Song Writing (2) - AABA

First let's talk about assignments 2 and 3, which were to find two verse/chorus pop songs, and to look at a song everybody loves but you hate. Then we'll look at the two lyrics you wrote and see if I can't somehow steer the topic to AABA.

Build Me Up Buttercup, your first verse/chorus pop song, is a great song to sing at the top of your voice on a long drive through boring scenery. Like a lot of pop songs it starts with the chorus instead of the verse. Do you suppose it's because that meant they only had to write two verses? Not much to say about this song. You bounce in your chair and croon along even if you don't know the words. Essentially, it's about somebody waiting for a phone call that won't come. The whole song is stuck in initial condition, my term for the part of a story that describes, how things are. The song's story has only a very slight movement from frustration to anticipation.

Somebody didn't sit down with pen and paper and write this. It's a jam session song, where a couple of musicians riffing on an idea in an afternoon, kept the bits they liked. So is Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel, your second choice. Yip Harburg, lyricist for Over the Rainbow said, “Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.” The thoughts you feel in these light, fun pop songs are not deep and complex, they're meant to be fun and danceable. I would have bet you could never hold a theatre audience with these kinds of numbers, and yet think of all the jukebox musicals out lately – Mama Mia, for example. Is it a reaction against the wordiness, denseness, depth of thought, unusual explorations (and songs you can't appreciate let alone learn in one hearing) of Sondeheim? Or is it because of non-English speaking tourists on Broadway? Or non theatre-goers who want something familiar? Or producers pouncing on a formula?

These are questions for another blog. Where were we?

Rent. I don't like it, either. To be fair, I'm not a fan of rock, and especially so-called rock musicals written by theatre composers. I don't know Rent, except what I know of La Boheme, and I've only heard snippets of the score, so won't comment on these lyrics except to point out they are more complicated than verse/chorus form, and they convey a lot more information than a typical pop song.

The other thing I want to say about the show Rent is that it's a phenomenon, and phenomenons break all the rules about what you think works and doesn't work. Hair, was one of those shows. So was Cats. As a creator of musicals, what can you do with these things? You can't manufacture the kind of buzz these shows had – a buzz that becomes a news story in itself, whre the theatre experience becomes less about the show and more about participating in the excitement the show generates. In the end a phenomenon teaches you very little, and in its wake is a whole generation of producers who don't realize that you can't duplicate a singularity.

Oh, that's enough! Let's get on to the fun stuff.

Previous Assignment #1 – A Bouncy Drinking Song
Improvised around a container, a mood, a color, and an action.

Oil Bin – by Caitlin Allen
I open up my oil bin an find a little gin
I drink the gin and find that I have made a little sin.

The sin makes me excited
But my love is unrequited
And still I have decided

To open up my oil bin an find a little gin
I drink the gin and find that I have made a little sin

The gin is green
It don't seem clean
I wish I could be more serene

And so I open up my oil bin an find a little gin
I drink the gin and find that I have made a little sin

I go a mountain climbing
my thoughts still not reclining
For love I am still mining
This senseless way I'm pining

So I open up my oil bin an find a little gin
I drink the gin and find that I have made a little sin.

Excellent job! Bouncy, fun, imaginative, and you did everything I asked. It gives me a chance to introduce two new topics: masculine/feminine rhyme, and scansion.

Masculine/Feminine Rhyme

Excited/unrequited/decided are feminine rhymes. So are reclining/mining/pining. (Climbing is a false rhyme with this grouping. I'm sure you discovered there are a lot fewer IM rhymes than IN.) A feminine rhymes on an interior stressed syllable of the word. The ED and the ING are unstressed add-ons to the rhyme.

Gin/sin, green/clean/serene are masculine rhymes, rhyming on the final syllable. Don't ask me the origin for the labels masculine/feminine. It's old school sexist, but there you go.

Scansion

Scansion is not just the number of syllables per line, but also the meter of the line. Your song is either in 2 or in 4. (I haven't heard it, so I'm just going by the words.) For example, it could be either:

in 2: i O-pen UP my O-il BIN and FIND a LIT-tle GIN
or
in 4: i O-pen up my O-il bin and FIND a lit-tle GIN

It doesn't scan in 3.

in 3: I drink the GIN and find THAT i have MADE a lit-TLE sin

The meter of your song, then is 2 or 4 (or 8). Now let's look at the number of syllables per line. The first verse is 7, 8, 7 (with a feminine end rhyme); the second verse is 4, 4, 8 (with a masculine end rhyme); the final verse s 7, 7, 7, 7 (with a feminine end rhyme and an extra line). In the real world, these kinds of songs don't bother to be consistent in their syllable counts from verse to verse. But it's sloppy from a song crafting point of view, and will be a lot more visible in a form like AABA.

Previous Assignment #4 – New Lyrics to Mr. Frostee
Improvised around an occupation.

The occupation you were given was Architect

A House for Sis – by Caitlin Allen (to the music of Mr. Frostee)

I made a blueprint to plan a house my sis was gonna lie in,
'Specially since she has a spouse whose wishes she did give in
Tile bathroom floor
Some strange décor
A double door
She wanted more
I made a blue print and planned a house my sis never did live in
I bought her instead a pretty blouse with a fancy olive sequin.

Excellent work! You managed to tell a little story with a twist ending. I was surprised by the four OR rhymes in the bridge. When you listen to the musical grammar of that section, several possibilities present themselves:
. a couplet (blue toilet seats, some strange decor/a fancy mirror, she wanted more)
. alternating (blue toilet seats/some strange decor/red satin sheets/she wanted more)
. pairs (blue toilet seats/red satin sheets/some strange decor/she wanted more)
. your choice – a quad rhyme

I like your choice best.

I don't want to talk much about scansion here because the sample recording I gave you was indistinct and cuts off too soon. My fault. I want to point out though that this little melody is not verse/chorus. It's a simple AABA.

AABA

AABA is the song form polished by Tin Pan Alley's golden age of song writers. The letters refer to musical chunks. Since I brought up Yip Harburg, let's look at Over the Rainbow.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow"
music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg

FIRST “A” SECTION
Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.

SECOND “A” SECTION
Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.

“B” SECTION
Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me.

THIRD “A” SECTION
Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow.
Why then, oh why can't I?

WRAP UP
If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can't I?

This is AABA. Each A is musically identical. Think about the days when written music was done by hand, and the pain it would be to write every single note of the song instead of putting a mark on the page that meant “go back and do it again.” This is where the songwriter's consistent scansion helps the poor copyist, so he doesn't have to add ghost notes (called pick-up notes) that apply in some stanzas and not in others. It also helps the singer to learn the melody and the musician sight-reading the score.

In this particular song, the A sections are shorter than the B section. In some songs (like Mr. Frostee) it's the other way around. The B section is often referred to as the bridge, “bridging” the A sections; also the “release”, which breaks the pattern of the A's. Notice also that the title of Over the Rainbow is found in the first line of each A. In some songs it happens in the last line of the A, like it does in Someone to Watch Over Me:

There's a somebody I'm longing to see
I hope that he
Turns out to be
Someone who'll watch over me.

These repeating phrases, wherever they appear in the song, become the title whether you want that to be the title or not. It's what is remembered on first listening, and often referred to as the “hook” of the song.

I have a lot more to say, but I really should get on with your assignments.

1.Fix the scansion of Oil Bin. Choose whether you want masculine or feminine rhyme, and choose the number of beats per line and stick to it for every verse.
EXTRA CREDIT – sometimes it's fun with a drinking song to have an expanding pattern. It's harder, but if you want to you can have a triple rhyme in the first verse, a quad in the second, and do a whopping 5 rhyme in the last verse.
2.Give me the name of a Beatle song that's in AABA form. (Hint: look at the ballads.) Tell me the A's and the B.
3.Rearrange the verses and the chorus of Elenor Rigby so that it's an AABA song.
4.Keeping to our Beatle theme, find four Beatle songs that are very different from each other. This is our improv bit. Once you've selected the songs I'll tell you what to do with them.
5.I want you to gather a list from your friends:
things that mystify you
things that annoy you
your favorite cliché

Good luck!

JIM