User:Jimi Joplin/sandbox

The AABA Form (also called "American Popular Song Form" or "Thirty-Two-Bar Form") is the prevalent form in American popular songs from c. 1920-1950. Although the musical style of pop music changed fundamentally in the 1950s, the form outlived the Tin Pan Alley era and was further used in R&B and pop ballads, in Doo-wop, in Brill Building pop and by The Beatles. Actually, it also can be seen as the precursor of the "compound" song form found in later rock music featuring several verses, prechoruses, choruses and a bridge.

History
ABAC

From the late 1800s to about 1920, the most common form in popular song was the verse/chorus form with several verses, each followed by a chorus with different, more memorable music and stable lyrics (a form called "contrasting verse/chorus form" by John Covach). In songs of this era, the verses usually are longer or of the same length as the chorus: After the Ball (Harris 1891): 3 verses of 64 bars each, chorus of 32 bars; All Coons Look Alike To Me (Hogan 1896): 2 verses plus a "recitativ"-section preparing the chorus (16+4), chorus (16); Take Me Out to the Ball Game (Tilzer/Norworth 1908): 2 Verses (16), Chorus (16).

Usually the form of such a chorus is a period, that is a succession of two similar sections, with the first ending harmonically open and the second closing (AA'). Very often, the sections differ not only in the last bar but in the last phrase, the whole chorus thus having the form abac (e.g. All Coons Look Alike To Me) or aba'c (e.g. After The Ball and Take Me Out To The Ballgame). In addition to the equal melody at the beginning of the two halfs, the unity of the chorus is produced by beginning and ending with the hook which usually contains or refers to the titel: "After the ball is over... ...many the hopes have vanished, after the ball.", "Take me out to the ball game... ...at the old ball game". This combination of abac form and "bookends"-technique in choruses of usually 16 bars is typical for the American popular song popularized in minstrel-, vaudeville-, and Broadway shows and distributed by the publishers on Tin Pan Alley up to 1920. Although beeing largely superseded by the AABA form from the early 1920s on, ABAC (now mainly in the 'big' 32-bar layout) had remarkable hits in later times (e.g. Tea For Two (Caesar/Youmans 1924), White Christmas (Berlin 1942), Mr. Sandman (Ballard 1954)).

AABA

In the 1920s ABAC was largely replaced by the AABA form. While its smaller (16-bar) relative aaba had been a common verse or chorus layout for centuries, the 32-bar AABA is closely linked to the decades also called the Golden Era of American popular song. The rise of the AABA chorus was closely linked to the decline of the verse. Especially love ballads now existed mainly of the chorus, while a single "sectional verse" served as a mere introduction to the chorus as the song 'as such'. Actually these verses, which in Broadway musicals usually function as a transition from spoken dialogue to the lyric chorus, were omitted in most recordings (although many verses have nice musical ideas and witty lyrics).