19) Song Structure (part I)

[Post #19] The structure of a song is the musical form of a piece, the parts of a composition that are joined together make a complete song.
In addition to the advice I wrote in this post two other important things must be always kept in mind:

1. the balance between repetitions and changes. The use of repetitions will help the listeners to understand your composition and makes the song familiar. But too many repetitions could be boring. The use of variations and changes makes the music more dynamic and highlights the differences in the parts. Again, too many variations could be confusing for the listeners.
2. The balance between anticipation and conclusion. This is not so easy to explain. Think about a book and how you guess about its possible conclusion. Here again, you must beware, for example, if the anticipation is too strong the conclusion could be unsatisfying or fail, instead of being the top of your music.

Let's see how the elements of a composition. We start with pop-rock songs because this music is very familiar to everybody and for this reason easier to understand. Then we will see that there are really a lot of similarities with instrumental music or piano solo music.

The most important elements of a song are:

• Introduction (Intro)
• Verse
• Chorus (or Refrain)
• Middle Eight (or Variation, Special, etc.)
• Bridge
• Instrumental or Solo
• Outro (or Coda)
• Hook

Intro

• It appears only at the beginning of a song and introduces its style, rhythm, etc.
• Sometimes it also appears as Outro, in this case, the composition ends exactly as it begins, like a circle.
• It is not used in each song and if a song has an Intro, it could be made of a short drums fill, a guitar or piano riff, a hook (see below), a part of the song (verse or chorus, sometimes light changed in rhythm or sound), or a theme completely different from the rest of the piece (to surprise the audience).

Verse

• Is the quietest part of the song and makes a contrast with the refrain.
• Sometimes there is a bridge between verse and chorus. 
• The verse shows the style of the song and will be often repeated twice before the first chorus comes.
• It is very often made of 8 bars with simple chord sequences like the one chord progressions (some example here, here, or here) or the two chords circle progressions (as analyzed in these posts: post 1 - post 2 - post 3 - post 4). 
• Sometimes you find in the verse some progressions that are a little bit complicated, I explained some examples here and here.

Chorus

• It is the part of the song that we always remember.
• It is put in contrast with the verse and here the song reaches its top. 
• This part will be often repeated, sometimes with only small variations. 
• It is very often made of 8 bars with chord progressions based on the examples described in this post and in this one.
• The chorus includes often the hook.

Middle Eight

• As the name says it is usually made of 8 bars. 
• It appears only once in a song (in the middle) and it is usually followed by the chorus, less often by the verse or a solo.
• It introduces something new in the song and breaks the typical alternation between Verse and Chorus.
• It can be sung or instrumental. 
• In this part the most used chord progressions are the same used for the verses but, as there are no fixed rules, sometimes the Middle Eight progression is more complex.

Bridge

• The Bridge is a short musical link between verse and chorus.
• If verse and chorus are very different you can use a bridge to reduce the musical jump.
• As Intro and Outro, the bridge is not always present in a song.
• In this part the most used chord progressions are the same used for the verses, sometimes only two chord circle progressions.

Instrumental / Solo

• It can be a repetition of another song part but without lyrics (verse, chorus, etc.) or a completely new song part. 
• It is used to make a kind of musical change in the song, breaking the alternation between verse and chorus.
• The last verse is often replaced by an instrumental part of a solo, it leads then to the final chorus and eventually to the Outro.

Outro

• What we said about the Intro is also here valid.
• This part is usually used in live performances as the studio recordings quite always end with fade-outs.

Hook

• It is not really a part of the song. 
• Hook and chorus are sometimes the same, but generally, we can say that the hook is the part of the song we easily remember, it could be even only a short riff. 
• Some famous hooks are the guitar riffs of Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple or of Sweet Child of Mine by Guns'n'Roses, or the bass riff of Another One Bites the Dust by Queen, etc.
• Sometimes the hook precedes the verse and follows the chorus, it is then a kind of repeated Intro.

Now we analyze the structure of two milestones of pop-music history (click to enlarge the images): Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams and Billie Jean by Michael Jackson.

If we listen to Summer of '69 we learn that:

1. There is a very short Intro, just a couple of chords, a kind of short verse.
2. There is no bridge between verse and chorus.
3. The first chorus comes after 2 verses.
4. After each chorus, you can listen to a hook on which sometimes there are some lyrics.
5. After the second hook there is a Middle Eight, maybe to avoid too much repetition.

Here is the analysis of Billie Jean:

1. There is a longer Intro, here will be introduced the rhythm of the song and the chords of the verse.
2. There are always 2 verses followed by bridge and then the chorus.
3. The Outro includes a short instrumental part (based on the chorus) then 2 other chords. This is another way to avoid too much repetition.

Once again: these are not rules but only suggestions in fact if you listen to Yesterday by Beatles, Losing My Religion by REM, or Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin you will see that these are examples of worldwide hits without chorus. Just to say that, even if some structures are more used than others, there is no trick, it is the composer that should choose the best solution for his song.

In the next post, we will see how all this information works for instrumental music or piano solo music.

Music Composition - Index

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