I used to think that sing-alongs were all about campfire hangouts… then I realized that the lessons learned when writing a campfire song can be applied to writing songs in any genre. It doesn’t matter if you are writing for contemporary Christian, heavy metal, hip-hop, or any other genre of music, if people can sing your song they will most likely like it.

One of the most important factors in writing the sing-along is the melody range. If you are writing a melody that is too high or too low, then folks just won’t sing your song. In general, if you want to stay within the D-D range on the treble clef. This gives you an octave range of comfortable singing. Additionally, you want the majority of your notes to remain around the B note on the staff. This will sit the melody in a comfortable range for male singers, and will put all your harmonies in an easy range for both male & female singers.

The other factor of writing an easy sing-along is the rhythm of your melody. In general, I try to not write anything faster than an eighth note when writing my chorus lines. That may seem slow, but it does make the songs more intelligible to listen to and easier to sing. If you’re going to put cool swing rhythms into the song, you may want to put them in there a lot… repetition is a teacher’s best friend;)

Check back next week on Monday for our Making the Instrumental blog.