So, I’m a music person. Always have been. You might have picked up on it from my previous musical blatherings, or the fact that my entire advertising career came about from me sucking at music.
(This is not true. It came from me sucking at remembering music under extreme stress. And that absolute brain collapse halfway through Chopin’s Waltz in C#m, which scuttled my plans for music school, is what resulted in me discovering advertising as a major, and now here we are, making it the most fortuitous brain fart I’ve ever had.)
ANYWAY.
Music is a lot like writing, and I don’t mean that in a metaphorical, writing should flow like music kind of way. I mean writing and music are alike. The way copy, and even design, is composed is like the way music is composed. We use phrases, we have a hook, we talk about getting adagio and vivace (okay, not that last one). We’re telling a story and making people feel the way we want them to feel.
I’m firmly convinced understanding music can help you be a better writer, and vice versa, so here are some basic-basic-basic elements of music to know and share and internalize for future copywriting purposes.
What you say
The basic-basics. Musically, writing-ly, and visually, these are kind of duh, but they’re still good to look at in the context of everything else.
Notes
You’ve got your eighth notes here, your quarters, your halfs, and your wholes (not pictured), and the difference between them is just how long you hold them. Big words, little words, you put them together. In phrases! Music and writing both have phrases. I am very smart.
Rests
This stuff is at least interesting — the stuff not said or shown. This is where you’re letting your audience take a break — a breath (I think I’ve talked about audiences holding their breath?), a pause for effect, a little bit of time to let something sink in. Visually, it’s your line breaks, your whitespace. An eighth rest is an em dash. Fight me.
How you say it
Just a bunch of words and/or not-words is blah. They’re not attention-grabbing. You have to take the messaging you want to express and say it in a way that means something to the audience. Words matter — that’s why copywriters get paid to use ‘em — and this is where that comes in.
Dynamics
How will we best convey the meaning of our phrase? Will we hit them with something forte? Or make them lean close and listen to something piano? This is where we start choosing not just words but the right words. The simple or the complex. The accessible or the technical. The gentle or the edgy. Does this particular usage call for a stronger word or a softer one? Thesaurus-wielding copywriters can be scary because so frequently, a thesaurus is used as a weapon to make things fancier, but true discernment is knowing when to go with a word that’s…. less… fancy if that’s what’s needed in the moment.
(Also, I’m hereby coining tt, or thesaurissimo, when thesaurus use gets WILDLY out of hand.)
Articulation
I mean, yes, obviously, being articulate. But also: This is basically about how the notes are played with regard to other notes. Marcato is a kind of forcefulness that emphasizes a note, staccato notes (not shown here) are sharp and detached, and
legato notes are tied together so they flow into each other. Sometimes you want to grab their attention, and sometimes you want them to move smoothly through your copy.
How you make them listen
It’s not enough to just grab their attention — you have to keep it long enough to get them to listen to and understand your message. You need to move, so they know you’re going somewhere, and you need to build tension, so they’ll be not just waiting but wanting to get there.
Crescendo
(And, of course, decrescendo, or alternately diminuendo.) You’re going from soft to loud (<) or loud to soft (>), respectively — across phrases or lines, you’re building and/or easing off. You’re going from that simpler to fancier language, or those short, crisp phrases to longer, more elaborate ones — or in the other direction. You’re making them start to feel things, and they might not even notice until you get where you’re going.
Repetition
We’re told to vary our line lengths and such, and that’s totally true — mostly. Every rule has moderations and exceptions. Sometimes, what seems boring and monotonous is actually creating a kind of tension that will make the copy that much more effective when you finally cut it loose. (And you can sand the edges off the repetition with
parallelism. While you are maintaining that steady rhythm, you still give them a little balance with phrases that call to each other but each bring their own meaning and impact.)
Syncopation
This is, in a way, an antidote to repetition, giving you something unexpected and surprising against something steady. It’s both a relief of and different type of tension. Instead of putting your stress on the beat, you’re putting it of the off-beat. The audience is a little off-balance, but they like it.
The Drop
This is where you’ve been going this whole time. Everything you’ve done has been leading to this moment. Your music has been preparing them for it, the tension you’ve been building has been making them crave it, and now BAM. The message, the biggest thing you want them to hear, the point of it all.
There’s a lot of pressure in this, because your audience has been waiting for it and opened themselves to hearing what you have to give them, and if it doesn’t hit, they’re going to be disappointed. Worst-case scenario, they might actively dislike you. But if you do it right, they’ll love you and believe you and feel the way you want them to feel.
All of which brings us to the big question of the day:
Did I just describe one of the most iconic ads in advertising history,
or an absolute banger from the summer’s hottest animated film that was way better than it had any business being?
Shrug.
I suppose we’ll never know.