Tension and release form the backbone of memorable music.
Think of the suspended chord that hangs in the air, making you lean forward, waiting for resolution. Or the bridge that lifts you to an unexpected place before bringing you home.
Tension creates anticipation, discomfort, longing. Release provides satisfaction, rest, arrival.
Without tension, music becomes wallpaper. Without release, it becomes exhausting.
Harmony and dissonance work similarly. Consonant harmonies feel stable and resolved. They're the musical equivalent of a deep breath.
Dissonant intervals create friction and unease. They demand movement.
A song built entirely on pleasant harmonies would lull you to sleep. But dissonance without eventual resolution feels chaotic and unfulfilling.
The magic happens in the interplay between these forces. A skilled songwriter knows when to introduce a minor chord in a major progression, when to let a note clash before resolving it, when to build tension bar by bar until the release feels inevitable and earned.
Dynamic contrast adds another dimension: the shift from whisper to roar, from sparse to dense, from intimate to epic. These shifts create emotional peaks and valleys that mirror human experience.
If you want to dive deeper into these concepts, I highly recommend "50 Songs Every Songwriter Should Hear" by my friend and Berklee College of Music Professor Andrea Stolpe. It's an incredible resource that breaks down exactly how master songwriters use these elements to create lasting impact.
Now here's what strikes me: these same principles don't just govern great songs. They're the architecture of a sustainable, meaningful career as a mature music artist.
Consider tension and release in your creative life. The months leading up to a music release are pure tension: the focused push toward a deadline, the late nights mixing and remixing, the promotional groundwork, the anticipation building. Your entire system is in a state of productive stress, moving toward a specific goal.
Then the release happens. And, if you're wise, after a good amount of time riding that promotional wave, what comes next is release in the truest sense: rest, creative replenishment, space to wander without agenda. This is when you read books that have nothing to do with music. When you take long walks. When you let your mind go fallow so new seeds can take root. This isn't laziness. It's the essential other half of the creative cycle.
Many artists burn out because they never allow for tension release. They finish one project and immediately sprint toward the next, building tension upon tension until something breaks. But a song that's all buildup with no resolution isn't satisfying. It's just stressful. Your career needs both.
The harmony and dissonance principle shows up in how your various passions and responsibilities interact with your music career. Sometimes your multiple creative interests exist in beautiful harmony. Your love of visual art informs your album artwork. Your interest in poetry enriches your lyrics. Your background in another genre creates a distinctive fusion. These consonances make your work richer and more uniquely yours.
But sometimes there's dissonance. Your day job demands energy that you'd rather pour into your music. Family responsibilities pull you away from the studio. A passion project in another medium competes for your attention. These frictions can feel like obstacles, like you're not "all in" on your music the way you should be.
Here's the insight that changes everything: if everything was easy, you probably wouldn't accomplish as much, because dissonance seeks resolution.
That tension between your role as a parent and your identity as an artist? It creates pressure that can forge more honest, emotionally resonant songs about love, responsibility, and the passage of time.
The friction between your stable day job and your artistic ambitions? It can fuel a work ethic and focus that pure comfort never would. The discomfort of balancing multiple creative callings? It often leads to breakthrough innovations as you synthesize different influences.
The dissonance isn't the problem. The problem is when you have only dissonance with no path to resolution, or when you deny the dissonance exists and pretend everything should feel easy all the time.
Just as songs need dynamic contrast, your career needs seasons. There will be times of intense output and visibility: album cycles, tours, promotional pushes. These are your crescendo moments, and they're exhilarating.
But you also need your pianissimo seasons: periods of quiet writing, of learning, of incubating ideas that aren't ready to be shared. Periods where you're doing the deep work that will make your next crescendo moments possible.
The artists who endure understand this. They don't try to maintain peak intensity year-round. They know that the quiet verses make the choruses soar.
The most important parallel might be this: the best songs aren't accidents. They're crafted with intention, with an understanding of how tension and release work, when to introduce dissonance and when to resolve it, how to create dynamic arcs that carry emotional weight.
Your career deserves the same intentionality. You can choose when to push and when to rest. You can recognize the dissonances in your life and ask what resolution they're seeking. You can embrace the seasons rather than fighting them.
You can craft your creative life with the same care you bring to crafting a song.
Because in the end, your career isn't separate from your art. It is your artâa long-form composition that spans decades, full of themes and variations, tension and release, harmony and productive friction.
The question is: are you writing it consciously?
If you're intrigued by this idea of balance in songwriting, this article from my friend Andrea Stolpe (author and Berklee College of Music Professor) will give you some serious "lightbulb moments" about the invisible forces that make up well-crafted songs.
Always in your corner,
â<3 Bree
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