It doesn’t really have an agreed name, so I’ll go with “strophe”, even though that’s not a term you hear all that much. In strophic form, there’s only one section, a building block that’s repeated through the entirety of the song.
In the English-speaking world, classic folk examples are songs like Scarborough Fair (UK) or In the Pines (USA), though these kinds of vernacular songs exist across all languages and cultures.įorget about verses and choruses, much less bridges or middle 8’s. Songs in strophic form are often what I think of as “story” songs. Because of that, it’s ideal for setting text to music as the musical information tends to stay out of the way. People’s music, where arrangements, harmonic material and musical elements tend to be fairly simple. While strophic form can be found in all styles of music, it’s usually seen as a kind of “folk” form. Which we’ll get to in a moment, because oh yes, strophic form has some serious limitations. We can better understand AABA and verse-chorus form and how/why they work if we see them in the context of strophic form and as a response to its shortcomings. Apart from the fact that some of the greatest songs of all time are in strophic form, it’s where it all began. But to me, any discussion of form in popular music has to include strophic form. You’ll often find it being dismissed as not being relevant for the contemporary songwriter. If you look at most guides to songwriting you’ll see that strophic form gets a bad rap – if it gets any rap at all.
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