the song.