Secrets of Exciting Chords & Chord Progressions: Lesson Twenty-Five
Chord Progressions Part Six
“What You Need To Know About Musical Form”
Chord progressions come in sections, like one room in a house. You can put several different rooms together to make a big house, or you can live in a one room house. Just like people. In most 3rd world countries people live in one room houses — which means, of course, that much of the world lives in one-room houses.
Those of us who live in the West generally live in multi-room houses.
But there are also musical houses — we call them songs — that are built out of several different rooms — several different chord progressions. Some of them, like mansions and castles, go on and on and get quite involved.
But most songs are like many modest houses — they have 2 or 3 rooms, sometimes 4 — built using 2 or 3 or 4 different chord progressions.
Each “room” in a musical house is called a theme, or a “motif”. The first theme is always called “A”. The next theme is called “B”, the next theme is called “C”, and so on. Most songs only have 2 or 3 themes, but these themes often repeat.
For example, let’s say we have a chord progression that goes like this:
C Am7 Dm7 G7
…and then it repeats those same 4 chords…
and then we have another chord progression that goes like this:
Gm7 C7 F Fm7 Bb7 Eb G7
…and then the first chord progression is used again as the song ends.
This song would have a musical form of A, A, B, A — main theme, repeat of main theme, contrasting theme, main theme.
| Theme Theme Contrast Theme This form is known as A A B A musical form. |
If the song went like this: Theme Contrast Theme …it would be known as A B A musical form. |
The “B” section of a song is sometimes called the “bridge”, or the “release”, or the “chorus”. These terms usually mean the same thing — depending upon the form used.
| Can you guess what this might be called?
Theme Right you are! A B A B form. This is also known as “verse-chorus” form. |
Most popular songs fall into one of these forms:
A B A
A A B A
A B A C A
A B A B
Why should you care?
Because if you know songs are constructed this way, you can look at songs with smart eyes — you know what to look for, and once you determine the form, you have a “mental map” of the song — you’re not just wandering from chord to chord anymore.
In addition, most songs are proportional. That is — 4 bars of section A, then 4 bars of section B, then another 4 bars of section A, and so on. You will find TONS and TONS of popular songs that are 32 bars long in A A B A form — 8 bars of theme A, 8 bars of theme A repeated, then a bridge of 8 bars, finishing with 8 bars of theme A.
Does that give you an advantage knowing that?
It gives you a HUGE advantage because you know what to look for, and you know that if you learn theme A you have automatically learned 75% of the song! All that remains is to learn the 8 bars of the bridge, and you’ve got it!
And that’s why you need to learn about form.