Learn the basic structure of a song in Tan Nhac

Dear friends, today we will try to understand the basic structure of a popular New Music song so that you can compare and evaluate how to compose old songs and now on! And please tell us immediately that we will avoid using technical terminology to those who are interested in this topic but do not specialize in music, we still convey some main ideas to present !

First of all, let's see how writing a song is different from writing a poem. We do not compare writing a song with an essay because writing with music is not close to each other with music and poetry, although all three things have one thing in common in terms of themes and expressions, ie readers, in where is the listener who first wants to know exactly what author they want to say, then what is it to say it is bad!

A poem and a song are very close to each other. How many songs are remembered by the people in Tan Nhac from the past until now are nothing more than the poems that are valued by talented musicians who have included music features that make these poems lie in the middle The pages of books are like wings flying up and down the streets. There are also songs that their writers write well-written lyrics like poetry.

A poem with a owl, rhyming, a song, in a slightly different form, but also has a place to deal with a particular key requirement for it It is how people can easily remember and belong to sing or let them listen after listening. Kieu poetry has thousands of sentences, but the people still remember very long passages because of the structure of Luc Bat poem, its way of rhyming, helping people remember like that! But if poetry has a category called "free poetry," then songs can't have a kind of free-to-do song, then do it! To say this more accurately: If you want to make a song in a free style, no matter what kind of rules you need, it's fine. But whoever finishes, they can take care of themselves by singing or training for some individuals to sing, but also consider bringing such a work to the public and hope that it will survive. It is impossible! It is because we are eccentric to write a poem with the most number of sentences, with the most number of lines, without needing to rhyme anything, no need for a comma is okay; because anyone who can read, read, like, like it, but whoever sings a song, each song cannot last more than one breath. Writing has had its punctuation, writing a song even more respects its punctuation, because unlike writing can be punctuated or forgotten punctuation, Writing a song without arranging punctuation is performed in breaks to get a tight breath, the singers cannot sing. Singers who have learned to sing to the right place know that one of the first basic lessons is breathing practice, breathing practice!

Therefore, a person who does not have a so-called "poem" in him but who has learned the basics of poetry makes it difficult to write a poem - even if it is mediocre - compared to a person There is "music" in people but knowing how to use a speaker and learning speaker on "solfege" to record sound is easier to create a song, even if it is a song live with life for years! It is easier because by following the inspiration and how to tone the melody of the song to me, whichever way, according to the natural reflexes of the lungs, it also knows the way to take a breath. sentence, punctuation.Please be clear that there are some things - absolutely no fundamentally profound in terms of music, let alone the composition!

After determining the role of punctuation in a song, from which to arrange the verses, the short length of the sentences that go together cannot be arbitrary, because the more arbitrary it is The harder it is to remember, the harder it is. Not only the melodies of the songs need to have some basic repetition, but at the shortest length of the lyrics, they must follow each other like a mold so that people can easily remember them! So, in terms of structure, how much should the stereotypes should be stereotyped, avoiding stereotypes so that people are still easy to remember? Please make a simple statement like this so everyone can easily imagine: I took 4 verses of the Dao:

"My four-
piece shirt hangs on me" "The night I lay, I took a breath"
"Remembering my brother is still in my life"
"Forget you, you have been born in the past "

You must also recognize the poem "Song That Luc Bat"! That poem has both the structure of Song That, and the structure of Luc Bat, but joining together it sounds harmonious and smooth as usual. If the old people wrote, then those Ca Dao verses use Luc Bat for all 4 sentences, but can still write:

"My shirt is hanging from me"
"Going away, I remember to bring with me"
"Remember my brother is still
alive "

It is not so much about the rhyme, but it sounds more monotonous if it is written in the style of "Song That Luc Bat" as the original place, and not only the original Ca Dao post has original meaning love and talk in some words "The night I lie down, I take a breath"!

Where a song is considered "balanced" in terms of composition, it is difficult for you to see it beyond the general model as we have just illustrated through the past verses in terms of arranging sentences. sing.

At this point, it is thought that you can listen to familiar songs with a relatively more specific concept in how people write a song. Let's listen to a song with a beautiful melody as well as very simple words but full of true feelings of musician Nguyen Van Dong when he was old; the song "About the old house" through the voice of Luu Bich.

(Quote " About the old roof ")

We are listening to Luu Bich singing the song " About the old roof " by Nguyen Van Dong.

Let's analyze the structure of the verses in this song together:

" Go back here, bewildered, birds fly to find herds ", 8 words, 8 notes, finished singing, rested 4 times
" Go here to be deserted, cold and cold ," also 8 words, also rested like last sentence
" I settled listen to the human heart ", change the number of words with the notes, only 7 words left, take a beat
" Passing the unconscious heartbeat ", repeat the structure in 7 words, take a beat
" Through charming dreams simple ”, repeating the structure in 7 words, 4 breaks

And back to the structure of the verse as well as the melody as at the beginning of the song:

" On this happy where ancient huddled minutes
Shelf embroidered desert sun, phoenix petal fall than
you hear in fur die
Covered dry leaf incense night faded
disabled wandering between heaven flying home "

Then there is a variation with the structure of the verses as well as the melody to avoid the monotony:

" In the old country where the poor people lived, the House of ruin destroyed what was once hated by the Old Love, " including all 12 words, 12 notes, and then took 4 breaks.

Then continue with:

" The person has gone, the returner doesn't have a good time."

To repeat the structure of the first paragraph with:

" Here, the water is cold and the night is cold.
The strawberry garden is too shy.
I love in the winter.
Bring the blue shirt to the river
Forget the thatched roof, forget the old boat "

This is a form of structure for a song that is very popular in Vietnamese New Music. But the problem is of course not on the structural side, in the way of singing sentences. Hungry with a song, its beauty or beauty always lies in the melody. The song " About the old house " is now widely known because the structure of the song is so simple, but the melody of hundreds of other songs is also structured like that, but the melody is not like that. !

In the New Music, in addition to songs with a popular structure like the melody, there are also songs that express the melody even more spectacularly than without any Repeat from head to tail! It is no different from a poem but spoken in music. In Western classical music, there is a famous song that the old generation of music lovers used to know is the song "Sérénade" by Franz Schubert. This piece is a style whose style is considered by the author as an " art song " - translated into English as " art song ""- although the unique song does not bring the art, but Franz Schubert calls it that because he sees it as a morphology without repetitions like normal songs, but instead then the inspiration of the musician just spread out like it was when people wrote poetry!