Problem child?

[Heidi writes]

A bit of a revelatory morning for me at SWF…

Taking my seat in the University Theatre to the strains of Girls Aloud (SWF truly embraces a broad range of genres). The topics for today included deconstructing hits. While this sounded interesting – I had no idea it was about to sort out a particular songwriting problem that has been plaguing me for months.

Part of the talk centered on AABA songs, which have fairly strict conventions about title placement, bar lengths, even how long the song itself song is. We were given a live demonstration of several Jazz standards including the song ‘Making Whoopee’ written in 1928 and ‘Yesterday’ by the Beatles. While the form is more often used in older songs, it still pops up in contemporary hits like Nora Jones’ ‘Don’t Know Why I Didn’t Come’.

This got me thinking about a particular “problem child” song of mine. You know the ones – you feel in your bones you have really good idea, but you just can’t seem to make the song flow. Because I had positioned my title at the end of each verse and chorus, I wondered if what I’d been thinking of as a Verse/Chorus song could in reality be an AABA song. After the talk, I sat down to have a go at reworking the structure. By cutting one chorus, adjusting the lyric and repositioning the instrumental break, the song sounds so much better as an AABA. RESULT!  For the first time, the song seems to be fully working and I really, really like it.

Heidi