Musician/Writer Gabriel Ramos of Ssleeping DesiresS and Nero discuss Eno's 40 Infallible Tricks For Successful Songs
- Mindless dives and absurd jumps (steel guitar, whammy pedal)
- Sonic hooks (Telstar, the snare on 'she drives me crazy' fyi, Del Shannon instrumentals)
- Lap-steel or Hawaiian guitar (or anything else slide and unsquare)
- Sliding up or down to the right note (appoggiatura) (24 hours from Tulsa)
- Lyrical Rhythm guitar (eg Nile Rodgers, Carlos Alomar)
- Klaus Dinger beat (motorik)
- Handclap patterns eg 'Carwash' (invitations to listeners)
- Male humming (cf Jordanaires)
- Frozen reverb
- Sounds of the real world
- Heterophony
- One unchanging note harmonies and parts
- Bass riff (funk) (Melvin Dunlap: Express yourself'
- Impossible singing (Minnie Riperton)
- Long high note (I will survive)
- Big melodic intervals ('Mingulay', 'Somewhere over the rainbow'). Stamina
- Scale confusion - eg Tiny percussion instruments loud in the mix (fingernails on table)
- Instrument shadowing singing ('Love will tear us apart again')
- Unexpected, unusual chord in otherwise normal context
- Call and response ('Did you ever get one of those days')
- Male falsetto voice (Chris Martin)
- Low female voice (Sonia Tavares, Kitty Lester, Nomcebo Zikode JERUSALEMA
- Sing along scat (EDDIE HOLMAN/ COLDPLAY)
- Vocal rhythm accented on drums
- Riffs and multi riffs and heterophonic riffs (SEX MACHINE)
- Brass stabs (FELA)
- Parts of songs introduced by name 'and all the coloured girls go.."
- String entry - soft cloud over straight lines
- 3/4 - find the three-ish beat and somehow incorporate
- Appoggiatura
- Sudden change of space (RAF Judy Nylon Patti Palladin)
- Trademark songs ('Return to Sender' 'from a jack to a king' )
- male and female voices an octave apart
- insistent one note bass ('Everyday people')
- try playing it on an Omnichord (eg change minor chords to relative majors)
- Insanely fast tempo
- Low pass filter (makes things darker)
- Speaker simulator (or real)
- Something backwards
- Use the edges of things