Cheap Advice On Music

Many songs start off with some sort of “intro” segment. Others jump straight into the first verse. But there are always a few that start with a prolog, an introductory segment that is often slower or with a different musical texture from the rest of the song. An example from the Ancient Days would be “Do You Want To Know A Secret” by the Beatles, with its “You’ll never know how much I really love you” opening. More recently, the neo-pop girl group The Pipettes used a prolog in their song “It Hurts To See You Dance So Well.” Maybe you can think of additional examples.

So, have you ever written a song with a prolog? Maybe you ought to give it a try! One possibility is to graft a prolog onto the front of a song you’ve already written. In fact, it is usually easier to write a prolog after you have the rest of the song in hand anyway, since then you know what you are “setting up.”

One of the best things about having a prolog in a song is that you get to have two nifty beginnings instead of just one! The second beginning, where you start the actual song, can be especially dramatic if the prolog ends with a pregnant pause….then bang! in comes the verse.

[A longer version of this tip appears in my eBook, Cheap Advice On Songwriting.]