How are the Songs Described?

Songs are described using a variety of elements that together compose the overall idea or feeling behind a song. These elements can be any of the following: lyrical content, musical content, emotion, sound effects, or simply the overall concept. After a user submits descriptive words that are associated with their song, the song is then cataloged and becomes a “descriptune”.

Example of a Descriptune

'Beautiful Mess' by Diamond Rio - has the following words associated with it: 'affected', 'alright', 'bittersweet”, 'relationship', 'unbalanced'. Once these words have been added by a user they will never removed unless the content of the words is deemed inappropriate or objectionable by Descriptune.

A summary of this song would read, “this song is about someone who is in a 'relationship' that is 'affected' because the relationship is 'unbalanced', but somehow is still 'bittersweet' and 'alright'. What is interesting to note is that none of the words except 'bittersweet' are actually in the song, the rest of the words are topical summations that describe lyrical, musical and emotional content within the song.

Descriptune Users

If you are a Descriptune user and are wondering how you should go about describing a particular song we recommend using your own words to simplify and summarize a song, instead of simply including lyrics from the song, though this is certainly acceptable it may limit the accessibility of a songs position in our database. There are thousands of songs that have the words 'You', 'baby', 'I', and 'Love', and maybe the message is that simple at times, but if there appears to be a more specific message to the song try to pinpoint it.

Pinpointing Word Associations

Here's an example of how to clearly define a common word in a song. The word 'love' is very common, but the artist may be pointing to a particular kind of 'love' like 'romantic'-'love' or 'heartfelt'-'love' or 'sensual'-'love' or 'brotherly'-'love' or 'sacrificial'-'love' etc. So now instead of just adding the word 'love' we'll also add 'romantic', based on the musical mood of the song or the lyrical content, etc. There are over 6,000 words that can accessed to describe songs so there are nearly limitless ways of defining a given song.

Describing Music Itself

A song's description is not limited solely to a lyrically description or concept only. Music and mood, and even particular sounds can also be described. In fact songs that have no lyrics can even be described simply describing mood or the feeling or sound, etc.

Example of A Musical Description

For instance the song, “That Kind of Love” by PFR has the following words associated with it: 'harmony', 'heard', 'Jesus', 'love', 'smooth', 'tell', 'where'.

In this song the word “smooth” refers to the smoothness of musical quality. Some people may think this is opinion and it very well could be, but everyone is entitled to express opinions, though some may be widely accepted than others. In a musical sense the word 'Smooth' can be used to define music with a lack of friction or conflict amongst various musical attributes such as, 'rhythm', 'melody', or 'harmony'. After listening to this song it is at least somewhat evident that 'smoothness' is really found in all three aspects of the song, but especially harmony.

Other examples of musical description could include the following words: 'edgy', 'tough', 'rugged', etc. This is completely up to the users best judgment. Try not to be too liberal in tossing out musical descriptions; it is best to only use them when a musical description can be easily recognized as such.

Sound Descriptions

Anything that refers to music or a sound such as 'buzzing', 'beeping', 'tapping', 'clapping' or 'humming', would probably be used to describe a particular sound in the song. Although it is possible that a song is could be about the idea of “humming” and how it's fun to hum, even so it would most likely have the sound of humming in it.

Just Listen...

Creating a Descriptune is actually quite simple. Pretend that your listening to an artist and their playing a concert just for you! Pretend the rest of the world has never heard this artist and has no preconceived ideas about them or their music. Now listen freely and interpret the artists message!