Every type of Song Structure EXPLAINED

This video was made possible by HD piano. Learn the best piano

song

s at hdpiano.com. Today I am going to explain the different

type

s of

structure

that a

song

can have, the different forms it can take and the different

type

s of sections. that we can find in a song, so let's start with the simplest type of song

structure

possible: strophic form, this is when a song literally has a section that simply repeats itself, so we could think of the structure as AA, a section that repeats in strophic form. It is commonly found in songs that are meant to be sung together communally because they are easy for the crowd to understand because there is only one section that repeats, so the crowd doesn't have to pay attention to what comes next. just keep repeating, so we see it in church hymns and national anthems, we also see it in children's songs and also in popular and traditional songs, so if the strophic is the most basic type of song form, then the Second most basic form is the binary form.

We have two different sections, so now we have an a a b a b pattern in our song. You can often think of the binary form as Verse Chorus. Two contrasting sections we do one and then move on to the other and then move back and forth. Hotel California is in binary form Foxy Lady by Jimmy Hendrick Honky Tonk Woman by The Rolling Stones all of these songs only have two contrasting sections: a verse and a chorus, an a section and a b section, so songs with one section are strophic , songs with two sections are binary, but now when we add a third section, there are a lot of different ways we can approach this.

One of the most common ways to have a third section in a song is to have a pre-chorus chorus structure that gives us a form of a b c a b c a is verse B now. the pre-chorus and c is now the chorus we can see a pre-chorus in You Really Got Me by The Kinks Message in a Bottle by the police Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan only on radio head a really archetypal example of the first pre-chorus The structure is Lucy in the Sky of Diamond by The Beatles, we start with a verse in Riv major, then we go to the pre-chorus where the key changes to B flat major and then the chorus is clear as day because it is not only in a different one . key but also a different time signature, so we have a very clear mood change between each section, but sometimes the line between the verse and the pre-chorus can be quite blurry and the casual listener may not even notice it.

Notice that there are different distinct sections there, for example Hello. by Adele has a clear chorus, we have this big dynamic change for the chorus, so we know where each other's hell is, but the line between the verse and the pre-chorus is not so obvious, this is the verse, hello, I'm me and this part. is the Precor, the Precor here features a changed chord progression and a changed melody, but the mood and dynamics are quite similar to the verse that preceded it, so you could easily group all of this together and instead mark hello as a binary song with a verse in a chorus instead of making that distinction between verse pre chorus and chorus, so the pre chorus is one way we can introduce a contrasting third section to a song, but another common way to have a Third section is to have a bridge. a section that occurs later in the song, usually in the last third of the song and that somewhat acts to refresh the palette, will tend to go somewhere different tonally or dynamically to shake up the song and keep things interesting, for example For example, if we look at the Power of Love by hu Lewis and the News this is the verse it's a funny thing to make a man cry this is the chorus I don't need money I don't need it and then later in the song we get this bridge and we hear it How different this section of the bridge is compared to the other sections we've heard so far.

This bridge is much more subdued and restrained in tone than the rest of the song and begins to explore different chords that we haven't explored so far in song A. A really effective way to make the bridge stand out as a completely different character to the rest of the song is changing the key of the bridge. We can see this in many different songs. Summer of 69 by Brian Adams is largely in the key of D major, but for the bridge it briefly modulates to the key of F major. The cplay clocks are largely in E-flat or E-flat mix lyan, but then they switch to D-flat major for the bridge and so Weezer says, it's largely in the key of E-flat. major but then it changes to B flat major for the bridge love is dad, I'm like you by changing the key we not only get this big change when we first enter the bridge, but then we get another change as we return to the original. key after the bridge, so it's kind of a two for one, the sun is drowning in the yes, another third section that we could see in a song is what is called a coda, a coda is a new section that occurs at the end of the song, Koda is the Italian word for Tales appears at the end of the song.

Maybe you could also call it extended outro, but of course outro is a pretty modern slang term because it's an abbreviation for a word that doesn't exist in the introduction of a textbook example. from an encoder is cut by the be for the first 3 minutes of Jude, the song is in traditional binary Verse Chorus form but then we enter the famous Coda section, a new section we haven't heard before and the Beatles really get their money's worth. This Coda is worth taking advantage of and ending up spending much more time on the coda than any other section of the song.

Another famous example of a coder is Leila from Derek and the Dominos. Again, we have most of the song with the verse and chorus, but then we get into this extended code, a section at the end, maybe the best way to learn about different song structures is to just learn a lot of songs , when you learn a song you are forced to pay attention to the structure, an element of the song that perhaps as a listener you weren't paying as much attention to and a great way to learn many classical songs on the piano is the HD piano.

Many of the songs we've been talking about today are available to learn right now on HD Piano and are presented in this really easy to understand format where you don't need any sheet music, these well presented and well thought out tutorials are all you need. you need to start learning these songs, follow the link below in the description to start learning piano with piano HD today. One section you don't see as often is what's called a post-chorus, so a post-chorus is a lot like what a pre-chorus does, but it comes after the chorus instead of before, for example on Smells Like Teen Spirit we have the verse we have the chorus and then after the chorus we have this section here that can be called post-chorus.

It's definitely different from the main chorus, but we also haven't gone back to the verse yet, a song form that was very common in the first one. middle of the 20th century and then went out of fashion is what is called the 32-bar shape. The 32 bar shape follows the a to b structure each section is eight bars long so we get eight bars per section somewhere over the rainbow, that section is then repeated, then we get a contrasting B section, we want a star and we wake up, where CLS is so far back and then we go back to that original section again, the rain, this form of song was very popular in the '30s, '40s and '50s, we can see.

The 32-bar form in many of the songs we've now included in the so-called Great American songbook, all these old jazz standards and show tunes, but the 32-bar form also appears in some more modern songs, for example, Wake Me Up When. September ends with Green Day has 32 bars, we have this section which then repeats until he's gone and then we get section B again falling from the stars Dr. in my pain again BEC, who are they and then we go back to section a Now, something that happens with the 32 bar form is that there's not really an A chorus or a verse, here we have the A sections and we have the B section and in fact, a common name for this B section for these eight bars that happen in the shape.

Half of the shape is a middle eight. You may have heard of middle eights before, as they are the type of term that is often confused with Bridges or pre-choruses, but they are actually something different. I actually made a video the other day. about how the Beatles often used the middle eight so check it out if you're interested, in fact a Beatles song that has a middle eight that I didn't mention in the video above is something we have this section about is repeated. and then we get the different B section, the middle eight, you're asking me, and then we finally get back to the a section.

Now I'm sure many of you would have thought of this section in the middle of something like the bridge, not the middle. late, but they are different sections and some songs actually feature a middle l and a bridge, for example Breath You Take by the police combines the 32 bar form with a bridge, we get the 32 bar form above here is the section a Every breath you take

every

move and here's the B section, the middle eighth, but then we also get this different bridge section. Now another thing that may be confusing about these songs in 32-bar form is that traditionally all of this in AA form was considered the chorus. and then the verse was this other unique section at the beginning of the song that nowadays I think we would call the intro, for example, I Got Rhythm by George Gerswin is a classic song in 32-bar format and in many versions you can hear it. that's all you get, you just get a a b a i got I got but in other versions that are more faithful to the original we have this intro section, the section known as the verse can be sunny without a sigh as you can hear this opening verse is very very different to how most of the song will sound, it has a much more relaxed tempo with a very conversational style of melody and this is because although we now think of songs like iot Rhythm as jazz standards, they were originally written as show tunes as songs for musicals iot Rhythm was written for the crazy musical girl of the 1930s and, as you can imagine, the characters in the musical are not simply launched directly into the song, but are, in a sense, led to her telling us more about what is happening in the days of history.

It can be sunny without ever a sign, so that's what this opening verse is, this verse, this intro is part of the narrative of the musical and then the song starts properly when we get to the quote-unquote chorus, look what I've done over the years. The artists who covered these show tunes stopped including the intro section of the downtempo verse and just went straight to the upbeat chorus, so not only did the idea of ​​including this intro in this verse go out of style, but the entire Naming convention changed. Chorus now doesn't mean what chorus meant 100 years ago.

Chorus today is ultimately a term for the section that is the main pinnacle, the main focus point of the song. This is usually the dynamic peak of the song and will usually also be a section where the lyrics stay the same. each repetition, unlike verse where the lyrics will change on each repetition, but there is another word that is sometimes interchanged with chorus and that is chorus, ultimately chorus is just another more old-fashioned word for chorus, but I think sometimes now a distinction is also seen. fact where people consider the chorus to be a much shorter and less distinct section than a chorus, for example you could say that Blowing in the Wind by Bob Dylan has a chorus at the end of each verse, we get this four measure section where the main hook and the main title of the song are repeated and interspersed with each different verse, so this could be a good example of a chorus where this isn't really a distinct section, it doesn't feel like we're to a different place, it feels more like that. it's just kind of a conclusion to each verse the verse asks a question and the chorus gives an answer the answer my friend is blowing in the wind the answer is blowing in the wind now a section of the song that i skipped earlier is the intro or the intro, the role of the intro can really vary from song to song.

Sometimes it's a completely different riff or melody that only occurs during that moment in the song, for example the famous riff at the beginning of Sweet Child of Mine, more typically although the intro will effectively be just the verse, but without the verse. Melody has not yet begun, for example, in John Lennon's Imagine we get the same piano figure that we will get in the verse and somehowway sets up the song so that when the Melody verse hits, you feel like you belong there. We could describe this type of intro as a vampire. Vamp is a term that means repeating a short section of music, but some song intros do the opposite, they don't prepare us for the verse at all, so when the verse comes it comes out of nowhere, for example the verse from Under the Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers is in E major, but the intro is in F major and is quite different from the verse, sometimes I feel like the intro can work too. as a motif that occurs at some points during the song, in which case we could call it a reintroduction, for example, in My Life by The Beatles this distinctive guitar riff opens and then we hear that guitar riff again at the end of the song to In closing, we were talking earlier about the 32-bar aab baa form that appears in many great American songbook classics and many jazz standards, but that's not the only common form we see in these older jazz standards, another form common is a b to c, effectively in this way we are getting a section a which is then answered with two different answers B and C.

A great example is White Christmas. We get this by opening a Christmas A section followed by this B section where the treetops and children shine, then we get section a again. but then instead of hearing the same B section that we heard before, we hear a different variety of the B section that we can call the C section. Its shape and ab to c is used in many classical songs, for example, Someday My Prince Will Come fromSnow White Every Time We Say Goodbye and also Moon River by Henry Manini, something that we have seen constantly in all the forms of songs that we have seen so far is repetition, most songs involve some type of repetition where they return to the previous sections, but not one song.

We don't have to go back to the pre-PR sections, it could be what's called composite, where after listening to each section we simply don't go back to what we heard before, songs like this could be described as episodic made up of different sections. episodes, a classic example is Bohemian Rapid which effectively has the form a b CDE e five different sections that we listen to once and then they just move before my eyes and this episodic form is actually part of why behemi rapid is called rapidy, a fast is a classic way. where the piece is made up of these contrasting episodes and the last type of structure that I am going to mention today is what we can call a front chorus, it is generally assumed that the chorus of the song will not be at the beginning when we are talking about previous songs in form binary that have a section A and A B.

A verse and a chorus. The chorus will tend to be the second section we hear, but it doesn't have to happen that way. You could open the song with the chorus for For example, we can hear that in a couple of Beatles songs, like Ellena, putting the whole front load in the chorus is also very common in rap songs because the verse will feature rap, so there won't be much melody, so you can hook the listener sooner. to give them the melody that will only happen in the chorus so that the chorus ends up being the first thing you hear.

Examples of this include Love When You Lie by Rihanna and Eminem Simply All and Clint Eastw by the Gorillas so you can see there are no rules when it comes to song form, but there are certainly particular formulas that songwriters turn to. over and over again and the trend of how songs should be written seems to vary over time if you can think of any other type of song structure that I've ever known. If you don't mention them in this video, then mention them below in the comments.