There are several ways to describe how a musical piece is organized:

1. 1.One of the easiest forms to hear and understand is strophic form, in which every verse has the same music with different words.  Common examples are “America the Beautiful,” “Silent Night,” and most church hymns. Blues also can be called strophic, because each blues chorus has the same form (aab).
   

2. 2.Another important form in American popular music is verse-chorus form.  The music and the words are usually the same in the chorus (also called the refrain). In the verses, the music stays the same, but the words change for every verse.
   

 

1. *Listen to Stephen Foster’s “O Susanna” as an example.
   

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3. 3.An exception to the rule about the chorus having the same music and the same words occurs in blues form.  In each blues chorus, the music will remain the same, but the words will be different.  (See next paragraph.)
   

4. 4.Lower-case letters (a, b, c, etc.) are used for small units of form.  So, when we talk about 12-bar blues having each of its choruses in aab form, we use lower-case letters.  Each letter represents 4 bars of music.
   

1. Each a section has virtually the same words and the same music; the b section has different words and different music:
   

2. a:  I ain’t got no mama now
   

3. a:  I ain’t got no mama now
   

4. b:  She told me late last night, “You don’t need no mama no how.”
   

1. When this pattern of aab is repeated, we can all it strophic form, as mentioned in #1 above.
   

1. *Listen to this blues tune (“Black Snake Moan”), and notice that each chorus has the same form (See also the Listening Cue in the text).
   

5. 5.Verse/chorus and blues form come together in hokum blues (late 1920s and 1930s), in music of the jump bands (late 1940s and 1950s), and in some of Chuck Berry’s early rock and roll songs (“Maybellene”). Verse/chorus blues form uses the harmony of 12-bar blues, but the rhyming couplet of blues form is replaced by verse/chorus. It represents a blend of black and white elements.
   

1. *Listen to the hokum blues tune, “It’s Tight Like That,” in which the verses tell a story, and each one is followed by the chorus (“It’s Tight like that . . .”).
   

6. 6.Upper-case letters (A, B, C, etc.) are usually used for larger units of form. So, in John Philip Sousa’s march, “Stars and Stripes Forever,” he uses the form A  A  B  B  C  D  C  D  C.  This means that the A section is repeated; then a new section (B) begins and is repeated.  Then the music becomes softer and more tuneful--this is the Trio section (C). After this there is another section (D), then C again, D again, and finally C. We know that one section ends and another begins, when something different happens.
   

 

1. *Listen to Sousa’s march, and follow the Listening Cue in the text. 
   

7. 7.From the 1920s until the early 1950s, some variation of the form A A B A was used for each chorus of a song. Usually each of these sections contained 8 bars, so this form is often called 32-bar song form.
   

1. *Listen to Ethel Waters‘ “Am I Blue,” which begins with a short introduction by the band, then has a short verse, then 2 statements of the chorus--with each statement in the A A B A form.  (See also the Listening Cue in the text). 
   

8. 8.The important thing to remember is that the first musical item we hear is A.  When a new section begins, we call it B, and we know it is new, because something different happens. You must listen to a song more than once to grasp the form!
   

9. 9.Sometimes sections don’t always have a clear beginning and a clear ending; instruments enter gradually (fade-in) and sometimes at the end there is a fade-out. This is an influence from African music, which is organized differently from European classical.