Song Format

You know each genre of music has its own way of formatting a song a lot of times.. are you familiar with your genre's formats? It's a good thing to know.. not necessary to copy, but to understand why those songs are formatted that way.

An example of a hip hop format... 4 bar intro, 12 bar verse, 8 bar hook, 16 bar verse 2, 8 bar hook, 12 bar verse 3, 16 bar hook, 4 bar outro.

An example of an R&B format... 4 bar intro, 8 bar verse, 8 bar hook, 8 bar post hook, 8 bar verse 2, 8 bar prehook, 8 bar hook, 8 bar bridge, 8 bar prehook, 16 bar hook, 16 bar post hook.

An example of a jazz format... 12 bar part A, 12 bar part B, 12 bar part A, 24 bar solo, 12 bar part A, 24 bar solo 2, 12 bar part A, 12 bar part B, 4 bar outro

So as you can see just among 3 genres, the song formats vary significantly. A few things that determine how you want the song formatted are.. 1) How long the song should be (commercial singles shouldn't be more than 4 mins, and even past 3:30 is pushing it)... 2) Feeling you're trying to convey (for example, if the listener needs to marinate on what you said in the hook, give them time to marinate on it with a post hook)... and 3) Features/Remixes... those usually require special formatting.

Best thing to do is to get together your favorite hit songs and just study the heck out of them. Figure out what they did, why they did, and how they did it. Eventually you'll find yourself applying this education to your own songs and the hits will suddenly start coming out. Happy Recording.

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