Edited by Peter Muldoon - Original article appeared in Mouthzoff Magazine
Hey,
let's chat about something you don't often hear about in depth -
musical structure.
Everybody
is familiar with the terms verse and chorus, some of you will also
know bridge and pre-chorus and some will even be familiar with
assigning letters to each different section, such as A, B, C and so
on, but their purpose and how best to string them together often
seems to be a bit 'hit and miss'. I suppose we had better start by
saying that there are six commonly used forms in music. I'm not
dismissing all others, but simply giving a framework to base them on.
When
we write a song we're trying to communicate an idea - not just a
lyric and a story, but also a feeling provided by the combination of
music and words. If you were attempting to tell a story about a man
who was frantically searching for his keys, you might try to
reinforce the frustration (we've all experienced it) by singing fast
and rapid-fire lines while musically switching to a new section at an
odd time in the song, just as he would be changing direction after
looking in the same places over and over again.
So,
to try and understand how the sections of a song can impact the way
the story is told let's look at First
Form.
At first glance this is the simplest from of all because it's just
the same section over and over. Same chord progression and melody
(maybe some subtle changes for each time around); however this can
make it difficult to pull off. Not only does the story need to be
interesting and develop throughout the song, but the title still
needs to be in the prime location so that it is remembered. Typically
this is in the first or last line of a section and in this form has a
name for the more common-place end line – refrain.
Another
thing to keep in mind is the rhyming scheme. For example, if you
rhyme the first two lines "I
love my fat orange cat, sometimes he wears a purple hat",
then the first two lines of the next 'A' section need to follow the
same type of rhyme, but not necessarily the same sound, "Breakfast
was just toast and jam, for lunch I think I'll have clam".
This form originates from the 1930s when songwriters were like
factory workers and would sit in a small room, working nine to five,
cranking out song idea after another and when they came up with a
good one they would run next door to the publisher who would then
tell them to finish it. The first part they came up with is the bit
that would be repeated and played on radio. This became known as the
chorus, whereas the 'rest of the song' was the verse or the set up to
the story. This part usually wasn't as catchy, memorable or even the
same tempo, so was often dropped before it reached the general
public.
Examples
from that era are Cole Porter's "I get a kick out of you"
and Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust".
Second
Form
uses the verse and chorus to drive the song. This is used a lot in
rock (with catchy guitar riffs), urban and folk. The chorus is the
section that repeats throughout the song and is the memorable
'singalong' part, typically with the title in the first or last line.
It contains the main idea of the lyrics and the main hook or riff of
the song. The chorus chords and melody would normally remain the same
on each repetition as would the verse. The verse fleshes out the idea
and explains a lot more detail and although the lyrics change for
each verse, the rhyming scheme remains the same, again not the same
rhymes but the same format. A typical layout for a song in second
form is Verse (V), Chorus (C), V, C, Instrumental, C with the chorus
repeated until the end. If the songwriter has more to say they
usually wouldn't add a verse after the instrumental, but rather add a
second verse before the first chorus – V, V, C, V, C, Instrumental,
C, C, C.
Examples
of rock songs that use second form are Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction"
and "Maybelline" by Chuck Berry.
When
writing any form of song it is important to pace your lyrical ideas
so that there is a sense of story with a number of stages. This
doesn't necessarily need to line up with different sections like the
verse or chorus. A story that really pulls you in has detail and
explains everything before the end of the song so that you're not
left wondering about what happened or why.
Next
month we will look at two of the most popular forms, Third
and Fourth
and how they add sections to expand the story.
Edited by Peter Muldoon - Original article appeared in Mouthzoff Magazine
