Today I’m breaking down a song I wrote a couple of years ago called Curiosity.
This track is a good example of how simplicity in harmony, combined with thoughtful sound design and arrangement, can create a strong emotional result.
The song sits at a medium–fast tempo of 140 BPM and blends:
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ambient pads
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natural-sounding piano
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pizzicato-style synths
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organic percussion loops
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soft, intimate vocals
Together, these elements form a mellow electropop sound I had been wanting to explore for some time.
Harmonic foundation
I began the track by creating an ambient pad progression that plays from the very beginning and continues throughout the entire song.
The progression is built from the following chords in the key of B major:
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B (I)
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E (IV)
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F# (V)
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G#m (vi)
These four chords form the familiar and widely used progression family:
I – IV – V – vi
Rather than thinking of these as individual “pitches,” this pad part is made up of full chords, with B, E, F#, and G# serving as the chord roots.
This progression lays the emotional and harmonic foundation of the song and helps create the uplifting, reflective mood that runs throughout the track.
Adding motion with piano
Once the pad progression was in place, I added a simple piano lick that plays over the same chords during both the verse and the chorus.
The piano serves two important roles:
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it reinforces the harmonic progression, and
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it provides rhythmic motion that drives the song forward.
While the pads create atmosphere, the piano becomes the main rhythmic and melodic backbone that supports everything added later.
With this foundation in place, I moved on to shaping the structure.
Song structure and layout
At first listen, the form might sound like a standard ABABCB structure.
However, the arrangement is slightly more expanded.
I would describe the layout as:
A – B – A – A – B – B – C – B – B – D
Where:
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A = verse
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B = chorus
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C = breakdown (pads and vocals only)
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D = outro
The key idea behind this structure is:
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the listener hears a compact version of the song early on (A–B),
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then those same sections are expanded later (A–A–B–B),
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followed by a breakdown, a final set of choruses, and an outro.
You can hear these major transitions clearly:
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the expanded sections begin around 0:54,
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percussion enters the later verse at 1:22, and
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the outro begins around 3:12, marked by a change in percussion and a gradual thinning of layers.
This is best thought of as an expanding arrangement, rather than a strict pop form.
Defining the verse
For the first two verses, I define the section almost entirely through three elements:
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the ambient pad progression
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the piano lick
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the vocal melody
In the final verse, those same elements remain, but I introduce percussion at 1:22 to subtly raise the energy and move the track forward.
Defining the chorus
To shape the chorus, I keep all of the verse elements and add:
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a second percussion layer, and
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two sampled melodic synth parts.
Instead of making the chorus bigger by changing harmony, I make it feel larger by increasing density and texture.
To let the instrumentation fully stand out, I also remove the vocals entirely during the chorus. This shifts the listener’s focus toward the groove, sound design, and melodic synth layers.
Writing the lyrics
As with most of my songs, I wrote the lyrics after the musical structure and arrangement were finished.
Lyrics
Let’s lose our normality
And get a taste of insanity
Why do I flee from this feeling?
That world is calling
Everyone’s the same
Can’t seem to escape from their old ways
Free will’s to blame
But we weren’t born to regret anything
Forever and ever we live our lives on fire
Facetious desire we hold our dreams up high
One more step until I’m free
One last breath to breathe
Funny how the truth works out
When you open your mind and see
You can’t believe the simple things
If you have a bit of curiosity
Concept and inspiration
This song was inspired by the idea of embracing the absurd and the belief that searching for meaning can itself give life purpose.
Rather than trying to explain that philosophy directly, I focused on capturing the emotional side of it—curiosity, uncertainty, freedom, and reflection—and translating those feelings into both the lyrics and the overall atmosphere of the track.