by Mark Simos
Song form. Lastly, structure manifests at the broadest level as song form. Here, though more removed than phrase structure from close interactions with the facets, structure aligns directly with the world of content. Genres and styles are built on repertoires of song forms like verse/chorus, AABA songs in musical theater, blues stanzas, and the like. These song forms orient listeners and guide writers to genre, expected themes, and even emotional and lyrical tone.
Knowledge of a range of different song forms and their properties is essential to make effective decisions about song structure at all levels. It’s beyond the scope of this book to catalog these forms and their attributes, however. You can benefit greatly by studying example songs as models, replicating their structures but using your own song material. In the rest of this chapter we’ll explore phrase structure and motivic structure, across the multiple facets of the song.
Starting from Structure
Since structure touches all facets, which all touch each other, you might consider structure our Fifth Facet—the George Martin to our Fab Four. One key difference, though, is that structure rarely emerges directly from encounters with the sensory world of content. Rather, structure—at all levels—tends to emerge as we work with fragments of melody, chord progressions, or lyric lines. Thus, we’ve depicted structure at the center or hub of the Compass: directly touching the facets through creative operations of unfolding or fulfilling structure, but resonating with theme and content—the World—primarily through the facets.
Nonetheless, the songwriting process can begin from structure as a starting point. In project-based writing, structural requirements, constraints, and challenges may accompany requirements about topic or theme, genre, tempo and groove, etc. In writing for specific markets and formats, for theatrical situations, etc., structural requirements may be dominant factors constraining your compositional choices. If you learn to maneuver through them, and enjoy them, such constraints can lead to extremely efficient and productive writing; so many decisions have been made for you!
Our writing can also be sparked by structures discovered in example or model songs. Here, what inspires us about the structural expression is especially likely to be grounded in material of the facets: chords, lyrics, melody. We might want to try a particular rhyme scheme, or use a distinctive sectional form as a template for a new song. Together with listening and analysis, writing to examples as structural models is a great way to learn song form.
Whether writing from a model or example song as a learning exercise, or for the marketplace, it’s good to avoid actual plagiarism! When imitating one structural aspect of a model song, change structural elements in other facets. The more dramatic these other changes, the more you’ll learn about working with that particular structure. (A student once brought in a song directly using the intricate rhyme scheme of Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue”—but I made sure she changed the chord progression, subject matter, phrase lengths, etc.).
Structural Challenges
Given workable ways of notating structure—such as rhyme schemes or phrase maps, like aabaac—you can also work directly with structural patterns themselves. This becomes both a tool for study and a basis for an advanced form of challenge writing: i.e., create unique patterns for which you know of no existing song, then try to write to them. Fair warning: you’ll feel a bit nerdy if you try this! But even the possibility of this approach is a testament to the power of notation in creative work.
Phrase Structure
The temporal framework discussed at the start of the “Rhythm” chapter begins with pulse, tempo, meter, and groove. As this temporal horizon widens to phrases, sections, and overall song form, subdivisions of time are gradually felt less rhythmically than structurall ‿ : through balance, expectations, symmetry, closure/lack of closure. The level of this structural experience of musical time that interacts most closely with the facets, for both writer and listener, is the phrase structure of the song.
We set a lyric line with a certain number of stresses, or unfold a melody over a certain number of beats, in the context of a common structural phrase. Though this phrase roughly coincides with a sung lyric line, we can shift that line in relation to the structural phrase: start the line before or after the downbeat of the phrase, run the line across the phrase, or leave space in the phrase after the vocal line comes to its breath.
Exercise 8.1. Shift a Lyric Line against the Phrase
Take a five-stress lyric line and speak it rhythmically, feeling it initially in the context of a two-measure structural phrase. Gradually shift the line backward in the phrase, feeling the phrase begin before the first lyric syllable. Continue this until you feel the length of the structural phrase itself shift. Practicing this without the support of chords or an accompanying track helps you internalize and strengthen your sense for the structural phrase as an independent element.
I find the informal notation below useful for this exercise. Numbers refer to beats in the measure; italicized numbers represent the starts of measures. You can place dots (•) at will in the lyric line to line up with beats, in spots where rhythmic placement of the syllable gets tricky to follow.
By leaving certain numbers out (always including the “1”s to account for each measure), you can quickly map the felt phrase length of a lyric line, while leaving the precise placement of certain syllables open if that specific lyric rhythm is not yet decided:
As you pull the lyric line backward, add in pauses as needed so that the line still feels well-set and expressive of the intended meaning. For the first few moves, you will be able to accommodate the shifting lyric line placement within the structural phrase as is. At a certain point, though, you’ll feel the need to “add more time” to the phrase. At that point you are manipulating the structural phrase directly—“changing time.”
Independence in Phrase Structure
Rhythmic aspects beyond the rhythmic phrase, such as accompaniment and groove, can blend into our sense of the phrase structure of the song. But an even stronger connection is felt with the chords. Structural phrases tend to be marked most definitively by chordal movement—a consequence of the “seamlessness” of the chord progression, which links harmonic flow with purely temporal flow. Because chords generally move more slowly than vocal melody, because chords accompany the song, and because the sense of the chords is seamless and ever-present, chords align closely to phrase structure and even sectional form. Most often, chord changes cue starts and ends of phrases for our ears. In fact, many songwriters can only conceive of and work actively with phrase structure through the chords; harmony and phrase duration are tightly locked together.
This creates a potential limitation. Listener expectations can mark phrases based on anticipated symmetries and regularity of phrasing, or on genre-specific forms (such as the archetypal ternary 12-bar blues pattern). If you’re writing within these conventions, you can let the norms do the work of establishing the phrasing for you. But to write something innovative or irregular in phrasing, songwriters need the skill and flexibility to mark phrase structure with any combination of elements. This requires being able to feel, and shift, phrase structure independently of material in any facet—including the chord progression.
While struggling to articulate this concept, I stumbled on a compelling analogy in the domain of juggling. You learn juggling by building up: first juggling one ball or club, then two, then three. Recently, as I practiced juggling my one lone club, I was putting my whole body into it: bending my knees as I caught the club, giving a cute little lift with my torso as I tossed it again. My juggling teacher, Jen Agans, said: “Actually, jugglers need to keep their body still and let the movement happen at the periphery, with the clubs. If you mimic the movement of the club with your body, it will feel good, as long as you have just one club. But as soon as you’re juggling three, that will work against you. Your body won’t know which club to track with its extra movements.”
Consider songwriting via the facets as a k
ind of juggling, where rhythm, lyric, melody, and chords can be “tossed” independently, creating cool cascades and fountains in their interacting patterns. You need something to “hold still” so that all these elements can shift freely in relation to each other. That something is the phrase structure of the song—the temporal landscape you retain in mind’s ear while shifting lyrics, melodies, or chords.
Cultivating independence between chord progression and phrase structure directly affects our range of options for writing chord progressions. It allows us to work more flexibly with harmonic rhythm—for example, moving chords on unexpected, especially weak metric beats. This internal sense must be even stronger to use asymmetrical, unbalanced forms such as odd-beat or odd-bar phrases, or sections with unbalanced numbers of phrases. You also need this skill for compositional process, to change durations of phrases by intention in the course of developing or revising a song. A simple technique is to take a section written with regular, symmetrical phrasing and experiment with adding or removing durations to various combinations of lines. The following exercise involves weak-beat metric placement and, accordingly, odd time signatures.
Exercise 8.2. Shift a Chord Sequence against a Structural Phrase
Write a four-measure chord sequence18 that includes some shifts on weak
metric beats, e.g., beats 2 or 4 in 4/4 time. The following harmonic rhythm pattern is an example:
Place this sequence into varied phrase structures—without changing the sequence’s harmonic rhythm internally, but only the duration at the end completing the structural phrase. The exercise is illustrated, for the rhythmic pattern above, in figure 8.1.
FIG 8.1 Shifting Weak-Beat Chord Movement and Phrase Structure
The first line sets the chords to the harmonic rhythm, with weak-beat movement in measures 2 and 4. The second line reinterprets the sequence with odd-beat time signatures, such that the weak-beat chord moves now are heard to take place on strong metric beats of new measures. This transformation does not change the overall length of the structural phrase, just requires you to hear it a different way. (For this very reason, though, it may perhaps be the more difficult of these transformations.) Lines three and four shorten and lengthen the overall structural phrase respectively, responding to the shifted chord.
A flexible sense for structural phrases is essential for working with a wider range of functional and modal chord progressions. Progressions take on harmonic and tonal meaning in relation to phrasing; once we can shift progressions relative to structural phrases, and vice versa, we can not only shift metric placement of individual chords, but “recolor” entire cycles or sequences in a rich variety of ways.
Motivic Structure
Structural phrases divide up the stream of musical time. As we write songs, we fill these phrases with lyrics, melodies, and chords. These elements are also streams of a sort, which we in turn divide into units. These units are characterized not simply by duration, however, as with structural phrases, but by a succession of motives: distinctive figures that attract our attention and
play a structural role in the song. Motives—the “atoms” of structure as it were—and motivic structure, embodied as patterns of repeating and transformed motives, can be expressed in material of each respective facet: in lyrics, melody, chords, or in rhythmic patterns of any of these elements. Even distinct changes in the length of structural phrases themselves can become a motivic element that interacts with motivic patterns in other facets.
In the writing process, we can create motivic structure in complementary ways: bottom up, via transformations or operations on individual motives, building (or unfolding) them into larger structural units; or top down, filling (or fulfilling) overall structural patterns with motivic material.
Motives vs. Song Seeds
Though motives, like song seeds, can be expressed in each facet, motives are not quite the same as song seeds. In process terms, seeds are fragments captured via discovery. Just as some song seeds may arrive as composites of multiple facets, a song seed might already contain several motives, or a motive bundled with an interesting transformation. In fact, the essence of the seed’s interest may be the motivic transformation itself.
To skillfully develop a seed of this kind, you may need to break it into smaller, individual motives when composing gets under way. Not all seeds function as motives in the final song. A hook or title may have a key place in overall song form, yet not be intrinsic to motivic structure. And just as not all seeds are motives, not all motives begin as seeds that we catch or stumble upon. We can construct or compose motives.
Unfolding: Motives into Structure
We work with motives by repeating, contrasting, or transforming them in various ways. Though an individual motive may have a distinctive figural quality that attracts our attention, we often recognize motives because of their repetition and transformation in the song’s structure. Indeed, those transformations often create the sense of that structure for the listener. The structure may also emerge incrementally as the writer unfolds the motive into larger phrases or sections.
We can create diverse patterns simply by repeating and interchanging contrasting motives in various ways, within various sectional structures. For example, patterns with two motives a and b could include aaab, abab, abbb, or abbabb. But motivic structure can go deeper than just successions of distinct motives. The perceived identity of musical motives (including sound aspects of lyrics) is a continuum: from exact repetition, to similarity with variation, to strong contrast. We often create different motives for a pattern by transforming a single motive. Thus, in an abab pattern, we might generate the b motivic idea by transforming a in some way, minor or dramatic. The abab pattern can be intensified through higher contrast between a and b, and greater similarity between respective repetitions of a and b. The same pattern can be made more subtle by reducing the contrast between a and b motives (moving toward aaaa), or by loosening the match between a and/or b repetitions (moving toward abcb, abac, or abcd). I like to compare such variations to color patterns in textiles: e.g., setting blue against red, vs. pastel blue against sky blue.
There’s an almost limitless variety of these motivic relations and operations. As with learning a library of larger song forms, it will greatly enliven your songwriting to learn and practice a repertoire of these structuring and transformation moves. Many have been examined extensively in literature on classical composition or jazz improvisation. Jack Perricone’s Melody in Songwriting (Berklee Press, 2000) discussed some of these devices in a songwriting context, primarily in melody; while their aesthetic effects in rhyme schemes, sectional line-length patterns, and other lyric aspects have been explored by authors such as Pat Pattison (Songwriting: Essential Guide to Rhyming 2nd edition, Berklee Press, 2014) and Andrea Stolpe (Popular Lyric Writing, Berklee Press, 2007). The 360° framework allows us to work more independently with motivic patterns, and to better understand their common and varying effects in each facet, and at different levels of structure.
Question/Answer Phrases
The smallest scale at which you can see unfolding take place is at the level of a couplet (extending this notion beyond lyric only): a matched set of lines, or phrases, that sound connected as question and answer, call and response. In theory, you could build a section entirely from phrases with little or no motivic connection, or through-composed. But humans are pattern makers; this applies to listener’s ear and composer’s voice alike. In practice, it’s almost impossible to generate an answering phrase without applying some structural or motivic transformation to the question. Even a short melodic or rhythmic seed of a few bars’ length may form around a motivic device that gives it integrity and interest.
Exercise 8.3. Answer the Question, Question the Answer!
Start with a beginning phrase in any facet—your motivic statement. First treat it as a question, and generate, responsively, an answer to it. Try for a response between a direct repetition with minor variation and a through-
composed response (answer with an idea of the same length!). Allow your answer phrase to arise by free association and improvisation. Let the original phrase resonate in your mind; wait till you “hear” an answer in mind’s ear, then quickly record or transcribe it, without thinking much about it. Try several of these, then reflect on them. You’ll likely find you’ve applied some motivic development techniques, even without realizing it. Motivic operations name and formalize patterns we use and hear intuitively—the natural ways we think musically.
Now for the most important part of the exercise! Go back to your starting motive, but this time treat it as the answer phrase—that is, generate a “question” phrase to precede it, and that makes it sound like an “answer” heard in that new context. To do this, you must be able to hear the motive in a fresh way.
Unfolding in All Directions
Through exercise 8.3, you experience an important aspect of working with motivic structure. Most motivic operations are reversible, and so the same musical material can feel like a question or answer depending on context. When we unfold structure in a bottom-up way, we need to keep this principle in mind. Often, our seed ideas will be the answers to which we must find the questions, rather than the other way round! That is, in composing, we must often work in the opposite direction from how time will flow experientially for the listener in the final song.