hey welcome to NUMBER_TOKENtone choruses are hard they're the hook the part everyone remembers so a boring chorus can ruin even the greatest song or put another way a song with a boring chorus probably isn't that great to begin with with so much pressure riding on the chorus writing a good one can seem daunting but fortunately music theory is here to help or at least it's here to make things a whole lot more complicated but hopefully that winds up helping we'll see before we talk about what makes a good chorus though we first have to talk about what a chorus is this video is sponsored by curiositystream okay so the first thing we need to ask is what are song sections for what purpose do they serve and the simplest answer is that song sections divide time they take the continuous experience of listening to a piece of music and chop it up into smaller more digestible chunks typically between NUMBER_TOKEN and NUMBER_TOKEN bars although the exact lengths of certain sections is a whole can of worms we really don't need to be opening right now the point is a section marks a single musical location within a song and the boundaries between sections are typically defined by significant changes in musical material but it's more than that section labels tell us not just when we transition somewhere new but also when we transition back to somewhere we've already been they mark out patterns of repetition within a song like in the classic jazz form aaba the entire point is that the first second and fourth sections are all basically the same with similar melodies and chord progressions while the third section provides contrast by doing something different these patterns of repetition turn songs from long strings of unrelated musical ideas into coherent self-referencing structures allowing them to establish clear distinct musical identities like when you play the second verse it requires less work from your listeners because they've already heard the first verse so they know what to expect but it's more than that too section labels also convey information about the role of the section within the piece if we're talking about lizzo's truth hurts and i tell you i really like the seventh section you'd have to go back and listen to the song to figure out which one i meant heck you might not even agree with how i counted them leading you to identify a different seventh section than the one i was referring to but if i tell you i like the chorus and you're at all familiar with the song you'll immediately know i'm talking about this
START_SPONSOR_TOKEN video is sponsored by curiositystream okay END_SPONSOR_TOKEN