Behind the Scenes: Writing RTHK #1 hit 你们好 - Jonathan Wong

Hey everyone!  As promised, here's the first entry that takes you behind the scenes, on the creative process behind some of my most successful productions.  Today, we dissect how Jonathan and I composed his new RTHK #1 hit: 你们好... Step #1 - WritingI was up in HK in late Dec 09 visiting Jon, and one day, we decided to write a simple, happy, instantly accessible sort of tune.  When I write with Jonathan, one of the techniques we use is to sit at the piano and decide on a 4-chord pattern.  I'll play the pattern repeatedly, and we'll each take turns to sing fragments of melodies over the chords.  We bounce back-and-forth off each other's ideas and morph/combine them until we get something that "clicks".  This process of cranking out song ideas usually takes no more than an hour per song.  When the melody is "set", we do really rough piano+vocal recordings on our cellphones so we don't forget it!  Later on, we can dust these ideas off when it's time to create the actual track.  (Here's an example...)The Verse...Simple... catchy... fun... A wave of inspiration hit me, and I started with a 4-bar riff on the chords: F -> E-flat -> A-flat -> B-flat, played in a typical 60's Motown rhythm.  Almost instantly, Jon started humming an ascending melody in his rich baritone.  It worked great off the bat, and at that moment, I knew that it wouldn't be long before we nailed the verse!  Sure enough, within a couple of minutes we had the final verse melody with low, ascending bluesy lines.The Chorus...The chorus had to be insanely catchy - and after some discussion, we felt that we had to keep the rhythms straight and simple, the melodic range narrow, and have lots of repetition for it to "stick" upon first listen.  We ended up throwing around ideas for a good half-hour before settling on the 3-note figure (D-F-F)that is the main hook in the chorus: However, we needed a middle section within the chorus that was contrasting (another great songwriting tip from our mentor and executive producer Hei - too much repetition and uniformity can also work AGAINST your song being remembered.  We always need to strike a balance between "hammering" a tune into people's heads, and giving them the occasional jolt with surprising melodic twists).  After trying a few fragments that were either too freaky or too ordinary, Jon suddenly came up with a simple, yet distinctive melody that consisted of only 1 note: F, but with octave jumps!That was the moment when the chorus "clicked" into place, and we finished off the song minutes after.Coming soon!In my next post, I'll talk about how we came up with the idea of arranging this song without any instruments at all!  And share some secrets on how to create a full, dense, radio-ready sound - with ONLY THE HUMAN VOICE.Take care, and till next time! :)