What is Form in Music?

Video Transcript

"Hello! My name is Duane Carter and on behalf of Expert Village, I am going to be talking today about learning how to listen to and appreciate music. In the last segment on contrast I mentioned the bridge or the middle section of the tune, this brings up an important part, form. Form is the structure of a song. It is the architectural loop print of how a song is put together. Form is important because it determines the logical sequence of events of how the piece is structured. There are a certain forms that have a great appeal to the listener and we are going to be looking at one of those forms. The most popular of these is the song form or aaba form. The a's and the aaba's form is the melody, the b being the bridge. As we noticed there are two a's at the beginning. What differs these are the variations used by the composer so that the second a does not sound exactly like the first a and then he introduces the bridge which we've already talked about as being contrasted by introducing new melodic lines or other rhythms or other harmonies and then it returns back to the third a or melody line. It is important to recognize these form elements so that you have a better understanding of how songs develop. "