You have to be a borderline genius to get someone to read 300 pages of a novel. What keeps people turning pages? An interesting story isn't enough. It's your method of presenting the story in such a way that nothing jumps into the reader’s consciousness about the mechanics that makes the reader start thinking about anything else except the story which also better be good.
The same thing is true of songwriting. If only one thing in your song makes people start thinking it's strange or just bland that's when they'll stop listening. If only even one section doesn't transition well into the next thing then we start thinking about that instead of the good feeling the song is (was) producing.
In India they have a word for the feeling that music produces. The word they use is rasa which means taste. You never want to break rasa. But it's very easy to break.
If you don’t want to break rasa then the question isn’t so much what are you going to put into each section of music. The question becomes how are you going to put it in?
People have too many choices when faced with a blank page. To overcome the paralyzing nature of too many choices, composers learn to define the limits that their composition will fall within, such as how fast should it be, how many beats per measure will there be? What key will the piece of music be in? How long will it last? What chord should it start with? Surprisingly, composers sometimes even limit themselves to a few notes and a basic rhythm. I’ll now be talking about an important group of limitations.
Instrumentation
If you listen to a standard artist, the instrumentation they use is usually the same on almost every song. Keyboards, bass, drums, guitar, vocals. That doesn't change usually except they might add another instrumental player such as a harmonica but that occurs very rarely. There's usually a standard instrumentation for things.
Form
If you walk into a music store in America, it's clearly monocultural. About the only instruments to be found are guitars, basses, keyboards, and drum kits, with classical and jazz instruments thrown in for good measure. Walk into a music store in South Asia and you've got sitars, dutars, setars, esrajs, rebabs, shawms, etc... etc... etc... along with guitars and keyboards.
There seems to be some disparity between what many young songwriters from the west SAY they want and what they’ll actually put their money down for. They SAY they want to be totally unique and different and yet they buy the same instruments as everyone else and listen to the same music as all their friends. The next sentence may not apply to you but it probably applies to 99% of the people who might be interested in buying your music. It's VERY difficult to get a person to accept anything which is not what they expect, hence the difficulty of selling dutars in North America.
If you yourself or most of your neighbors at least, do not like anything out of the ordinary, how can you expect your listeners to go for what some aspiring composers are calling “writing from the heart?” This usually means a lack of knowledge of or lack of willingness to be constrained by accepted forms.
Don't let it escape your attention that it's possible to write from the heart within the form until you're established. On that day there will be people to buy your tunes that break the rules because enough people who matter, already know and trust you. Even then, it will only get sold if you broke the rules for a good reason, hence their trust.
When young songwriters hear someone talking about forms, they often say that the best music breaks the rules all the time. I don't believe the best music breaks the rules all the time. I consider experimental avant garde music to be nearly complete psychosis precisely because it doesn’t follow any traditional rules.
When the Beatles broke the rules, they had a very good reason for doing that. A phrase was shortened or lengthened because the lyrics demanded it not because of any animosity towards the normal sections built of eight or sixteen measures.
I often think about those people who don't want to constrain themselves to traditional forms. It's like saying I'll play football, basketball or soccer but I'm going to reach the goal by running outside of the boundaries, and then expect to be rewarded for that at the end and not be penalized. It's probably not in the realm of possibility.
Another metaphor is if you're painting, do you paint on the wall next to the canvas? It's about context. Only if you're an avant garde artist and the house owner knows you're going to do that and likes your work or you just want to piss him off and don’t really need the money.
Newbies, many of whom seem to like rock, heavy metal or punk listen to their favorite bands and hear them as icons of rebelliousness. Then they think to themselves, “How could my favorite icon of rebelliousness be following any rules, forms or formulas?” But naturally the newbies haven't analyzed their favorite bands and even if they had, they wouldn't know what to listen for.
Yes, in fact your favorite icon of rebelliousness, whether they play thrash metal, punk or rap, is using intros, verses, choruses, and bridges pretty much the same way everyone else is. They're not just doing their own thing as many newbies seem to think.
If they were doing that in the beginning, their manager or producer inserted the cold calculated reasoning that it takes to succeed in the biz. Then the guys in the band probably said, “Oh, is that all? We can still make music we like and have it mostly fit inside the basic guidelines.” It's not so difficult once getting past the emotional resistance to it.
Some might say that I'd be a good example of someone who writes only for themselves. I like World Music and am into stuff like microtonal tunings, 17/8 rhythms and all night songs played for the gods not for people on instruments like gopichands, seed pod and goat hoof rattles. My Garden of Contemplation CD has no chords per se from beginning to end. There's no guitar, bass, drum kit or keyboard. So, how did someone like me get my music forwarded and into music libraries waiting to be picked up by TV or film music buyers?
The people who might say I write only to please myself would be wrong. I don't inflict my interest in microtonal tunings on my listeners many of whom surely wouldn't like that. It's too far outside their expectations. Also the rhythms are kept to what people would expect, only breaking their expectations where they expect to have it be broken. SERIOUSLY. And I reign in world music's proclivities toward inordinate length and make my compositions conform to traditional popular song forms. Most of my stuff is instrumental but SONGwriting terminology is still useful. I write only 4 measure intros and get to the chorus fast which means no double verses before the first chorus.
All of this stuff helps people forgive the fact that my music has no chords and it's played on bamboo xylophones, three and four reed shawms, bowed spike fiddles and double headed hand drums no one has ever heard of. I love this stuff but I try to be realistic about what might go over well with the average person. In order to do that, it's important to at least try to really REALLY know what that is.
So, what is the popular song form and why is the popular song form so popular? The basic song forms goes: Intro Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Bridge Chorus Out. This doesn't tax people too much. They don’t have to work too hard to "get it".
A tune seven minutes long can go on the album but it will never make it to radio unless you're Pink Floyd etc... Radio format is about 3.5 minutes. Not much longer or shorter. Initially, shoot for around 100 measures of music at a moderate tempo and you'll be in the ball park for the airwaves. Of course not all popular songs need to be aimed at radio. There are lots of great tunes longer than 6 minutes.
If your pieces have choruses in the B section here's a list of possible forms to put them in which are in the pop format ballpark so that A's =Verses, B's =Choruses, C's =Bridges, D's=make C's another section proper and the D is the bridge, T's=Transitions and R's=a rise to the chorus.
ABABCAB. This is good if you've got sections longer than 8 bars or a slow tempo. It will prevent you from going over 3.5 minutes.
ABABTCAB. transition before the bridge. There may not even be any melody in the transition.
ABTABCAB. Another good one for a slow tempo or longer sections.
ABTABTCAB The transition is repeated before the Bridge.
AABAABCAAB Double verses are too long for unknowns to sell easily most likely.
ARBTARBCARB This could work. Sounds perfectly postmodern.
ABBABBCABB Double choruses to lengthen a short melody.
AABAABTCAAB. Not much point in putting a transition before the bridge except such as where the band drops out 4 bars early while the improviser solos before the start of the solo section as in jazz.
ARBARBTCARB. Rise to the chorus with Transition before the Bridge.
ABBTABBCABB. No transition the second time. Double chorus.
ARBTARBTCARB. Contemporary practice often has the rise to the chorus and a transition somewhere.
AABTAABCAAB. If repeating the transition every time makes the song too long leave it out the second time. There's a bridge anyway. Damn double verses again though. Bane of the unsigned!
ABBTABBTCABB. Double chorus. Transition after the chorus.
AABTAABTCAAB Double verses again.
ABCDABCDABCD It doesn't end on the chorus. Good for smooth jazz or real Latin music.
AARBAARBCAARB Rise to the chorus is very common in the postmodern era of popular songwriting. Those double verses plus the rise will kill you though. The exec's aren’t gonna wait that long. Next!
AARBAARBTCAARB. Double verse and rise. Do you want to sell this song or not?
ARBBARBBCARBB Rise to a double chorus.
AARBTAARBTCAARB. Double verse AND a rise before the chorus. Forget it unless you're the Beatles or Elvis.
AARBTAARBCAARB. Ditto
AABBAABBCAABB. Double verses and choruses. NEVER try more! Otherwise we'll stamp "Rank Amateur" on your forehead permanently.
AABBTAABBTCAABB Double trouble with transitions.
AARBBTAARBBTAARBB. Are you Marilyn Monroe or Princess Di reincarnated? If not, then don't try it.
Sections
Normally, sections are either eight or sixteen measures in length. For variety’s sake here is a theoretical chart of how the sections could all be different lengths on your album.
8 8 8
8 8 10
8 8 16
8 10 8
16 8 8
16 8 10
10 8 8
4 8 8
8 16 10
8 8 6
8 6 8
16 8 6
6 8 8
8 16 6
16 16 16
16 16 10
8 8 14
8 14 8
14 8 8
14 8 10
14 8 8
8 16 16
8 16 14
16 16 14
16 14 16
14 8 6
14 16 16
8 16 6
etc…
The three basic sections of a tune, the verse, chorus and bridge, can all be eight or all be sixteen measures but you can make them shorter or longer usually in groups of even numbers so sections ten measures long and six measures long also occur. Odd numbers are also possible but you have to have a good reason for doing that.
Most of the time, there are two phrases in each verse section and two phrases in each chorus section. And possibly in the bridge section as well. However, you CAN use more, less and even no phrases depending. The intro could just have accompaniment and no melody at all. The same is true of the bridge. The intro doesn’t need to be terribly melodic. In my case, I often create my intros from material in the bridge. For the bridge to be self sufficient, it doesn’t need to have a melody but then the accompaniment would have to be very interesting and you might have to shorten it so that it doesn’t get boring for the listener.
As far as lyrics are concerned, the verse basically keeps the same melody each time it comes around but with different words. The chorus basically keeps both the same words and the same melody each time it plays.
Phrase Lengths
If you give weight to favor the most common phrase lengths such as “four bars with four bars” and “eight bars with eight bars” occurring the most frequently. That way you wouldn’t constantly be getting music coming out of the system which is barely in the ball park of expectation.
You also need to know that the consequent phrase within a section often reaches a greater height, has a wider leap, and/or has a greater dynamic.
You can also contrast melodic rhythms between sections or phrases: long held notes on the chorus and shorter note values for the verse.
