More what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules
Thus spake Captain Barbossa
When I started doing this mothershout thing (Spotify, YouTube) seriously, I set myself some ground rules. There are two reasons for this. In fact, they’re two sides of the same reason:
When you can do anything you like (in music or writing or anything else creative), it’s surprisingly easy to be paralyzed by choice. Rules lock you down and remove some of that choice, and that can be helpful.
Constraints help creativity; they help you focus and provide a challenge. Challenges make things interesting, and you learn. I like learning.
The Rules of mothershout are:
The music should sound like a band; a group of people playing together. So:
Each part is played in whole. I don’t play one good verse take and copy it to all the other verses. If there’s piano all through the song, I played it all the way through.
The arrangements assume that there’s a limited number of musicians, and they can’t switch instruments abruptly.
The band sound like they’re all playing in the room (or on stage) together. That rules out a whole bunch of tricks with multiple reverbs or effects that are way too tempting to get lost in.
The instruments should be “real”. That is:
No exotic synthesizer sounds, or otherworldly ambient textures. It’s way too easy to spend hours searching for the “perfect” sound. I seem to remember (though I can’t find a source) that The Police had a philosophy for their early albums of just using the first sound that worked. I try to do that.
Where I can play a real instrument, I do. There are no synthesized guitars on these tracks. Technically the pianos are all virtual, but they’re played as though they were real.
Use virtual versions of real instruments; pianos, horns, drums, voices, etc, and arrange the parts for them as though they were played by real humans.
The tracks aren’t designed for commercial success in the twenty-first century.
There are many (many!) websites and tutorials that claim to teach how to write a hit. Start with the chorus because Tiktok viewers will only listen to the first few seconds. Maximize the loudness. Mix to sound good through the tiny speakers of mid-tier iPhones. I’m not interested in going viral on Tiktok and I like mixing in stereo for good speakers or headphones.
I write music that’s fun to play and interesting to listen to… for me. Some other people like it, sometimes they even tell me so, and that’s great. But I’m not trying to target songs to be picked up for TV or movie soundtracks, or to follow the trend of the moment.
And yeah, I break some of these rules some of the time. After all, they’re more like guidelines.