Song Forms Part 1: Verse/Chorus

January 20, 2016

Modernist designers introduced the notion that form follows function to suggest that the intended purpose or function of any object should dictate its shape or appearance.

For songwriters, this is an important idea because it draws attention to the musical form that we use to provide a structure for our compositions. If we assume that the hook is the heart of a song (it doesn’t seem right to call it the ‘function’) then the form should follow in such a way that best supports that hook.

There are always exceptions to the rule, but Sheila Davis in The Songwriters Idea Book offers a helpful overview of the three major song forms that have tended to dominate in the field. This is changing with genres like rap and EDM but let’s ignore that for now.

The three major forms are the verse/chorus, the AABA, and the AAA. Each has several variations, but basic idea is that these forms support different kinds of hooks. Let’s focus on the verse/chorus form for now and I’ll discuss the others in future posts.

The verse/chorus form is very common and well suited to songs that have a strong hook that can stand on its own with a lyric and melody that bears repeating. The verses support the hook by using a variety of approaches including plots based on time, place, point of view, etc. The sections are usually very distinctive, with most listeners able to easily identify the difference between a verse and a chorus. Very often the title of the song is the first line of the chorus in this form.

A good contemporary example of this form is found in “Beautiful Day” by Charlie Robison. The song includes a lengthy 16-bar instrumental break after the second chorus before continuing to a third verse/chorus. (Amazingly, however, the song still comes in under 3 minutes, ensuring it is radio friendly.)

A common variation of the verse/chorus form is to include a bridge after the second chorus that provides musical contrast to both the verses and the chorus. The song form looks like this: Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus/Bridge/Chorus. Sometimes there is a short instrumental break after the second chorus and before the bridge.

A good classic example of this form is Bryan Adam’s “Cuts Like a Knife“. The 8-bar bridge is placed after the guitar solo and with the lyric starting “Another night/another lesson learned”. The chorus then follows and ends the song.

A second common variation is the verse/climb/chorus, which adds a pre-chorus or ‘climb’ in between the verse and the chorus. This form is used to build up energy for the release of the hook, or sometimes to provide an important lyric line that helps to set up the chorus.

A good contemporary example of this form is JP Hoe’s “Save You“. The climb after the first verse begins with the lyric “so tell me where did it go wrong..” with the chorus starting on the line “You tried to own the sun …”. The climb in this case is essential to a plot twist in the lyric (listen for it). It’s interesting to note that the title is buried in the chorus, but in my opinion the musical hook is so strong that it doesn’t matter all that much. It’s also worth mentioning that the song has a bridge-type section based on the both the music and lyrics of the climb section.

Form follows function, and for songs with strong, repeatable standalone hooks, the verse/chorus structure is both effective and often anticipated by listeners. In the next part I’ll talk about the slightly more elusive AABA form.

Preproduction session 5: get back (to where you once belonged)

December 21, 2015 — Leave a comment

Tracking will start on the record in January but the last preproduction session of 2015 was about continuing to run songs and exploring ideas for arrangements.

One important point that came out of the conversation was about capturing the essential energy of a song, and how that energy changes as a song evolves from a seed into a demo and beyond. Sometimes the seed of the song captured on a smartphone or a scratch track has a liveliness to it that slowly disappears as it is massaged into a more complete piece and arrangement.

As a result there are times when it may be helpful to scrap the demo version and go at a song fresh in order to re-energize it and bring back the sparkle of that first blush of an idea.

Philosophers and anthropologists talk about liminality, that moment of first encounter with something new and unknown. It’s a notion that captures the idea of a threshold, of disorientation, of radical potential. The liminal energy of a new song is vital, and trying to bring it out in a record is a priority if the track is to come alive for the listener.

Everett LaRoi’s home studio where we will be recording in January

One of the tracks planned for the record, “Meet me in Montreal” has been indelibly etched in my mind with an arrangement I cobbled together for the first demo of it.

Everett and I had an important conversation about that song yesterday, discussing the idea of departing from that demo version and taking it in a brand new direction from a production standpoint.

And while the demo version is familiar and has some good ideas in it, I’m totally okay with trying something new as a way to recover that liminal energy and inject into it some outside creative influences. I realize that it’s not quite a tabula rasa but it is more about returning to that original place of inspiration … or getting back to where I once belonged.

Preproduction session 4: the sound of silence

November 30, 2015 — Leave a comment

This session we continued to run songs, discussing structure and arrangement. One of the important considerations as we begin to imagine the songs in production is the balance between sound and silence.

Context, as they say, is everything, and learning how to use silence to frame a melody and lyric can really bring out the most in a song. One proverb I came across sums it up well: words are silver but silence is golden. We frame the words with silence. Silence makes it sing.

Everett and I running songs in his studio

In any case, working in the modern digital studio with hundreds of gorgeous sounds at your fingertips makes it very tempting to fill up the silence with a rich but unnecessary arrangement.

We know this and so we’ve been talking about how to strike a balance in the songs that will give them an interesting sonic texture that brings out the most of the melody and the lyrics. A golden frame for silver words, as it were. When does the lap steel come in? At the beginning or in the second verse? Does it play throughout, or only at one or two points in the song? Should we have backup vocals in this part? What about a tone wheel organ? Or nothing. Just a single note the guitar maybe. So many possibilities.

From a production standpoint, one approach may be to try out lots of different ideas and explore options before making decisions and stripping it to the essentials. But this still comes down to a subjective decision in the process, and one where experience and a sense of discipline will pay off in the end.

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Preproduction Session 3: Steel sings and fat gets trimmed

November 15, 2015 — Leave a comment

Everett and I met on Sunday for our third preproduction session. This time we set up some mics and did some initial tracking with vocals and acoustic guitar. Everett has recently acquired a Gretsch lap steel, and we used this opportunity to explore ideas for the song “Longest Night of the Year”.

When he first tried out the slide guitar during the bridge of the song, it was almost a transcendent moment for me. Not having heard much beyond acoustic guitar versions of the song so far, even this small contribution to the arrangements was amazing. It was like putting butter on the bread. The trick now will be to figure out how much of that slide guitar will be just right without overdoing it.

While we spent a good part of the session exploring possibilities for the lap steel, I also began to take a hard look at the structure of this song and what might be trimmed to tighten it up. The initial version was coming in at over 6 minutes, which is too much to keep a listener interested–at least for this kind of folky acoustic song. So, we’ve started to trim and clip some of the excess. It is always remarkable to see how much better a song can be when the fat is cut from it. And while the length of a song should not always be a determining factor, it is an important consideration especially when a first draft of the song exceeds five minutes.

In this case, the song structure revolved around a Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus/Verse/Bridge/Verse/Chorus, which when you look at it written out does seem kind of excessive. And that isn’t taking into the account that the verses are structured around 3 stanzas as opposed to the usual 2 stanzas. Anyway, we can often write a lot when a song is in its early stages and we’re not sure what is really important to the lyric or the flow of the song. That’s not bad inasmuch as it gives us lots of material to work with.

However, having some distance from it now (I wrote the original song in March/April), it has become easier for me to take a critical view and cut out a stanza in the second verse, remove the verse before the bridge, and drop the chorus at the end altogether. (I realize that dropping the last chorus might seem unusual but it works because the last verse is a repeat of the opening stanza, creating a cyclical effect with a sense of instability in the ending, which corresponds with the mood I want). The net result has been to bring the length to under 5 minutes and arrive at a song structure that will be more likely to hold the listener’s attention.

I’m learning that the songwriting continues well into the preproduction phase, as lyrics get revised and song structure gets reworked. I’m also realizing that it’s a lot easier to do some of this when I have some critical distance from the song, which suggests the value in coming into the studio with material that maybe isn’t too freshly minted.

Working the Body Language of a Song (Part 2)

October 14, 2015 — Leave a comment

My last post introduced Pat Pattison’s songwriting theory of stability/instability and I compared it to consonance/dissonance in music composition. Good writing, I suggested, is when we intentionally design both stable and unstable elements into a song to convey an intended emotion to our listeners.

Pat Pattison’s songwriting method offers an interesting way to apply the concept of stability/instability when we set words to music. He refers to this as the ‘body language’ of a song and, rightly, points out that most of our communication is non-verbal in nature. In other words, how we say or sing something is probably more important than the actual words we are saying or singing.

Pattison uses the terms ‘front heavy’ and ‘back heavy’ when he talks about stability/instability with the setting of lyrics to music with this fundamental distinction:

Front heavy phrasing is stable
Back heavy phrasing is unstable

So what does he mean? Front heavy phrasing emphasizes key words on strong beats. In 4/4 time, that means the first and third beats of a measure. Back heavy phrasing places key words on weak beats. In 4/4 time, that means the second and fourth beats. In practice when we sing, the placement might not be exactly on a beat but the idea here is a rough guideline.

Front heavy phrasing is called for when we want to convey a sense of being assertive, confident, factual. Back heavy phrasing is called for when we want to convey a sense of uncertainty, loss, trepidation. Used in combination, the two techniques can be subtle but powerful when aligning the body language of you song with with the content of the lyric. Pattison’s demonstration of it in action (see link above) is quite revealing.

I’ve applied it to my own writing and I am becoming convinced that there is definitely something to this approach that improves my songs. Not only that but it gives me a helpful tool for analyzing my lyric setting especially when something just doesn’t sound right to my ears. By examining the placement of my lyrics in relation to front/back heavy emphasis, I find I can make more informed decisions when I want to make changes to the song.

In the next post I’ll share a worksheet technique that I’ve developed for analyzing the body language of my songs.

Simplicity in design … or is it?

January 18, 2015 — Leave a comment

The La’s song “There she goes” is a good example of simplicity in songwriting across the four dimensions of lyric, melody, harmony, and rhythm. However, what seems simple at first hearing can be surprisingly subtle and, on closer inspection, harbour a few surprises for the astute listener.

This version comes in at 2:47, performed on this recording at about 120bpm.

Released first in 1988 then again in 1990, the story is a boy wants girl theme set in a repeating pattern that uses a single rhyme scheme that flows from the first line, “there she goes again”. Subsequent lines end with rhyming words “brain”, “contain,” “remains”, etc.

The harmony is the widely used G/D/C progression, followed by an Am/G/C with the minor chord giving it a bit of moodiness.

The first line of the melody is two half notes and whole note: “there/she/goes” singing on the 5th, 3rd, and 5th of the harmony chords. So, he’s singing D/F#/G. Giving it a nice open feel. Actually, the melodic line in this phrase is similar to “When the Saints Go Marching In” which might resonate subconsciously with some listeners. I don’t know … maybe.

The second line changes the rhythm with a quarter notes “there/she/goes” with again picking up the last downbeat beat in the bar and carrying over into the next measure. The third lyric phrase is similar

Then it moves to the Am/G/C progression with the line “And I just can’t contain/this feeling that remains”, repeating it, then turning around on the D to start the cycle all over.

Altough it’s a simple design overall, the song structure is unusual because it isn’t based on the usual 4/8/16 bar sections, opting instead for odd numbered sections:

12+1 bar intro
11 bar verse
11 bar verse
11 bar instrumental (same as verse)
12 bar bridge
11 bar verse
7 bar outro

The unusual structure stems from a five line verse followed by a one measure turnaround. The line phrasing is a typical 2 measures but the verse itself is five lines:

G D C
There she goes- (2 measures)

G D C
There she goes again (2 measures)

G D C
Racing through my brain (2 measures)

Am G C
And I just can’t contain (2 measures)

Am G C
This feeling that remains (2 measures)

turnaround on D (1 measure)

In terms of production, the song may sound relatively simple but it uses a number of devices to develop an arc and keep it fresh:

the guitar intro is a motif that is repeated throughout and reappears in the instrumental section and again in the the bridge section;
the vocal part is solo in the first verse but additional backup parts are added in subsequent verses;
the shift in the vocal styling from falsetto to full voice in the second half of the verse adds character and “body language” to the delivery;
the bridge is a simple but effective variation on the verse, with a slight dip in the dynamic at the beginning to add some mood.

The Wikipedia entry for the song provides some additional background and context for the song, including an interesting note that seems to suggest that it took the magic touch of producer Steve Lillywhite to transform the original recording into a hit record. The song was covered by Sixpence None the Richer in a 1999 release. How do they compare? Listen for yourself.

On returning to songwriting

June 16, 2014 — Leave a comment

I began songwriting in my late teens. At some point in my mid-twenties I stopped and went on to other pursuits. Now at mid-life I’ve taken a new interest in putting words to music. It’s mostly for my own pleasure, but part of that pleasure comes from sharing it with others.

So this is a place where I can reflect on the creative process, on what it means to be doing this kind of thing as a forty-something father and husband, and where I can share the fruits of my labour of love with a few friends and family members, or perhaps beyond.

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