The Parts of a Song

Jeepers, the AMG site has everything!

Just found this.

Glee

Glees are polyphonic pieces written, usually, for a minimum of three voices. Originally intended for male voice with the highest parts being sung by male altos, glees were set and scored for mixed voices by the end of the nineteenth century. From the early glee clubs have arisen today's present glee clubs as well as high school and college choirs and choruses. The music both composed and sung as a glee can be of a lighthearted or serious nature and vary in length from a simple stanza to a three movement composition.

AMG equates "bridge" and "middle eight"; does my distinction make sense?

JBR, that's an exact quote of the AMG def (why?)

No reason; I'm just obsessed with the word "glee."

Jody Beth Rosen for president of the ILx Glee Club!

I'd add to yer def. of "riff" that the riff is often given emphasis by having two or more instruments playing in unison (rather than in harmony or countermelody)

Good descriptions, although I would distinguish between a break and a solo, in the way that a break is rather short, with nothing much happening, while a solo is, exactly that, a solo - one or several soloists doing some (more or less) impressive stuff on a solo instrument (or several)

Can somebody clarify for me what the different parts of 'Drivin' by the Kinks are.

0:10 - 0:26 - this section "seems like all the world is fighting..' is the exhilarating thing about the song. Is this the verse? Also at 0:56 - 1:11 and 1:48 - 2:03.

0:27 - 0:34 - 'we'll go dri-i-i-iving' obv. the chorus. Also 1:12 - 1:28 , 2:04 - 2:20 and 2:48 - end.

0:35 - 0:55 - 'drop all your work..' musically the most boring part - is this the middle eight? Also 1:28 - 1:48 and 2:33 - 2:47 (this one ends by slowing down as a drum fill kicks in - is there a special name for that?)

2:21 - 2:28 - an instrumental break

2:29 - 2:32 - 'drive with me, drive with me' short bit - is this a 'turnaround'?

I especially want to know which is the middle eight and which is the verse.

Okay, for a start, here's my "objective map" of the song; I'll post it first and compare it to yours, then I can take a shot at your questions.

Kinks, "Drivin’"
From Arthur (1969)

0:00 A1 - wordless (A is based on chromatic descending progression ending V-I in A-flat)
5 bars

0:12 B1 (B is emphasizes minor chords at first, shifting to flat-III and then to V of A-flat)
8 bars

0:26 Chorus (based on I-V harmony in A-flat, with stepwise moving bass)
"Drivin’"
4 bars

0:35 A2
5 bars
0:44 A3
5 bars

0:55 B2
8 bars

1:11 Chorus (with repetition, twice original length)
8 bars

1:28 A4
5 bars
1:36 A5
5 bars

1:47 B3
8 bars

2:04 Chorus (with rep.)
"Drivin’"
8 bars

2:19 A6 (instr., vocals on 5th & 6th bars)
6 bars (usual 5 bars plus repetition of 5th)
2:32 A7
6 bars (extended as before, tempo slows at end)
1 bar drum break (back in tempo)

2:46 Chorus (with rep.)
"Drivin’"
8
8 rep/fade

So the main trick is to match up the parts I've labelled "A" and "B" with the conventional labels "verse" and "middle-8"

Note the odd length of the A material (5 bars in most appearances); since these usually occur in pairs, you could condense my map a bit by packaging these pairs together as a single (normally 10-bar) section each time.

I guess I'd vote for
A-> verse
B-> middle-8

Among the arguments in favor of this view:
- The verse appears before the middle-8 (albeit in wordless form, with the effect of an Intro)
- The middle-8 serves a "bridge" function by ending on V in the home key of A-flat, which sets up the arrival of the chorus in that key; what I'm calling the "verse" never runs directly into the chorus except at the end (section A7) and even there you get a drum break providing connective tissue

- If you feel the "drive with me" bit at the end of each A section (each so-called "verse") serves more to usher in what follows rather than wrap up what's ending, then it would be appropriate to call it a "turnaround"; I'm not sure whether it's a useful term here or not.

I wonder if any of this makes sense. (Of course you can't force a verse/chorus/middle-8 model onto every song, but lots of songs work by either following, or messing with, these conventions.)

(Obv. another reason for calling section B the middle-8 is that it's 8 bars long)

I agree with AMG there's no difference between a bridge and the middle eight.

In the abstract context of my original, top-of-the-thread post, I thought I was making a useful distinction between bridge and middle eight, but now I'm inclined to agree with Burr -- I've conflated the two concepts in my Kink-o-graph.

That was very interesting, Paul, and I don't even know the song. Sometimes I wonder if I'm soft-headed for liking pop music - it always seems so elementary when analyzed closely.

Actually, this took me around a dozen repeated listenings, plus additional checking-by-ear of a few spots, before I could map it out clearly. The level of detail that shows up in my "map" looks pretty elementary, but some of the harmonic details & such turned out to be more complicated than I would have suspected if I'd just been listening in a typically casual way.

You could map out a simple Mozart minuet and it would have about the same degree of complexity if you're just looking at thematic/tonal structure.

That B section sounds kind of interesting harmonically, what with the minor chords and the flat-III. I guess it's the repetition that makes it seem so simple. Mozart strikes me as the most pop of the classical composers, so I guess it shouldn't be surprising that some of his pieces have comparably simple structures - although even then, they probably have greater melodic variation than the typical pop song.

"I agree with AMG there's no difference between a bridge and the middle eight."

This is idiotic. The bridge usually repeats, while the
middle eight is usually a single occurence.

In that case I should have called the B material the "bridge" rather than the middle-8; that's closer, after all, to my original speculative definitions (although back then I was thinking of the bridge as something potentially shorter).

In (for instance) "I Saw Her Standing There": "Well my heart went boom/When I crossed that room/And I held her hand/ In miiiiiiiine" = the bridge (aka the middle eight).

Take it to the bridge! Hit me! < /James Brown>

Remember that a bridge plays a very different part in a verse/chorus based song than in a AABA song.

In an AABA song (most early Beatles songs and Tin Pan Alley songs are like this), the bridge usually is the only contrasting part of the song while the rest is all repetition of the same theme. In a verse/chorus based song (which doesn't necessarily have to have a bridge at all), it is usually the last part of the verse, preparing the listener for the chorus. Iow. there are more contrasting parts than just the bridge and the chorus.

I think for a break to be a break it has to be striped down in some way. Maybe all the instruments except drum and bass would drop out. Whereas a solo isn't as much so.

I think the parts in "Viginia Plain" might be more of a break then solos. Also think of MC hammer's "Break it down" in "U can't touch this" In that way It gets more dancey and the singer probably drops down to do some break-dancing or does some extra exciting dance, but this I think is called a "breakdown" instead of a "break."

The technical term for that one is actually "hammer time."