Talk:Song structure

"Variation on the basic structure"

This paragraph is extremely unclear. It says "compound AABA forms" but the link has no mentioning of what compounds mean. "Variations such as a1 and a2 can also be used." - I have no idea what this means. AAA format - isn't this what's called a "strophic form"? I think it should have its own section. Here it's not explained properly at all. Examples are provided for AABA form, but how is that exactly "a variation" on the basic structure? ABA - I fail to see how is this different from the verse-chorus structure described above. The same goes for ABAB and ABABCAB — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.125.145.87 (talk) 20:56, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

What century?

"Many popular songs, particularly from early in this century, are in a verse and a chorus (refrain) form. Most popular songs from the middle of the century consist only of a chorus."[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marius63 (talk • contribs) 13:05, 20 April 2013 (UTC) )

I made a clarification to the first paragraph then realized the whole thing could use a good rewrite. The tone is not at all appropriate for an encyclopedia. Good Luck to you! 207.69.137.41 04:05, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Question

"The bridge may then replace the 3rd verse or precede it. In the latter case it delays an expected chorus." - Does this make sense? The two cases you mention are (as far as I can see) VCVCBC or VCVCBV. In the second one the bridge delays an expected verse. Neither of these delay an expected chorus. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.184.246.230 (talk) 18:15, 19 August 2007

Verse

It seem the link Verse as a main article to be false! --A4 21:14, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

How so?! Hyacinth (talk) 07:09, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

It was to verse rather than verse-chorus form. Hyacinth (talk)

Section for chorus

Chorus is currently explained in the lead section as one of the primary elements, but it doesn’t have its own section in the body. It makes me wonder, if I just look at the TOC, What about the chorus? There should be a Chorus section between Pre-chorus and Bridge; maybe move some material down from the lead. MJ (t • c) 01:44, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Middle eight section

It seems like the section describing the "middle eight" is misusing the term "bridge." From reading the rest of the article, it seems like they are actually referring to the pre-chorus. In either case, I think somebody should look into the terms used. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.36.94.35 (talk) 19:24, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Chorus / Refrain as different things

This article, and the related article Refrain, mostly seem to talk of chorus and refrain as being the same thing. The Chorus section even links to "Main article: Refrain". There is a mention in the Talk of Refrain that the Chorus article was split and part of it was merged with Refrain. (Actually for some of this info I had to follow the link Talk:Refrain/Old history from Chorus but I could not actually find the history of that discussion.)

From elsewhere it seems that Chorus and Refrain are distinct concepts. For example http://musiced.about.com/od/othermusicgenres/p/partsofasong.htm and also the online course I am on at the moment treat chorus and refrain as different things (www.coursera.org - Songwriting from 1-3-2013 - note that I am putting this in as reference/information not advertising).

I suggest that Chorus and Refrain are treated as being distinct (though similar) concepts, with separate sections in this article, and separate articles of their own. FrankSier (talk) 23:26, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

"Most popular songs from the middle of the century consist only of a chorus."!?

The end of the Chorus section at the moment says: "Most popular songs from the middle of the century consist only of a chorus." This seems an extraordinary claim. I was assuming at first that the century being referred to was the 20th Century - but even that is not clear. There is a reference, but it is not online - can anyone confirm that the source does actually say that? Also, the quote seems a bit disconnected from the flow of the article.

The first part of the quote: "Many popular songs, particularly from early in this century, are in a verse and a chorus (refrain) form." also seems a bit strange and not put in context - and again, which century are we talking about?

Some examples would be useful.

Maybe it should be removed if it is not clarified. FrankSier (talk) 23:40, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Maybe the confusion stems from jazz players who play songs through numerous times, improvising new melodies over the chords, and who refer to each run-through as a "chorus". —Wahoofive (talk) 06:39, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Provided by the only source or reference used, it might be expected that the quote be the most clear statement in the article.

For example, the first sentence

"Song structure or the musical forms of songs in popular music are typically sectional, repeating forms, such as strophic form."

fails to indicate which country's popular music is under discussion.

Hyacinth (talk) 21:13, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 25 June 2014

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus, leaning towards a consensus against moving. Jenks24 (talk) 13:05, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

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Song structure (popular music) → Song structure – Unnecessary disambiguation. I understand that the reason for the dab is the possibility that articles on the structure of non-popular songs will be written eventually, but I suspect that this possibility is merely theoretical and such articles are not realistically to be expected. My lay impression is that the overwhelming majority of literature about the structure of songs is about popular songs, not art or folk songs, and that there is not nearly enough encyclopedical content to write about the structure of non-popular songs to justify concurrent articles, possibly. That said, I would not be surprised to be wrong on this account. Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 13:11, 3 July 2014 (UTC) Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:33, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Strong support. The normal process would be to move the content, flesh out the article at that location with information about all sorts of songs, and then siphon off the content into daughter articles at titles like this if the main article got too long. Red Slash 23:42, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually that wouldn't be normal in this case, I have never seen a classical music article grow out of a pop music one. An egg is more likely to grow out of an orange. Art song#Art song formal design would be a more likely incubator. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:52, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually it has frequently happened, save that they used to call them folk songs rather than pop songs :). --Richhoncho (talk) 14:33, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Misreading again, I missed the WP bit, thought you were talking about the music..Apologies. --Richhoncho (talk) 14:44, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Umm, this isn't talking about classical music at all. We're talking about making this an article dealing with song structure. There's not a reason in the world to assume that just one genre of Western music should be the predominant focal point rather than one of many. Red Slash 20:24, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Erm, why the Eurocentricism? If this article is to be restricted to Western music, then it should still have a delimiter (such as "Song structure (Western music)"), to show that it means to exclude the music of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, and music of non-Western cultures in North and South America, where a multitude of song forms are found.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:35, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Jerome Kohl, could you clarify who you were referring to, please? I don't think this article should have any limitations other than being about songs. Red Slash 00:47, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

That's fine with me. However, you had said, "There's not a reason in the world to assume that just one genre of Western music should be the predominant focal point rather than one of many." I read this to mean "one among many genres of Western music", hence my question.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:10, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

• Strong oppose Art song#Art song formal design exists. Of course there's plentiful material in books on Song structure (classical music), such a standalone article could probably be constructed linking off to existing articles on each genre "structure of the madrigal", "structure of the lied", "structure of the art song". It's just that we only have a handful of classical music editors. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:33, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

• Comment there is also the classical music topic. Is pop music the primary topic? Or should the redirect just be converted to a disambiguation page, because there is no primary topic? Or should an overview article be created to cover both classical and pop? -- 65.94.171.126 (talk) 06:38, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
• Support per Red Slash. Unify the articles and break out as necessary. Musical structure is musical structure, doesn't change according to genre (or key!), some of it might be a little simpler, but that's another issue and very much original research. --Richhoncho (talk) 14:33, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree. I'm not suggesting this article should stay exclusively focused on popular music, not at all. I think that turning the article into a general survey of song structures from all genres would be a good idea. The strophic form is found across genres. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:16, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I remain skeptical. Right now Song structure (art song) for Robert Schumann redirecting to Art song#Art song formal design would be a better target than this article. Guillaume de Machaut is way outside any post-Baroque tradition and really belongs in Song structure (medieval song) which now could redirect better to Medieval music than this article. I honestly would leave Song structure as a dab. And if those after Schumann or Machaut really do want popular music rather than Song structure (art song) or Gamelan music or Traditional Tuvaluan song structure then they have the option at the dab. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:13, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. This is the kind of discussion that can help me make up my mind whether to support or oppose this move. More opinions along this line would be really helpful.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 15:48, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

The crucial point which I forgot to mention is that currently, Song structure is not a disambiguation page, it redirects straight to this article! --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:17, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

• Comment. I'm not sure whether to support or oppose this move, but if it were implemented, I would hope to see sections added on song structures from many other cultures and eras. Florian is certainly wrong to think there "is not nearly enough encyclopedical content to write about the structure of non-popular songs to justify concurrent articles" (assuming a narrow definition of "popular" to refer to commercial music of the 20th and 21st centuries, which is certainly the focus of the present article), though I notice he qualifies this statement with a "possibly". The available material on the structures of the songs of Guillaume de Machaut and Robert Schumann alone would be enough to sustain separate articles for each of them, for example. Furthermore, since 20th/21st-century popular music represents only the tiniest blip on the historical radar (pace the attitudes of its many enthusiasts and promoters), I would expect that, in the fullness of time, this aspect would come to be only a very small section of an article surveying song structures from all historical periods (Ancient Greece, the Song dynasty in China, etc.) and geographical areas (for example, songs of the Indigenous Australians, shamanistic songs of Siberia). I think I would like to see some indication of intent about what this renamed article is to become, before I could come down on one side or the other.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:02, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Good point about non-Western music, I totally forgot about this; I admit in shame to a blatant Eurocentrism that I thought I was not as prone to. (That said, at least I am aware that the history of Western art music spans centuries and of music in general millennia, while the Western popular music is focused on measly decades.) I already assumed that art song has an extensive literature (hence my admittance of doubt), but was not aware that theoretical classical music coverage is still far too little developped. Thanks for your comment; that's exactly why I alerted you. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:17, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

In light of this, turning Song structure into a proper disambiguation would be a better way to deal with the awkward redirect, which was really what originally spurred my proposal. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:24, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Apology accepted, on behalf of all the world's peoples ;-) I am puzzled by your statement that "theoretical classical music coverage is still far too little developed". If you mean with respect to song composition, I am astonished that you can think this. There is an enormous theoretical literature on 19th-century Lieder alone (as I hinted above), and similarly large bodies of work on other categories of so-called "classical" song. Not all of this literature is concentrated on specifically formal aspects, of course, but I think you will find it more than ample to support separate articles (should they come into existence in the future). As far as European music is concerned, I am personally more interested in the medieval repertory, where similarly there has been a huge amount of work published. I think you can see where my line of thinking is headed, if the idea is to make this an all-encompassing article.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:32, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I meant the coverage on Wikipedia! I was referring to the total absence so far of separate song structure articles with regard to non-Western, non-popular forms, especially art song and other vocal music, which caused my ignorant initial comment. Well, at least there is a section for the structure of the art song already, but if the literature is so vast, it is surprising that the section is so modest, and it should indeed be easy enough to develop it into a full article. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:36, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I would be fine with either solution. Either a collective article or a suite of separate ones with Song structure as a disambiguation. Just to get rid of that silly redirect. What would you consider preferrable? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:45, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I understand you now. I think one reason that art-song articles have been so slow in coming is the strong bias toward instrumental music on the part of present-day listeners to so-called "classical" music. I have just been busy redressing this imbalance in the list of important musical works on the Baroque article, where opera was almost totally absent. (Church music was none too well represented, either, which is quite ridiculous.) Today's listeners, of course, gravitate to the keyboard works, concertos, and chamber sonatas of the period, as if these were actually important. Going back any further in history, and ignoring vocal music is insupportable, and yet too many "early music" concerts today are still overloaded with instrumentals. The academic literature is not so out of balance, but I suspect a much larger share of Wikipedia editors in this area are "music lovers" rather than scholars.

I would still like to hear from other editors on this subject, but I am beginning to lean in the direction of a suite of separate articles with a central disambiguation page. This would put me in opposition to the current proposal, but please try to persuade me otherwise, if you have got strong feelings on the subject.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:06, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

As I have already tried to indicate, I am open to either solution, and am willing to change my vote – even based on your expert assessment alone, given my ignorance of music theory, and lack of global perspective. You are certainly correct that the bias towards instrumental music is due to the bias of editors (besides, a curious circumstance, compared to how vocal music is far more popular than instrumental music in the grander scheme of things, and, as you note, historically prevalent; indeed non-vocal-centred music, I have learned, is a relatively recent development).

Certainly, I can see the merits of a suite: It would mean that this article could be left alone and there would be sufficient space to develop other areas elsewhere, as suggested by In ictu oculi to be more realistic. A collective article, despite the potential for synergy, could easily grow far too crowded. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:23, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

A third possibility would be to have an overview article (instead of a disambiguation page) functioning as a "hub", with the suite of more detailed articles.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:39, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Good. In that case, this article could still be left substantially alone, and the overview article developped elsewhere. This would allow more organic development as the overview article could function as a general outline and incubator of more detailed articles. (Unfortunately, I cannot be of help with the dirty groundwork, i. e. content, at all.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 04:14, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this puts me back on the knife edge, so far as deciding whether to support or oppose the change of article title is concerned. On the one hand, if the title is to be changed, we now have two options: (1) changing this to a "core article" with the more general title would require splitting the current material out into a summary here and a specialized article on popular-music song forms, and adding sections here on various historical and geographical areas; (2) the proposal as originally constituted could result in an unmanageably large single article. On the other hand, rejecting the proposal and keeping the current title still implies that a disambiguation page should be established and an ambitious project launched to create a number of sister articles dealing with song forms in a variety of times and places.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:13, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. I'm off of the fence, and here is why: I have spent some time surveying the relevant Wikipedia articles. This one is in fact quite idiosyncratic, as well as being minutely detailed. Expanding it at this same level of narrative to encompass all varieties of song would certainly result in the longest article on Wikipedia, possibly by an order of magnitude. To return to that word "idiosyncratic", the reason we have been failing to find "song structure" articles in other areas (particularly for art songs) is that musical form is usually approached from a different direction than this article takes. Going back up the hierarchical tree structure, this difference is visible in the "mother" article, Song, which divides into three main branches:

1. Art songs
2. Folk songs, and
3. Popular songs.

Note that "popular songs", unlike the other two categories, does not link to a master article of its own. (To be fair, the other two categories do not branch to parallel topics, either.) Now, "Art song" provides links to a modest assortments of genres/forms: Lied, Mélodie, and Art song#Art song formal design, the latter of which includes links to the articles Strophic form and Through-composed (BTW, both of these also link from the present article). Strophic form in turn contains links to Refrain and Musical form. In fact, it appears there is a much richer set of song-structure articles under the art-song umbrella than exists for popular music (though I have not made a strenuous effort to investigate the latter). The “Musical form” article seems nicely organized, and covers a great variety of designs, most of which are used in the Europan art-song tradition, but is rightly tagged for needing globalization. Either that, or it should be renamed to reflect its restriction to the Western tradition (there is nothing in it, for example, on the forms of Australian-aboriginal music, Japanese Gagaku, Indonesian gamelan, West-African drumming, etc.). This "musical form" article also branches to several subordinate articles:

• Strophic form
• Binary form
• Ternary form
• Rondo form
• Variation (music)
• Musical development
• Sonata form

Others, not found there, include:

• Aria
• Cavatina
• Rondò

I think this demonstrates another gulf between the present article and the art-song branch, which is that, when discussing art songs, form is not regarded as primarily tied to vocal genres. I think this is a weakness but, oddly, the present article shares it: there is scarcely any mention at all of the connection between structure of song texts and the corresponding non-verbal aspect of the musical structure.

Moving on to non-Western and pre-classical song forms: I find no umbrella article covering these, but there are separate articles on at least the following medieval song forms (including descriptions of their structures):

• Formes fixes
  • Ballade
  • Rondeau
  • Virelai
• Chanson
• Madrigal (trecento)
• Ballata and
• Barzelletta
• Bar form
• Cantiga
• Canción
• Villancico

Although the sharp distinction we make today between Art and Popular music did not exist at the time most of these forms were in common use, they may plausibly be construed as "popular" song forms, and yet they are not discussed in the present article, suggesting that the current title is already too broad, rather than too restrictive.

Some non-Western forms prove to be very difficult to track down on the English Wikipedia. Whether this is because “form” is really a Western obsession, of only secondary importance in other cultures, or if this is due to weakness of the writing of these articles, I cannot say. However, some relevant articles do exist:

For forms found in Indonesian music:

• Balungan
• Pathet
• Colotomy (also redirected from Gendhing structure)
• List of gendhing structures (also redirected from Lancaran)

These do apply to vocal music as well, though the articles describe instrumental gamlan practice. As a result, there is no discussion of the interrelationship between text and music.

The only relevant articles I can find on African music concern only localized patterns, nothing on how these are deployed in larger-scale forms, and these are strictly about instrumental music:

• Bell pattern
• African_drumming#Key_patterns

A related article on Afro-Cuban music is Clave (pattern).

North African music fares much better:

• Malhun
• Andalusi nubah#Form, texts, and performance
• Nuubaat
• Music of Tunisia#Structure

North-African music is of course closely related to Middle-Eastern music, where articles dealing with song-structure include:

• Dawr
• Maqam al-iraqi
• Muwashshah
• Sama'i

(Other song repertories/types have articles, but they lack any content describing their forms.) There are also articles on Middle-Eastern/North-African poetic forms upon which musical structures of songs are usually based:

• Ghazal
• Qasida
• Zajal

For Indian and other South Asian musics there are Qawwali#Musical structure, etc., etc. I shall stop here, since I think my point is made. Obviously, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Expanding the present article to include all song types would plainly be catastrophic. A disambiguation page, however, would no doubt be a good idea.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:11, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Wow, Jerome Kohl, that is impressive research and as a result I have struck my support !vote. Not convinced I can go all the way with a oppose !vote as I still think there are issues of building, separating and making logical the whole musical architecture articles i.e should this article be at "song form?" Does, say, "strophic" need to be split by genre? Which genres is, say ABCABB used? And so on... --Richhoncho (talk) 10:29, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree, I had no idea what a hornet's nest I had stirred up.

So the article is going to stay at its current title. Fine to me; the discussion can be closed. Anyone ready to create the disambiguation? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:50, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 4 March 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Move to song structure. Consensus is to expand the article; discussion on how best to go about that can continue below. Cúchullain ^t/c 18:31, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

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Song structure (popular music) → Song structure in popular music – Wikipedia normally uses parentheses for disambiguation, as in Mercury (element), but natural titles for subtopics, as in Driving in the United States. Jruderman (talk) 00:47, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Comment. Another possibility is to merge with Verse–chorus form and use that as the title. While that's a larger change, it has two advantages: a shorter article title, and neutrality regarding whether this form defines popular music (or vice versa). Jruderman (talk) 00:49, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
  • If there is a merge, it should be the other way. The Verse–chorus form is only one aspect of the structure. —  AjaxSmack  14:25, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Support. As the nominator notes, this is a subtopic of the larger topic of song structure, not a unique meaning of the term song structure. —  AjaxSmack  14:25, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Support per nominator and AjaxSmack. Melonkelon (talk) 23:02, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Strong oppose as proposed; counterpropose Song structure, which still does not have any information on it at and still should be where this article resides. Red Slash 18:35, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Do you think my proposed change would make the article worse? Or just that it would be a waste of time if the lack-of-consensus on the "Song structure" proposal changes? Jruderman (talk) 21:12, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
    • The article as it stands is not about song structure in general but narrowly about Anglophone popular songs. "Song structure" would be blatantly inaccurate. Wikipedia still awaits a general article on song structure. —  AjaxSmack  04:56, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
      • Well, that's a pretty imposing topic to consider writing an article about. This would be a start... Red Slash 01:07, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
      • BTW, pinging Florian Blaschke, Jenks24, In ictu oculi , not Rich as he's already here, and apologies for anyone I missed Red Slash 01:07, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
• Support renaming to Song structure per Red Slash. Whatever the content should be - and I have noted the arguments - WP should have an article and not a redirect at Song structure. Later everything will be in place, but we need to start somewhere. --Richhoncho (talk) 01:32, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
• Support renaming to Song structure as per the Red Slasher (yes I know I'm extending the joke ). Even with a perhaps more conservative example a search on Hymn verses chorus got plenty of results. See: Category:Songs by genre. While the formats of song structure mentioned may not extend to all songs (even in popular music) they certainly extend way beyond "pop". GregKaye 09:20, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.