Song Form

Whatever happened to the old Verse-Chorus-Bridge format? I miss the “middle 8.” Call me old fashioned, if you will, but it is such a classic form. AABA… or ABABCAB. It never seems to run dry. I guess I’ve worked with it so much I’m naturally inclined to sculpt my thoughts that way. It’s a convenient storytelling format: set the frame, fill out the story, interject in contrast, wrap it up.

I do like to work with other forms—and also if I work with this form I like to see what I can do to vary it slightly. That adds to the intrigue. Well, if Mozart worked in Sonata-Allegro form for most of his career, I can stick with this standard song form. So sue me! Right?

But thinking about it makes me listen to what is out there now with attention to the form … and it seems like form has been tossed away. First of all, am I on target to say that harmonically people are not using all the chords anymore? Perhaps just one or two. Seems like it’s more about the production sound, the drum beat, the rapper, a riff. Also, music seems to be consumed in tiny snippets—with contrasting elements crashing against each other. Well, Frank Zappa used to do that; he interspersed his songs with electronic collages—but that was in the days when they had an “album” format consciousness. Now it’s every song for itself. And people probably only listen to a few seconds of it. I certainly am guilty of that. 30 seconds is plenty to get the gist of it! Who has time for more?

I probably have to do a lot more listening. There’s too much to listen to.