The_Complete_Idiot%27s_Guide_To_Music_Theory

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Part 3: Tunes
Tip
When you have
variations of a single
section like this,
you can label each
instance of the section by
a number after the letter, as
in A1, A2, A3, and so on.
Let’s look at a song that has a verse, a chorus, a verse, and another chorus. The
form of this song would look like this:
A B A B
Note that when the verse repeats, we don’t give it a new letter; it keeps the “A”
designation—even if the lyrics change. Same thing with the chorus; the B section
is always B, no matter how many times it repeats.
Now let’s look at a song that has two verses, a chorus, and a final verse. The
form of this song looks like this:
A A B A
Things get more interesting when you add a bridge to the mix. Consider a song
with two verses, a chorus, a bridge, and a final chorus:
A A B C B
Or how about a song with two verses, a chorus, another verse, a bridge, a final
verse, and a final chorus:
A A B A C A B
It’s not really that hard to follow, once you know what letters stand for what.
Incidentally, some songs are all A. This is fairly common in folk music, where
you have one melodic phrase repeated over and over, each time with a different
set of lyrics. Think of “If I Had a Hammer,” or “Where Have All the Flowers
Gone?” as good examples. Neither song has a chorus, per se; they’re all verses,
and lots of them.
Head Cases
There’s a unique musical form associated with jazz music, and with some rockand-roll
“jam” bands. This form, called the head arrangement, is ideally suited
for extended improvisation.
In this type of music you play the “head”—the main melody, or sometimes both
verse and chorus—relatively straight, and then repeat those chord progressions
for a series of instrumental solos. (Jazz musicians call this “soloing over the
changes.”) The head is then repeated, straight after the soloists blow themselves
out.
In terms of form, this type of tune might look like this:
A (head) A (solos) A (head repeat)
If a more complex song (complete with both verse and chorus) is used as the
head, the form might look something like this:
ABA (head) ABA (solos) ABA (head repeat)