Every Track a Different Beast.

I’m no musician, but I do like music. I listen to it often, and I grew up at a time when albums were the main way to buy music, so I still like listening to them. As a person who likes music, if I like a song I’ll sometimes look for who it is, and try to listen to an album by them. So I want that album to be as good as it can. So here’s some advice from someone who does not know that much about music!

Variety. You have your musical style, and each track is a chance to pull people in. But people have different tastes. And even for one person, they have different moods. Different life stages. Different needs from your music at any given time. Variety lets you try to fit more ears.

Fitting ears it the key—the song is the key, the ear is the lock it has to fit. That’s not to say you’re trying to hit it big. But you do want to be heard. So you need to write for many ears. You have a greater chance of finding someone’s groove if each attempt is a bit different, and the ones they do like will stand out more.

But there is a much more important reason for variety. Contrast makes memory. It is in the contrast of variety that your listeners will remember ‘the slow one’ or ‘the one with the kazoo’ or whatever the variety you offer. If your songs are too much alike, it’s hard to remember them as distinct, and it’s hard to appreciate them in their own right. Nobody remembers ‘it’s the third mellow song out of ten mellow songs.’

If you feel like your existing songs don’t have enough variety, adapt them to be more varied. (This is also good exercise to improve for writing more varied songs in the future.) We’ve all heard covers (or self-covers) of songs at a different tempo or in a different style. We’ve heard unplugged sets, for example, where electric guitars are unplugged, and put in cases, and their acoustic cousins are played instead. So if you have a block of fast songs, slow some down. Or slow down part of them, throw a bridge in there. Or go hard.

The rule of variety goes for within a song, as well. You sing the chorus five times? Change one of them up, even a little. It makes the song feel more loved and worn to throw in some extra changes.

Here are some types of variety to consider:

1. Tempo
2. Vocal style
3. Song structure
4. Mood

But whatever you want to vary, it’s really down to seeing if it feels different enough to your other songs. Nobody mistakes Clark Kent for Superman because the costume is different enough. And mostly nobody confuses one superhero for another. So be bold, and make each track its own distinct entity.

You can consider different viewpoints, different voices, of the perspective singing a song. Write a song from a headless horseman’s standpoint, another from an asylum patient, another from a cowboy shrunk by a mad scientist, whatever you like. What would these different characters bring to a song? How does their style shape the song?

So there you go. Go write a bunch of different songs, and make them different so I won’t confuse them! I may still not like your album, but I’ll like it more than if it were all the same sound one after another.