Piano & Keyboard All-in-One For Dummies
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Feel like playing some rock or pop on the piano or keyboard? Most early rock and pop songs follow the structure of either the 12-bar blues or the 32-bar blues. Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” is one variation of the 12-bar blues structure used in rock, as is the Rolling Stones’s “19th Nervous Breakdown.”

The Beach Boys were masters of the 32-bar structure, using it in such songs as “Good Vibrations” and “Surfer Girl.” The Beatles also used this structure in many of their songs, including “From Me to You” and “Hey Jude.” Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire,” The Righteous Brothers’s “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” and Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” all also use the AABA 32-bar form.

In 32-bar pop music, the music is broken into four 8-bar sections. Songs like Fats Waller’s “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing” follow the AABA 32-bar structure, whereas Charlie Parker took the rondo approach (ABAC) to the 32-bar variation in songs like “Ornithology” and “Donna Lee.”

Compound AABA form really should be called AABAB2 form (but it isn’t), because in this form, after you play the first 32 bars, you move into a second bridge section (B2) that sends you right back to the beginning of the song to repeat the original 32 bars of the song. The Beatles’s “I Want to Hold Your Hand and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’s “Refugee” all follow this pattern.

The verse-chorus structure (also called ABAB form) is the most widely used form in rock and pop music today. Verse-chorus form follows the structure of the lyrics attached to it. You can, of course, write an instrumental piece that follows the same pattern as a verse-chorus rock or pop song, but the structure itself gets its name from the way the words in a song fit together.

Verse-chorus songs are laid out like this:

  • Introduction (I): The introduction sets the mood and is usually instrumental, although sometimes it may include a spoken recitation, like in Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.”

  • Verse (V): The verse begins the story of the song.

  • Chorus (C): The chorus is the most memorable lyrical point of the song — the song’s hook.

  • Verse (V): Another verse continues the story.

  • Chorus (C): The second chorus reinforces the hook.

  • Bridge (B): The bridge, which may be instrumental or lyrical, usually occurs only once in the song and forms a contrast with the repetition of verses and choruses.

  • Chorus (C): The final chorus repeats the original chorus to fade, or it just stops at the I chord.

The typical rock/pop song structure, as described here, is IVCVCBC. And just as in the 12-bar blues structure, the chords of choice are the I, IV, and V chords.

Thousands, perhaps even millions, of popular songs follow this structure. The Beatles’s “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” Tom Jones’s “Sex Bomb,” Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler,” Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face,” and Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” are all examples of this structure used in contemporary pop music. The really amazing thing is how different from one another, either by virtue of lyrics or the music itself, one song can sound from the next.

Pull out your bag o’ tricks and find the following musical ingredients to make any song rock:

  • Rockin’ intervals

  • Glissandos

  • Chords

  • Lots and lots of pyrotechnics for your elaborate stage show (plus lights, makeup, big hair, a smoke machine — all the necessities)

Jerry Lee Lewis practically invented the classic rock piano sound. For this style, all you need is an opening glissando, fast chords, and lots of energy.

Pour these elements into the 12-bar blues form and you’re ready to roll. Here’s a rockin’ bass line in Book IV, Chapter 2, Audio Track 93 that follows a typical blues chord progression in the key of C.

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About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book authors:

Michael Pilhofer, MM, holds a Master's in Music Education with a Jazz Emphasis from the Eastman School of Music, and a Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Performance from the University of Miami.

Holly Day's work has appeared in Guitar One Magazine, Music Alive!, culturefront Magazine, and Brutarian Magazine.

Jerry Kovarsky is a regular columnist for Keyboard magazine and longtime product management guru with Casio, Korg, and other companies who have been instrumental in bringing keyboard technology into people's homes and onto stages and studios around the world.

Holly Day and Michael Pilhofer are co-authors of all editions of Music Theory For Dummies and Music Composition For Dummies. Blake Neely was a contributing author to the 2nd edition of Piano For Dummies. David Pearl is author of Piano Exercises For Dummies. Jerry Kovarksy is a contributing writer to Electronic Musician magazine.

Holly Day and Michael Pilhofer are co-authors of all editions of Music Theory For Dummies and Music Composition For Dummies. Blake Neely was a contributing author to the 2nd edition of Piano For Dummies. David Pearl is author of Piano Exercises For Dummies. Jerry Kovarksy is a contributing writer to Electronic Musician magazine.

Michael Pilhofer, MM, holds a Master's in Music Education with a Jazz Emphasis from the Eastman School of Music, and a Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Performance from the University of Miami.

Holly Day's work has appeared in Guitar One Magazine, Music Alive!, culturefront Magazine, and Brutarian Magazine.

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