How to turn an old riff into a full song: Part 3 – Choruses

Investigating chorus ideas to stand as the peaks of our songs

Quick jump links

• Part 1

• Part 2 

Welcome back to our series where we’re slowly turning one of my unused riffs into a full song. So far, we’ve established the approach to the project, introduced the main riff, and explored different ways we can write verses off of that.

Now, we’re looking at choruses: the centrepiece of the song. In my head, choruses should feel like a mountaineer is stabbing their flag at the top of the mountain – this is the highest peak of the song and what the song has been building towards.

So, how the hell do we write one?

The trick is not to overthink or overwrite the part. Choruses should be simple and easy to follow, feel pretty open and epic, and leave space for vocals (or another form of lead melody) to shine.

Admittedly, this was a struggle for me while writing these parts. I probably wrote about seven different ideas, but ultimately chucked four away because they either didn’t blend with the previous sections cohesively, or they didn’t have that ‘this is a chorus’ feel that I was after.

I knew this would be the project's hardest part, and that perseverance and patience would be key. Of those two problems, I realized I needed to stop forcing sections. I stepped away from the computer, went on a walk, and listened to the songs in their current state(s). Then, when silence came where a chorus should be, I tried to think of what the song needed, instead of what I specifically wanted to try and write. This was a game-changer and honestly, this kind of problem plagues my creative process.

Tug of war

We can think of songwriting almost like a tug of war. You want both sides to have their moments, pulling the audience one way, to then pull them another. And there should be a nice balance between them. So, for the verses that pull back the momentum and lower the dynamics, we’ll want to counterbalance that.

This is where listening to the songs away from my writing space helped. It gave me a mental and physical separation and helped me instinctively feel what kind of vibe the choruses needed and were teeing up towards.

Thinking of the power of the leitmotif too, we want to keep weaving melodic and rhythm elements that have already been established in the song back in some ways. Again, however, balance is crucial; you don’t want to do an idea to death.

So, in this sense, I really tried to let each chorus write itself based on what came before.

Chorus Idea 1

The verse brought the dynamics and energy down. After a big riff, only an ambient guitar layer and the kick drum are really prominent until we start adding in some chuggy guitars to indicate that momentum is now building back up, and a little bit of the main riff motif is snuck into those parts.

There’s also a gap right at the end of the verse – an additional two bars added onto the eight-bar loop – because silence can help make loudness that will soon follow hit way harder.

What I landed on was a chorus of two halves, flitting between A and B sections. The A section is defined by simple but big chords, starting on the 8th fret of the sixth string (A#), before falling to the fifth fret (G).

I wanted lots of open space so I utilized a lot of open strings to flesh out the size of the section. I want it to feel like a chorus the moment it hits, and big open chords like this (tabs below) really help differentiate it from being just another riff.

With the B section, I felt we didn’t overdo the riff motif in the verse, so we could afford to sew a little bit of that in. This part hinges on the open sixth string (D), using the turnaround motif of the main riff to add some colour. It’s a little different, rhythmically, to give it a stabbier, rather than a naturally flowing feel, which I’d like to think offers something for a vocalist to really latch on to.

The fact the main riff is almost ‘teased’ in the chorus also makes any transitions back into it afterwards way smoother. It’s important, like you’re playing a game of chess, to think ahead. Otherwise, you can end up with wildly different sections that are cool in their own right, but not cohesive when the bigger picture is displayed.

There is a little movement with the chords in the A parts, with the odd 10th fret (C) brought in, and then, last time around, I swapped out the B section for chords on the 5th (G) and 3rd (F) frets. This helps with two things. First, it clearly shows that the section is concluding, rather than living in a simple A-B cycle that could go on forever, or end at any point. Secondly, it creates more harmonic colour for a vocalist to play with and punctuates their chorus.   

Chorus Idea 2

The big thing with version two of our song is it has a pre-chorus. The way the chill but still energetic verse flowed, I felt there needed to be a bridge before the chorus to make for a more natural-sounding transition.

The part took the same notes as the main riff, but anchored on a different root – mainly the 5th fret on the sixth string (G). This gave it a sense of movement away from the D tonality to better foreshadow a chorus. But then I felt I’d backed myself into a corner. I couldn’t get anything to fit.

That’s when I took my step back. I realised the energy of the pre-chorus was dictating a bouncy chorus that continued that energy made the most sense. I tried some big open chords and a slower idea, but it killed off any momentum the pre-chorus ramped up.

Note-wise, I felt the root needed to keep climbing, and so, using the same principal as the pre-chorus, I settled on a simple, bouncy groove rooted on the 8th fret (A#), with the second half falling to the G.

Again, the notes here are all lifted from the main riff, and it follows a simple A-B structure, and there’s a three-note flourish (A-A#-A) that works as a mini earworm. The final turnaround plays with that, instead playing (A#-A#-D) and octave lower. I found this worked nicely to transition into the main riff again – or even straight into a verse if it was warranted.

The riff may sound busy, because the energy needed made it so, but the notes are minimal, and I was really focused on leading with the A# and G tonalities so that it contrasted what came before, and what is to come back afterward.

Chorus Idea 3

The third time's a charm, or so they say. This time, we used John Browne's sub-groove technique, building the high-energy verse off a simpler, low-end-only version of the main riff, which led to me messing about with some Leprous-style twangy guitars in the backing. This created a huge soundscape that I knew the chorus had to match.

Achieving that took a little bit of work.

By the end of the verse, we had two rhythm guitars, two crunch guitars (doing the twangy parts), and an ambient layer all pushing the sonics, so the chorus had to at least match that. What I did to help here is add in an additional, center-panned guitar which can be a nice way of filling out the girth of the guitars, and a lead line with some octaver on in…because I’m a sucker for octaver guitars. What's nice here is that the lead guitar gives a little more harmonic movement, by landing on different notes when the chords remain the same. It makes it feel less static.

The chorus itself is further proof of why DADGAD is so great for metal. I’d originally thrown up a Monuments tab with the idea of lifting/tweaking some chord shapes used in that song, but I actually played the chord wrong and ended up with something totally different which I love the sound of.

Using this handy website to analyse the chord, it has it down as an Asusb6, which is a more colourful version of the fifth degree of D, so it gives a strong D tonality without overusing the note/chord itself, as its all over the intro and verse.

As with the other two choruses, I put a lot of thought into what the leading chord would be, so that it stood out from the surrounding sections. Here I went back to the trusty A#, sliding out of it to an open string power chord (D) and playing the big chord.

The quick snap at the start continues the vibe of the pre-chorus, so the transition is smooth, while the big chord makes this feel – at least to me – definitively like a chorus rather than just another riff.  It’s very Monuments and serves grooves with big, open spaces for vocals to come in as the centerpiece.

Next up, we’ll be looking at how we can write bridge sections from what we’ve already written, which is the last major section we need to finish our song. Catch you next time!