Song form and sections

A band doesn’t play a tune once and stop dead. It plays a few bars to set the key and the groove (the intro), then the tune, then the tune again, maybe several times, and then it ends: it lands on the home chord and holds it. Along the way it plays some parts fuller than others, and some songs change style halfway through. This chapter shows how to give a song that shape.

The Form row

The chord sheet’s Form row shapes the whole performance:

• Intro: No intro, 2 bars, 4 bars or 8 bars. The band puts that many bars in front of the song, with chords that lead into its first chord. They are written on the sheet under Intro, so you can read them, hear them and change them. Picking a length again writes them anew, and No intro takes them away. The rest of the song, melody and all, moves along to make room.
• Choruses: how many times the band plays the tune. The sheet shows it once, under Chorus ×3, between the repeat signs of printed music, and while it plays, the row shows which time round it is: “▶ 2 of 3”.
• Ending: two more bars after the last chorus. The band goes to the key’s home chord, plays one bar of it in the style, then strikes it once and holds it through the last bar, with a crash of the cymbal. The two bars are shown in grey under Ending, the last one marked held.

“Chorus” means once through

In a pop song, the chorus is the part that comes back after each verse. Jazz musicians use the word another way: a chorus is once through the whole tune, from the top of the chart to its last bar. A soloist “takes two choruses”; the band plays the melody for one chorus, then solos over several, then the melody again. The Form row uses the word the jazz way: one chorus is every bar on the sheet after the intro. The verses and choruses of a pop song are all inside it.

The intro: a turnaround

A turnaround is the handful of chords at the end of a tune that “turn it around” and lead back to the top. It makes the best intro, because the tune’s first chord then sounds like an arrival. Its engine is the dominant seventh: in C major, G7 (G B D F) holds B, which pulls up to C, and F, which pulls down to E. And D minor leads to G the way G leads to C, because roots that fall by fifths (A, D, G, C) are the strongest way chords move. See What chords do.

Into a minor chord, the ii is half-diminished (B D F A before Am), the chord that really sits on the second note of A minor, and the V is still a dominant seventh, E7, with G♯: the leading tone, a semitone under A, which pulls to it much harder than the G of E minor would.

The numerals are counted from the chord the intro leads to. Most songs start on their home chord, and then that is the same as the key. A song in C that starts on F gets Gm7, C7: the ii and V of F, so the intro still leads straight into the first chord. A song that starts on a pitch-class set, a micromode or a diminished chord gets a vamp instead: the band plays the first harmony from the first bar, setting up the sound before the tune comes in.

The ending: home, and held

The ending goes to the tonic, the chord the whole key leans towards. If the song starts on its tonic, the ending plays that very chord: a blues in C that starts on C7 ends on C7. Otherwise it plays the key’s plain chord, C in C major, Am in A minor. A song that changes key ends in the key its last chorus ends in. Type a chord in an ending bar, and it becomes part of the tune: the chorus grows to take it in, and the ending moves on after it.

End the song here, in a bar’s right-click menu, says where the band stops: it ends with that bar, and the chords written after it are cleared.

Sections

Most songs have parts with names: an intro, verses, a chorus, a bridge. Sections are marked on the playlist, in the strip above the bar numbers:

• Drag along the Sections strip to mark one. It takes the first usual name not used yet (Intro, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Outro…). ➕ Section in the playlist’s toolbar marks the next stretch of the song after the last one.
• Drag a section to move it, or its right edge to make it longer or shorter.
• Click a section for its menu: Select clips in this section, its Name (type one or click Intro, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Outro, Pre-Chorus, Solo, Break or Drop), Play it a number of times (a section is drawn once and played that many times), 🔁 Loop this section, ⧉ Duplicate (a copy, with its clips, right after it), ⇶ Write out the repeats (turns “×3” into three copies, so each time round can be changed on its own) and 🗑 Delete section (the clips under it stay).

On the chord sheet, each section starts a new line under its name, as “Verse ×2” when it plays twice. Click a section’s name on the sheet to select all its bars; right-click it for the menu below, for the whole section.

Variations a and b

A band doesn’t play every part of a song the same way. The verse is lighter, so the words come through; in the chorus the drummer, the bassist and the pianist all lift at once. Every style has two variations: a is the style as it is, and b is the same style played fuller.

Right-click a bar on the chord sheet and pick Variation a or Variation b: the band plays that variation from that bar to the next change, or to the end. To change only some bars, select them first (click the first, Shift+click the last) and right-click one of them; the bars after them keep what they played. A boxed letter marks each change, on the sheet after the bar number and on the playlist’s bar numbers, like the rehearsal letters over the staff in band parts.

The drums announce each change: the bar before it gets a fill, and the first beat of the new variation a crash cymbal, the signal real drummers give.

What “fuller” means:

The hi-hat is two cymbals that the drummer closes with a pedal: a short, dry “tick”. The ride is one large cymbal that rings, a shimmering wash that fills more of the sound. A cross-stick is the stick laid across the snare, its end clicking on the rim: soft and woody. Moving from one to the other is the most common way a band lifts a chorus. Where a style has no well-known busier way to play (a tango, a bossa nova, a chorale), variation b only changes the drums and the loudness.

A style for some bars

Many songs change their feel partway through: a verse as a bossa nova and a bridge in swing, a pop song that goes to half time for its bridge. The same right-click menu has Style: …, which names the style playing in that bar. Open it, then a genre, and pick a style: the band plays it from that bar on, or only in the bars selected. The sheet writes the style’s name at the bar where it starts. The song’s style, at the top of the menu, goes back to the band’s own.

A style for some bars changes how the band plays: the piano’s comping, the bass line, the drums, the guitar, strings and organ patterns, and the swing. It keeps who plays: the same piano and the same bass go from the bossa nova verse to the swing bridge, as in a real band. The drums play the outgoing style’s fill into the change and a crash on its first beat.

The menu lists only the styles in the time signature of those bars. To play a waltz in the middle of a song in 4/4, change the time signature of those bars first (see Tempo, time signatures and key changes).