Create emotions with music: These tips will help you bring emotions into your songs

"Where language ends, music begins."

E.T.A. Hoffmann

Music is a universal language that can completely transcend geographical boundaries and linguistic barriers. Even babies and infants in the womb have been shown to respond—often clearly— to sounds and musical tones. Music also has the power to immediately put us in a wide variety of moods—because we feel emotions when we hear music.

Do you want to know how you can bring more emotion into your own music? If so, I would like to give you three valuable tips in this article that will make it easy.

Tip 1: Tell stories with your music that evoke emotions in your audience.

The first tip is specifically for songwriters: dare to use your music to tell stories that stir emotions in your audience. There is something very primal about storytelling. Good stories are so interesting or exciting that you can be sure of your audience's attention. They offer opportunities for identification, often contain a message, and thus also have a certain learning effect.

Stories can also help you connect directly with your listeners. Have you ever heard a song which made you feel like the singer was speaking directly to you? If your audience feels addressed by your music, you can be sure that this will translate into emotion.

But what can actually be used as an occasion for good storytelling? 

For example, you can retell personal events in your texts, which you can of course modify and change. Equally suitable are existing stories, such as fairy tales, newspaper articles, stories, or films, all of which you can draw from infinitely. A simple example of musical storytelling is provided by the duo Oehl. They released a song in 2021 about the fraud scandal of a corrupt bank boss and its repercussions.

Of course, you can also invent stories freely according to your imagination. Here it helps to be aware of the theme, message and motivation of a song in advance. You can find inspiration for ideas in this video of mine. If your lyrics feel generally round, you can use your music to awaken emotions upon emotions in the hearts of your audience. But lyrics alone are not everything, of course, because ...

Tip 2: The sound makes the music—use instrumentals to evoke emotions and moods with your music.

Emotions can be created directly and effectively with the help of instruments, vocals or sound effects. For this, you can try to summarize the pure emotion that you want to transport in a concrete word and implement it musically as the basic mood.

Ask yourself: In which parts of my song do I want to embed this basic musical mood? What other emotions do I want to convey and how (and where) can these be implemented sonically? Which instruments or technical aids can support me in this? How can I underline existing lyrics or the core message or—if it fits thematically—create interesting contrasts?

You can approach the whole thing strategically or intuitively - often the forms of development mix, which is completely okay. Everyone develops their own inner strategies—whatever works serves its purpose. If your song also feels sonically coherent at the end, you will certainly have the emotions or the emotional participation of your audience with your music.

Tip 3: Music, emotions, devotion, performance—allow yourself to express yourself emotionally.

The third tip is aimed at identifying with your own music—have the courage to get emotionally involved with your music and become one with it, so to speak. For this you can, for example, allow your body to make the sounds and lyrics tangible and visible through gestures, facial expressions or body movements.

It's not as hard as you might think. If you really get involved with your music and put yourself at its service, it will all come naturally. However, it can help, especially if you feel inhibited, to loosen up your body in advance with stretching or movement exercises. Sighing out loud several times and grimacing have also been shown to help relieve stuck tension.

Clothing can help to slip into the artist role

Maybe it helps you to wear clothes specific to the music-making state, meant only for that occasion. Putting on and taking off these specific clothes can be very helpful in quickly getting into that specific, emotional artistic state, because they act like a sort of anchor. If you want to know what anchors are and how they work, check out this article here.

You can also wear this special clothing during stage performances if you are used to wearing it only in artistic moments. If you have often been able to express yourself musically in it, you will be able to do so much more easily on stage. In this way, your emotions will be easily transferred to your audience through your music.

Assistance in case of difficulties

There are numerous reasons that artists face difficulties with songwriting. Often it has something to do with perfectionism. You can recognize this, for example, when ideas are rejected again and again and are not considered good enough. If you suffer from such writer's block, I would like to recommend this video and this article of mine to you. In it, you'll find helpful strategies and creativity techniques to playfully get out of the blockade and into creating and implementing.

If this does not solve the problems, it may be that the cause of the difficulties lies deeper and is more complex. In this case I can support you as a creativity coach directly to find again or finally into songwriting.

Did this article make you want to network with other musicians from your area? Then take a look at mukken.com. Here you'll find many like-minded people from your area who share your passion for music.

• The 10 most valuable songwriting tips
• 5 tips for dealing with criticism calmly
• How to properly prepare for a live concert
• 4 tips for giving good, constructive feedback