Basic Music Structure

[nickdrake88]

Ive been kinda browsing the net for structure techniques in composition in music. Obviously I am an ableton user, chances are I make electronic music, but id like to get creative with structure. Most Drum and bass, dub step structures for example use 32 bar intros, then drop. Those are higher BPMs, is why the intro are so long, I'm assuming? If you are making hip hop or R&b, pop you stick with a 9-16 bar intro, verse chorus ect. Alot of the references and videos Ive been seeing seem to be sticky terms and subjective advice. For instances you dont necessarily hear the term "drop" in hip hop, as you wouldn't necessarily hear the term "hook" in dub step. How do you distinctly differentiate what a verse and chorus is without describing it lyrically? If I were to ask someone to numerically write out bar structures for music based on genre, would that be to subjective itself to ask?

[yur2die4]

I think it depends on the material for one thing.

A nice exercise is to just break up a few tracks in Live to their sections and then look at the similarities/differences.

Try to have Arrangement View open and put up markers for verse1, chorus1, etc with reasonable space between then (to fit any unusual suspects). Then line those sections up on those markers for each track

[nickdrake88]

I have tried this exercise a few times, where it began to get difficult was, like I said differentiating what the artist did, like was this the Verse repeated or pre Chorus? How should I title the sections as I break them, when im not exactly sure how to specifically define the terms myself.

[yur2die4]

Commonly you'll end up doing a verse. (Might sometimes start with a chorus)

Then either slide right into a chorus, a chorus usually hits hard whether it directly follows the verse section, Or there is a couple transition between the verse and chorus. I usually have a flag for that pre-chorus.

I'll also have a marker for the after-chorus. This part often reflects a signature of some sort. It can be very short or very long. If the person is a pianist, they might throw in some goofy assed piano hook, or if they are a talented vocalist, there might be vocal repeats or layers that are after the chorus. Sometimes it is total silence... So you can fall back into..

Verse 2. Repeat the pattern one more time.

After chorus 2 is often times the middle 8 or whatever you wanna call it. They do whatever, change it up from the routine.

Then either back to chorus or verse. This last section might amp up the intensity. Everything's been said and done, now you beat the song senseless with acrobatics. Leave an impression. A common practice in some music is, as it comes out of that middle 8 and into this last part, they might remove the beat and sing along to only a clap before coming back in full force.


So depending on style, popular music usually follows that format. In cases of rapping or rapping+vocalist, they might add two verses and two choruses to the equation or something so they can take turns.


Believe it or not, the best way to get REALLY good at recognizing these things is to go look up the billboard top 10 of country music. 8 times out of 10, those songs are blatantly obvious in their structure. Once you experience that, the more subtle applications in other genres become much more clear.

[ImNotDedYet]

Ive been kinda browsing the net for structure techniques in composition in music. Obviously I am an ableton user, chances are I make electronic music, but id like to get creative with structure. Most Drum and bass, dub step structures for example use 32 bar intros, then drop. Those are higher BPMs, is why the intro are so long, I'm assuming? If you are making hip hop or R&b, pop you stick with a 9-16 bar intro, verse chorus ect. Alot of the references and videos Ive been seeing seem to be sticky terms and subjective advice. For instances you dont necessarily hear the term "drop" in hip hop, as you wouldn't necessarily hear the term "hook" in dub step. How do you distinctly differentiate what a verse and chorus is without describing it lyrically? If I were to ask someone to numerically write out bar structures for music based on genre, would that be to subjective itself to ask?

Long intros in dance/club music were originally made for the DJs to be able to slowly mix in the song. It's not as important in hip hop as transitions are usually more direct and scratch based from one song to the next.

[clydesdale]

Interesting question and one I have been contemplating recently in regards to collaborative work. How picky should I be if something resolves in 24 bars when it's supposed to be "trance" or "techno"? When is 1 bar ok or 3 or 11 or 27? There is most definitely a structure-- and you'll certainly find the structure when warping any EDM in 8 bar chunks. You could also do the same for pop, country or classical and find the same thing though with possibly greater variation (it's fairly typical to find EDM with a multiple of 32 bars). As a musician/artist, you should probably think about what you want to express through your music and the arrangement in which you wish to express it. That means do whatever you like-- you wouldn't be the first to do asynchronous, atonal or rigidly rhythmic work by a long shot. As a producer, you should perhaps think about what's going to get your music played. That may mean being true to the genre, pleasing the fan base or meeting the needs of a DJ.

To your other point about bar structures, words like chorus, verse, and bridge are terms describing parts of a song but the parts could, and are, just as easily described as A, B and C. Whether they are variations on a theme or completely different but complimentary ideas is largely at the discretion of the musician. Classical, blues, jazz, electronic all have standard structures as well as non-standard and outliers too. If you look at the standards you can get your objective view. If you look a genre as a whole, it's going to be largely subjective as you've said though some things will always be true e.g. a waltz is always 3/4.

[dewaldo]

There is no better teacher than songs you like. Count beats and bars, listen for when things change and for how long the change lasts, picture the song on a timeline type view in your head, rinse and repeat. Eventually you will get a sense for when things should change (usually multiples of 4 or 8 bars), a sense of when fills (or dropouts) should come, and the like. Anything you read about arrangement will not help if you don't understand what people are saying in the context of a real song. So listen, again and again, until you develop an intuitive sense of things that you can apply yourself.