RECOGNISING A SONG'S STRUCTURE
All songs, even very simple ones, are made up of different parts that are repeated. The way these parts are combined is called the structure of a song.
In popular music, songs must find a balance between excessive repetitiveness (which aids familiarity but can cause boredom) and variation (which will bring about surprise and generate interest but may make it difficult to track and recognise these variations). Composers have to look for a "magic formula" for the structure of their songs if they want them to be hits.
Some types of structure that have been very popular at different historical moments, have been shunned cornered at other times. This shows that musical structures are also subject to fashion. During the 1920's to 40's, the majority of music that was composed, including swing music, mostly followed certain characteristic patterns. These ways of organising the parts of the songs worked very well on the dance floor and, even today, these are the pieces that are played during our dance parties.
It should be made quite clear that there are compositions, especially within classical music, that have very complex structures, with different parts (called movements), each of which has a structure with different sections.
In this section, however, we will only refer to the structures that we usually find in swing music.
What are the most common structures in swing music?
Although there are many possible structures, there are four that, because they worked so very well, are the most common. These structures are called AABA, ABAC, ABAB and 12-bar blues).
You can see an example of each structure in the following videos:
Do you know how to recognize these structures when you hear a piece of music or, even more importantly, when you are dancing? Do you know why they are named this way?
Understanding and, above all, being able to perceive these structures greatly simplifies musicality and musical prediction. That is why we feel you may be interested in knowing just what they are made up of.
The first step is to know the basics of a swing song. That is why we recommend, before moving on, looking at the page where we explain what these essential components are and how we refer to them.
If you are already familiar with the terminology and the basic elements, it is time to go into a detailed analysis of how pieces are structured.
If you want to delve deeper into this topic you can now visit the page What is a sections?