hi this is Jimmy Kachulis and in this clinic we're going to be exploring some
of the ways that we can create really effective choruses now remember there
are two stages to creating a section of music first of all you create an idea or
two contrasting ideas and then you put them together and develop them using
your development tools to create a full section so in this clinic we'll go over
both of those stages in a chorus of course we usually have the most dramatic
setting of a lyric usually it's the title let's examine this idea for this
classic chorus created by Marvin Gaye how sweet it is to be loved by you
notice that it's a very dramatic setting what are some of the things that make
this such a dramatic emphatic setting for a title first of all this court
progression C B minor a minor D G
is a full cadence and of all the harmonic tools to emphasize your title
this is by far the strongest there are at least 24 25 different types of
Cadence's in the various key colors but in the major key moving from ultimately
the 5 chord to the 1 chord is the strongest notice that in the key also
the melody ends on this note which is the do' of the key this is called the
melodic cadence when you end your title on the tonic note in the key it also
conveys a real dramatic statement this is to the audience this is the thing
this is the main idea of this song notice that in the time how sweet it is
to be loved by you it ends on the downbeat this is a rhythmic cadence and
this also produces a tremendous amount of emphasis so with all of these 3
Cadence's the harmonic cadence the melodic cadence and the rhythmic cadence
you're basically showing the audience that this is the central idea of the
song by the way just to again include a couple of more tools notice that after
we sing the title for two measures there's nothing but space afterwards how
sweet it is to be loved by you that space also conveys a sense of importance
to that whatever you sing before the space now that you have your setting of
the title how do you create a full section there are basically only three
types of development tools you can repeat your idea exactly you can vary it
or you can introduce contrasting ideas let me demonstrate each of those in turn
let's take the setting for that Marvin Gaye classic and notice how he just
developed chorus by simply repeating the title
exactly this means the melody the harmony the rhythm and the lyrics all
are done again it is by far the strongest tool for emphasis how sweet it
is to be loved by you how sweet it is to be loved by you
a setting of the title very dramatically and then a simple exact repetition
now the next development tool is where you vary the repetition one of the ways
in which it's used to create a chorus is to surprise people by repeating the
title but changing something now you can change the rhythm of the melody you
could change the pitch of the melody you could change the chord there are all
kinds of little subtle ways of varying that repetition one of the easiest ways
is to repeat the chord progression but sing slightly different melodic idea
when the title is repeated you can hear it in this classic song calling all
angels simply repeats a chord progression from the one chord to the
four chord
notice the original setting
calling all angels
here's the variation
calling all you angel
so you can hear that instead of stating the obvious which is exactly repeating
the title which is a standard move now you're surprising the audience by
restating the title but changing it up the second time the last way of
developing an idea or ideas into a full section is by using two contrasting
ideas most of the sections that we create have at the maximum two ideas it
helps the song kind of hang together when you're just developing one or two
ideas in a chorus I refer to these as the title idea and the non title idea
which I call the swingline lyrically often comments on the title but if you
want that title to stand out from the Swingline one of the most effective ways
to do that is to create two very contrasting ideas and how do they
contrast for instance choose different notes choose a different shape choose a
different number of syllables this would of course mean you have two different
rhythmic ideas as well create a different amount of space around each
idea harmonically choose different chords for the different ideas begin
them on different chords and them on different chords and as you've learned
in this course if you set the title to those various Cadence's as we heard in
the Marvin Gaye song that would also differentiate the title from the
Swingline idea here for instance is one of the classic choruses and I'll
describe the ideas after I play them see if you can focus on the differences
between the swingline idea and the title idea if you're lost you can look and you
will find me time after time if you fall I will catch you I'll be
waiting time after time
now let's examine those in a little detail
notice that the swingline idea has this as its melodic shape notice that it's a
leap from the D to the G notice that it has a lot of syllables and how is it
that idea developed it's moved up the scale and turned upside down so listen
to the idea
and it has these chords G chord a minor listen to it now by itself if you're
lost you can look and you will find me now listen to the title idea EEE de
notice that it focuses around completely different pitches it has a completely
different shape it does not leap it moves by step right next door to the
next note dips down and goes right back up and how is it developed not at all is
just stated once and it has a lot of space after it look at the chords F G C
a completely different chord progression including some chords that did not even
occur in the swingline it begins on a different chord it ends on a different
chord it has a different number of chords and it also has this special kind
of progression we talked about earlier which is the cadence in this case in the
key of C four five one now how is the full section built the
swingline is repeated musically but change lyrically so it's varied quite
substantially whereas the title is repeated using that tool of exact
repetition we talked about earlier so follow all of those things at the same
time and I think you'll appreciate how well-written this chorus is if you're
lost you can look and you will find me time after time
if you fall I will catch you I'll be waiting time after time
for more on this idea of creating dramatic ideas using the three types of
development tools to build really effective choruses check out the
songwriting course called writing hit songs
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