Standing out from the other bands and avoiding the “Every song on the CD sounds the same” trap.

Matt Wyckoff

By Matthew Scott Wyckoff

I find the idea of a desert island top ten CD/album list to be fascinating and inspiring. While everyone's criteria is going to be different depending on your musical tastes, if you ever are actually stranded on an island with those ten CDs I sure hope your collection is something you can listen to over and over again! An important quality for my desert island top 10 albums (which are always more then 10) is the scope of creativity and ability to inspire repeat listens.

Diversity is Key

For me Rubber Soul by the Beatles is an easy pick. If every song were a medium surf beat about holding a girls hand or if she loves you (yeah, yeah, yeah) I couldn't imagine needing to hear it too many times. But given the diversity in the lyrics, lyrical content, instruments (sitar, lead fuzz bass, tambourine, ect.) it's the rhythmic/tempo/tonal diversity that's at the heart of the appeal, and that started with the songwriting, which in my mind has a lot to do with the songwriters' musicianship.

Switch it Up

If your world is punk, country or jazz, tonal and rhythmic/tempo consideration will go a long way toward breaking past the attention span of your listeners. What key are your songs in? What tempo? What if every song on a CD started with an A chord? Even if one is A minor and another A major it will start to feel and sound quite monotone. If you're genre is punk or reggae, where the tempos are going to be very similar you want to be extremely aware of the key of your songs. But who is to say you can't have a punk or reggae song outside of the usual tempo? The more creative you can be inside of more rigid genres the more you'll stand out. I'll bet if you were to make a play list of ten singles from ten different groups in what ever your genre is you're likely to have a range of keys and tempos. 

If you enjoy many different styles of music your play list will have even more elements to choose from. I would even challenge a reggae, punk, metal or whatever kind of artist to pick songs from a variety of different genres and imagine playing them in their style, that'll get the juices flowing!

The More You Play, The More You Grow

In the case of the Beatles, by the time the world knew about them they had already spent many, many, MAAANY hours/years/gigs playing together. They would play eight hour gigs, eight days a week, covering popular hits of the day. All this means they were very comfortable playing different tempos and feels very well. It's one thing to be able to play a tempo, feel or particular key but to play it very well is another. Since we tend to write based on our strengths you can imagine that if you're really good at playing a slow reggae groove you'll likely not find a great amount of inspiration in that quicker tempo or riff you came up with, which in turn might not get finished. 

A little investigation will go a long way

You could have a real blind spot in the amount of variety you have in your songwriting. It could be the pace of the lyrics. Will the listener have a good idea what the song is about on the first listen? Are you getting your point across? That may or may not matter to your art, but maybe you can have a song that's easier to grab right away to make the weightier songs stand out.
 
The key here is variety. But more importantly is variety in ways you haven't considered yet. By all means be yourself and the musician/songwriter you are but be willing and brave enough to look for your blind spots.