Max Martins powerful secrets (to melodic math)

In this post, we’re going to talk about something that’s been a secret till now.

Max Martin developed a system for his songwriting that he uses in all his hit songs.

This ‘melodic math’ formula can be quite powerful at the moment in which you’re writing your songs, and we have to say as well that his songs have been played all over the world.

Max Martin himself has never shared this formula we’re going to talk about in this post, so if you are curious about that, keep reading! You might learn excellent tools that you can use for your songwriting.

Let’s start talking about the fact that Max is one of the best songwriters that we have nowadays.

He managed to place over 20 songs on the first positions on the Billboard Shore ranking, something that only John Lennon and Paul McCartney achieved before. Even if these two artists (John and Paul) were more famous and very prolific, we’ll focus on this post about Max Martin, one of the biggest songwriters of our days.

There’s a mystery in his way of composing, he has a specific formula for writing his melodies that we’re going to talk about here.

One of his main characteristics is the use of popular children’s songs. Surprising, isn’t it? That’s because he was very linked during his childhood to Sweden and consequently some traditional songs from this country.

That’s something you can also include in your compositions, maybe you know a popular song that you always loved and you’ll like to try and use it in one of your songs, making your own version of it.

We should mention as well some other writing techniques that are very effective in songs like ‘Do you know(What it takes)’ by Robin. This technique in particular is simple, it consists in using the same main elements in both the Verse and the Chorus, and this can be very useful if you want to display your melodies in an effective way.

In a recent interview with Max Martin, he mentioned that one of the keys of his melodic writing was the fact that he grew up surrounded by music. In Sweden it’s very typical to find a lot of music in TV shows for kids for instance, which is usually a very nice fact and helps the children’s musical education.

Imitation and inspiration are two important tools that you can use, and not only in music.

If we think about Astrid Lindgren for instance, one of the most famous fairy tale writers, also takes inspiration from tradition and other ‘old’ stories for her work.

In other different interviews, Max Martin also talks about the ‘repetition’ phenomena in his songs. He sustains that it’s important to hear the elements of the chorus already popping up during your verse. It’s a good way to emphasize the ‘best melody’ of your piece.

He also talks about the inspiration that he himself got as a kid from TV shows from the 70s and 80s.

Another interesting thing to do is to collaborate with another artist. Working together can be great and helpful, like in Max Martin’s case. He collaborated with many different musicians during the 90s, helping him to reach the top of success. For instance, he worked together with artists like the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, among others.

During the 2000s, he decided to close the Cheiron Studio, and that was the end of it.

So a new era started, in which Max evidenced all the time the importance of his collaborations with other artists, because without them he wouldn’t have reached the top of success.

We have to mention as well a composer called George Riedel composed some music inspired by Astrid Lindgren’s fairytales. Inspiration can be everywhere. Another good example is a very nice TV show called Barnen i Bullebyn, in which you can have the chance to hear a lot of Swedish traditional music, whose melodies are really beautiful and sweet, and very nice to listen to again and again.

During the 90s we had a studio in Stockholm called Cheiron, which featured all the hits from that time on the radio. If we go back to that period, we can observe different things: one of them is that during the 90s most of the songs were high quality and awesome, and we can also observe some writing techniques that were very frequent. For instance, the Backstreet Boys had a very particular sound, they have their personal touch, they use the same sounds and style in all their music. From this we can learn to find our own song as songwriters by listening to other artists that already found their own personal way.

Read the full story in the ling below

https://musicnerdrevolution.com/max-martins-powerful-secrets-to-melodic-math/

Originally published at https://musicnerdrevolution.com on February 24, 2021.