11

Phrases and Form

In This Chapter

◆Understanding the parts of a piece of music

◆Analyzing song structure

◆Discovering head tunes

◆Learning longer musical forms

Now that you know all about melodies and chord progressions, it’s time to think
about the entire piece of music, from start to finish. A piece of music, after all,
is more than just an eight-measure melody (and accompanying chords) played
once. Most pieces repeat a melody several times, and often contain more than
one melody.

When you’re constructing a song (or a longer piece of music), you have to con-
sider the overall form of the piece. If you have a main melody, do you need to
repeat that melody—and if so, where, and how many times? Do you need to
add a second, contrasting melody? What about some sort of buffer or break
between the two melodies? And how do you work your way into the main
melody—and how do you wrap things up at the end?

All these questions pertain to what we call song form.Song form is the sum of all
the parts that make up your song, usually in some sort of logical order.

Think of song form as the grammar you use when writing music. Just as you
can analyze the pieces and parts of a sentence, you can also analyze the pieces
and parts of a song and, not surprisingly, there are some common parts you
probably want to use.

There are also some established forms you might want to use; especially if
you’re writing classical music—symphonies, cantatas, minuets, and the like.
We’ll discuss these classical forms in this chapter, too, for when you’re ready to
take on some seriouscomposing tasks!

Chapter