Image: "The Conversation" movie poster
What would constitute the perfect musical decision — whether for a lyric choice, a note choice, an arrangement choice, or an entire song?
After asking myself this countless times, I've come to the conclusion that understanding how to write a good song doesn't come solely from looking at the question through a musical lens.
Sometimes, the best musical insights come from looking at music from the perspective of other disciplines.
Today's cross-disciplinary pairing:
Songwriting and Film Editing.
I got into film editing during the course of spending thousands of hours working on an ambitious music video project this past year and realizing how hard editing moving pictures with sound can be.
Thankfully, Walter Murch exists. He's a film and sound editor who has worked on classics like Apocalypse Now, The Godfather Part II and Part III, and my personal favorite, The Conversation.
And he wrote a book. It’s called “In The Blink Of An Eye” and I recommend you get a copy if you’re interested in the craft of filmmaking.
Don't worry, it's super readable — no film theory degree required and you won't have to sit through any expositions on the "intricate delineated ecology" of avant-garde French films.
The book not only transformed the way I watch movies and approached a music video project, but also how I now analyze and create songs.
Image: Walter Murch
Murch's most compelling concept is his "Rule of Six" — a hierarchical list of criteria for an "ideal cut" in film editing.
A "cut" is that fundamental transition where one shot ends and another begins, an essential building block of cinema.
This is Murch's original list as it relates to a cut:
The Rule of Six
1. Emotion - 51%
2. Story - 23%
3. Rhythm - 10%
4. Eye-trace - 7%
5. Two-dimensional plane of screen - 5%
6. Three-dimensional space of action - 4%
Murch's inclusion of Rhythm so high up in his film editing hierarchy was what made the musical alarm bells go off in my brain.
And it got me thinking:
What if I could apply the rest of this framework to music too?
So, I came up with some interesting parallels between Murch’s “Rule of Six” and what I'd like to call “The Songwriting Rule of Six":
The Songwriting Rule of Six
1. Emotion - 51%
2. Musical Development - 23%
3. Rhythm - 10%
4. Ear-Trace - 7%
5. Harmonic Grammar - 5%
6. Song Space - 4%
Let’s explore each of these musical "rules" and how they relate to Murch’s thoughts on film editing.
The Top of the Hierarchy: Emotion
Emotion is at the top of the hierarchy in both frameworks because it forms the core of what happens to us when we experience great art. We ‘feel’ things while listening to music or watching a film, without being able to rationally explain what’s happening.
When creating a song, you have to ask yourself:
How do I want the listener to feel?
And when you are writing - YOU are the first listener. So ask yourself:
How is this making ME feel?
You don’t have to articulate it precisely, but are you at least aware of some emotional response to the song you’re working on?
If this sounds abstract and difficult — you’re right.
It is.
That’s why it weighs so heavily on the hierarchy — more than everything else combined.
Without emotion, you cannot have a good song.
The specific emotion that you are creating comes from your unique value judgments — that is what makes YOU the artist.
It stems from your beliefs and emotions, whether expressed through a melancholic break up song or an angsty political statement.
Emotion drives all meaningful musical experiences and must be prioritized.
Without this emotional core — well, that’s where you get technically proficient Instagram musicians that inspire the same emotional response as an elevator ride.
Or a song that’s perfectly recorded and in tune but doesn’t inspire listeners to claim it as “their song.”
Story/Musical Development
Murch’s next rule of “Story” refers to how scenes progress and evolve in a movie.
I call my second rule “Musical Development” to include not just lyrical storytelling, but also how musical ideas unfold and transform throughout a song.
The key concept:
A good song is always taking the listener forward.
You’ve undoubtedly experienced disappointing songs where it starts in one place and never evolves.
In modern music, this often appears as a “loop-based” backing track created digitally, with a singer lamenting a breakup while that same loop repeats unchanged for three minutes. We are left with the same dissatisfaction as if we had read a diary entry after being promised a story. They are not the same.
Remember that music derives much of its meaning from its ability to express something like potential unfolding.
Just as progression and movement give life meaning, very few people would argue that feeling ‘stuck in one place’ is desirable.
Image: "The Godfather"
Stasis at its ultimate extreme is death — the opposite of life and meaning.
The techniques for creating ‘forward motion’ in music can be lyrical, melodic, harmonic and arrangement-based.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself as a songwriter to make sure you are following the rule of Musical Development:
If you are singing in a low range in the verse, are you building up with higher pitches in the chorus?
How much have you risen in pitch by the end of the song?
Or, are you belting from the beginning, leaving no room to build?
Are you changing the chords from section to section, or at least changing what chord you start the progression on?
If you are keeping the same exact chord progression throughout, what else are you doing arrangement-wise to make the chorus feel like it's bigger or more exciting than the verse?
Are you adding instruments or layers into your production to improve the song’s development?
A good song will almost always use a combination of many of these and other approaches.
These techniques serve one purpose: creating musical development so your song doesn’t feel like a movie where viewers wonder why “nothing has happened yet.”
Rhythm
Perhaps the strongest parallel between music and film is that neither of them can exist without a single element: time.
As I’ve written before about having killer rhythm, you aren’t truly playing music unless you're playing in rhythm (the ancient Greeks’ definition of music backs this up).
But rhythm in songwriting involves more than just playing steadily to a metronome.
There are a few things to consider:
Is the tempo, or speed, appropriate for the genre or the emotion you are creating?
How quickly are you transitioning between sections like the verse and chorus?
Are your transitions smooth and seamless, or abrupt and exciting? (Both can work, depending on the emotion you’re aiming for)
What’s the pace of chord changes?
Are you varying the rhythm of words between sections? For example, using long, drawn-out phrases in the pre-chorus before shifting to a busier, more syncopated chorus — or vice versa?
This parallel is so strong that Murch himself alludes directly to music when explaining why he uses a standing desk while editing.
He mentions in interviews that this choice isn’t just for health reasons but because it helps him feel the ‘rhythm’ of each edit better — like a conductor standing before an orchestra.
Image: Walter Murch editing
Eye-Trace/Ear-Trace
Eye-trace in film editing refers to the location and movement of the audience’s focus within the frame.
I created a direct auditory parallel and called it:
Ear-trace.
Ear-trace is the sonic location and movement of the listener's focus within the song.
My favorite analogy to illustrate this point:
A good songwriter constantly sets “traps” for a listener’s attention.
And these "traps" can be laid in one of two ways:
By adding something that suddenly captures the listener’s attention.
By removing something (or multiple things), creating a sort of musical ‘void’ that pulls the listener in.
Image: "Apocalypse Now"
Adding something can take the form of volume, like a voice or an instrument getting louder in a certain section, drawing our attention to it.
It can also come in the form of a recording or sonic effect like a ‘clean’ guitar turning into a heavy, distorted guitar, or a reverb/delay being added to a certain lyrical line but not others.
Or take this as an example:
Fuck.
It can be as direct as adding a curse word that jolts the listener. (Sorry mom!)
Removing elements can have an equally powerful effect.
One of my favorite techniques is stripping away most instrumentation in the beats leading up to a chorus, making the return of all instruments in the chorus more impactful.
Similarly, creating sections where the vocals pause while an instrumental hook takes over forms the foundation of memorable moments across all genres, from dance and pop to heavy metal riffs.
Regardless of genre, there is one common truth that remains the same:
A good song always guides the listener’s ear intentionally.
This guidance can be as obvious or subtle as you choose.
Murch’s advice applies perfectly here too:
“Suggestion is always more powerful than exposition”
To apply his principle to music:
Try to produce the greatest effect on the listener’s mind with the least amount of audible elements.
Two-Dimensional Plane Of Screen/Harmonic Grammar
A film editor helps viewers understand the spatial relationship between elements on a two-dimensional screen.
Viewers would get confused if two characters sitting across from each other were suddenly seen from the opposite angle than the moment before.
If this happened repeatedly, the spell of cinema would be broken and we would stop believing that those two characters are actually in the same room.
Music also deals with relationships. Our elements are notes played by individual instruments, and we call these relationships harmony.
Just as editors respect the “grammar” of spatial relationships in order to help viewers understand what's happening on screen, songwriters must respect the “grammar” of harmony.
And if we choose to break these rules, we should know exactly how and why we’re doing so.
At its most basic, this involves choosing a key to write a song in.
A key is a theoretical concept in music that works like a key that locks and unlocks a door or a safe in real life.
It's as if we're saying, "Hey, we're going to unlock only these specific notes for our song, and lock out all of the others."
Everything we play — all of our melodies and chords — come from this unlocked set of notes.
Image: "The Conversation"
As you sing a melody, you ensure the individual notes you are singing relate to each chord you’re playing.
If the chord uses the notes C, E, and G, and you’re singing those same notes, listeners will perceive these separate elements — the instrument and the voice — as part of a cohesive “song.”
A deeper harmonic grammar involves adding complexity by using higher-level abstract rules, or using emotion (there’s rule number one again!) to guide you toward interesting places of tension.
Musical rules give us a sense of how dissonance resolves to consonance, which creates a sense of movement and arrival similar to how visual composition can guide our eyes across a movie screen.
In both mediums, you can follow these rules strictly, or learn to bend them artistically.
But the most powerful results come from knowing the rules before breaking them and letting EMOTION, not theory, be your primary guide.
One of my favorite examples appears in Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy The Silence.” (the example first occurs at approximately 0:57)
In the final moments of the chorus, a new chord outside the established key appears precisely as the lyrics reach the theme that words "can only do HARM” — perfectly enhancing the emotion of something slightly dangerous or disruptive at that lyrical moment.
Writing a good song therefore requires understanding traditional chord progressions and scales but also a willingness to sacrifice “correct” harmony if it serves the upper parts of the song’s hierarchy, specifically emotion and musical development.
Three-Dimensional Space of Action/Song Space
Three-dimensional continuity in film editing looks like this:
A man walks down the hall toward a desk, then the film cuts to another angle of the same man continuing to walk from the same point before sitting at the desk.
Just as a film would suffer if the man teleported around the room between shots (unless it’s a Matrix-style fight sequence — another example of knowing the rules before masterfully breaking them), a song suffers when musicians fail to maintain a three-dimensional auditory environment, or what I call song space.
This song space is also made up of three dimensions:
Acoustical
Instrumental
Lyrical
Acoustical:
In modern music, songs are often inseparable from their recordings. Song space therefore includes stereo and surround positioning of a song’s recorded elements.
Just as films maintain characters’ physical locations, there are numerous ways to arrange what listeners hear through their headphones or speakers.
If an acoustic guitar is ‘panned’ (positioned) in the left speaker, and suddenly jumps to the right speaker, it breaks song space continuity.
Even more disorienting would be a centered lead vocal suddenly jumping between left and right speakers — the result would be chaos for the listener.
Techniques like reverb, delay, and volume also create a sense of distance and depth.
While this relates less to the ‘song’ itself, it absolutely contributes to what people consider a "good song."
Instrumental:
Instrumental song space deals with the continuity of individual instrument parts.
When writing a vocal melody, it's generally inadvisable to include massive jumps between notes. This creates a melodic equivalent of seeing someone on screen jump from one end to another without seeing the logical steps of how they got there.
Yet again — just as Matrix-style action might require such jumps — sometimes these will be the perfect creative choice. Just recognize the effect this will have on listeners as you experiment with song space.
Image: The Matrix
The same goes for arranging elements of a song like a bass line. Bass occupies a lower frequency range than other instruments. If you suddenly shift the bass up an octave (aka twice as high), you create discontinuity in the lower frequency spectrum.
Could be a hit.
Could be shit.
Just make sure it serves your emotional intention!
Lyrical:
Lyrics most frequently disrupt song space through what I call the Pronoun Problem.
And before either side of the political aisle gets triggered…
No, I don’t mean those pronouns.
Allow me to explain.
In songwriting, one of the most important things to do is to clearly define the “YOU” in your song.
Amateur songwriters often jump inconsistently between “You/I” in one section and “he/she” in another, creating confusion. Or only use “he/she” and kill any chance of directly connecting with the listener.
Intermediate songwriters might maintain a consistent “You” but leave it poorly defined or generic — unclear who is being addressed, if anyone.
Professional songwriters define their “You” clearly and then craft their lyrics to maintain consistency throughout, making listeners believe the “You” is real and specific.
This is what makes you love your favorite songs — because you feel the song speaks directly to or through “you.”
Applying the Rule of Six:
Following Walter Murch’s advice, I’ll leave you with his practical guidance:
When making songwriting decisions, if you need to sacrifice elements from this ‘rule of six,’ start from the bottom of the list and work your way up.
The top elements (emotion and musical development) are far more important than the bottom four combined.
When working with the bottom four elements, always ask how your decision will make listeners FEEL.
This begins with how it makes YOU feel during creation.
You can sacrifice song space, harmonic grammar, and even rhythm if it achieves the goal of expressing a specific emotion.
Just be intentional about your choices so your result isn’t a mediocre song that you claim “people just don’t understand, man.”
Never sacrifice emotion
Make the song evolve and take the listener on a journey
Remember that music can’t exist without rhythm/time
Create irresistible traps that your listener’s ears will have to notice
Use harmonic grammar to craft your perfect blend of consonance and dissonance
Establish a coherent song space that makes the listeners believe what you say - whether that’s ‘I love YOU’ or ‘fuck YOU’
And if this article has inspired you to express either of those sentiments toward me:
Mission accomplished.
