![]() ![]() A single stanza is usually set apart from other lines or stanza within a poem by a double line break or a change in indentation. Terms, concepts, definitions, and notational guidelines in OMT are taken either from common convention the published or unpublished work of Jason Summach, John Covach, Walter Everett, Mark Spicer, or Daniel Harrison or some combination thereof.What is a stanza? Here’s a quick and simple definition:Ī stanza is a group of lines form a smaller unit within a poem. The following sections go into greater detail about these large-scale structures and the component structures that make them up. Super-simple verse-chorus form is a term coined by Jay Summach (based on Covach’s), referring to songs in verse-chorus form where both the harmonic progression and the melody are both the same for verse and chorus (Summach, p. Spotify URI: spotify:track:5JGEAz15LkPoOtFHttDtVs Super-simple verse-chorus form A prime example of this is U2’s “With or Without You.” Simple verse-chorus form is a term coined by John Covach, referring to songs in verse-chorus form where the harmonic progression underlying the verse is the same as that underlying the chorus. The convention is to label cycles with curly brackets:, with Z potentially added to the end of either. Once the first AABA cycle is complete, there tend not to be any new lyrics, only repetition of the whole or the end of the main cycle. AABA songs almost always have a complete AABA cycle, followed by either another complete AABA cycle, or an incomplete cycle (typically BA). “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is a typical AABA song in that it does not just have four modules, AABA. However, it is easy to find, if you don’t already own a recording. There is no legal, open-access, embeddable audio for this song. Here is a bird’s-eye-view sketch of the form of “I Want to Hold Your Hand”: (And an auxiliary module, the intro, to help get the song off the ground.) But now it has a secondary module to add interest and tension, the bridge. Thus, the strophe is still the primary module. It also, for many people, is the more memorable part of the song. Note that the song begins and ends with the strophe, and the strophe contains the title lyrics. This new section builds tension by contrasting and withholding the main strophe theme before it returns at 1:11. However, where “Blue Suede Shoes” followed with an instrumental strophe, The Beatles move to a bridge at 0:52. After a brief introduction, the song begins with two strophes. 32-bar song form (AABA)Īnother formal structure that is more common in early rock-and-roll is AABA form, also called 32-bar song form because of some of the features of earlier “Golden Age” songs that make use of this structure.Ĭonsider “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by The Beatles. However, if a song has more than one main musical idea other than strophes and auxiliary modules, it is not strophic, but likely one of the following two forms. While “Blue Suede Shoes” is composed entirely of strophes, it is important to note that strophic songs can also contain auxiliary modules such as intros, outros, and codas. 1:37 – Strophe 1 (slightly varied repetition).Spotify URI: spotify:track:7bglJCaprPQTfDfovdJS2hĪnd here is a bird’s-eye-view sketch of the form of “Blue Suede Shoes” to follow as you listen: Strophic form is more common in early rock-and-roll (1950s–1960s) than in the 1970s and beyond. The form is called strophic form (sometimes abbreviated AAA, because the same basic material A is repeated), and the basic unit that is repeated is called a strophe. ![]() Songs that follow this structure of repeating the same basic multi-phrase unit throughout are called strophic songs. The entire song is a repetition of this same basic pattern, or slight variations of it, modeled at 0:19–0:41. Even the instrumental sections at 0:41 and 1:21 have the same underlying pattern, just a different melody in the form of a guitar solo. Listening a bit more closely, we can hear a similar, but abbreviated, version of the same patterns at the opening of the song. Though the instrumentation and the lyrics change, the section beginning at 0:19 contains the same – or, at least, very similar – melody, harmony, and phrase structure as the sections that begin at 0:58, 1:37, and 1:54. This song contains multiple modules, all of which have the same basic underlying music. Strophic formĬonsider “Blue Suede Shoes” by Carl Perkins. Pop/rock songs of the late twentieth century tend to follow one of three large-scale structural patterns. ![]()
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