Songwriting Instruction – Basic Song Structures

By Guest Blogger Steven Wagenheim

In my last article, I gave a bit of an introduction to song structure. In this article, I’m going to tackle three common song structures and hopefully give you a decent idea of how to go about utilizing them.

I mentioned that a gentleman by the name of Phil Sims (again, no relationship to the football player) taught me about AAB form many years ago. Actually, it was 1984. Hard to believe 25 years have gone by. Anyway, AAB form is where you take a main musical idea for the first part of your song, repeat it for the second part and then for the third part, slip in a totally different idea musically. An example of an AAB song would be “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” written by Burt Bacharach.

The beginning of the song that begins, “Raindrops keep falling on my head…” is the first A section. The second part of the song that begins “So I just did me some talkin’ to the sun…” is the second A section. The reason it’s another A section is because it has the exact same melody as the first A section. The part of the song that begins “But there’s one thing I know…” is the B section. The reason it’s the B section is because the musical idea is different from the A section. The melody is different. If you listen to the song, you can clearly hear this.

AAB is used by most of the old timers of writing. It is the so called “correct” way of writing a song, according to many composers. I’m not so sure I totally agree with this theory, but I will say this much. If you can master the AAB form of writing, you can probably write just about any other song structure that there is.

Another popular song structure is verse, chorus. If you listen to a lot of rock and roll, you will find this structure all over the place. In many songs you will find verse, verse, chorus. Now, if this seems to be similar to AAB, it is, but there is a big difference between the two. With AAB the A section is the main part of the song. With verse, verse, chorus, the chorus is the main part of the song. So while the structures seem to be similar, the feel of the song is totally different for each.

An example of verse, chorus would be “Highway To Hell” by AC/DC. The verse starts out “Living easy living free.” The chorus, about nine lines later is simply a few lines “Highway To Hell” repeated. Yes, that’s the whole chorus. A chorus does not have to be complicated. This is a perfect example of one that is very simple. An example of verse, verse, chorus would be “Brother Louie” by Stories. The first verse begins “She was black as the night…” The second verse begins “Nothing bad, it was good…” The chorus is the section that begins “Louie Louie Louie, Louie…” It’s not my favorite song of all time but it’s a classic example of verse, verse, chorus. The verse, chorus form is commonly referred to as AB. However, I feel that verse, chorus more correctly identifies it.

Another song structure, though not as common, is AAA. This is very hard to write well. As I said in an earlier article, a lot of Bob Dylan songs are simply AAA. To pull these type of songs off, you need a really compelling story and set of lyrics. The reason is obvious. You don’t have a chorus or B section to break things up. So musically, AAA can get to be pretty monotonous. This is why you won’t find a lot of people writing in AAA unless they are either extremely talented or don’t know any better. I should know. I used to write some pretty crappy AAA tunes about 30 years ago.

Okay, here is what’s important that you take away from this article. It doesn’t really matter what song structure you use. What DOES matter is that you understand each one, how it works, what it sounds like and how to use it in a song.

The rest will come.

To YOUR Songwriting Success

Steven Wagenheim

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