From the course: The Songwriter's Toolkit: Learning from the Masters

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Consistent melody in the verse and chorus

Consistent melody in the verse and chorus - Sibelius Tutorial

From the course: The Songwriter's Toolkit: Learning from the Masters

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Consistent melody in the verse and chorus

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- [Instructor] Identifying a song's chorus is usually pretty straight forward. Traditionally, the chorus is the part of the song that repeats the most and encourages the listener to sing along. Typically, there are differences in the musical makeup of a chorus that allow it to stand out from a verse. Usually, chorus melodies live in a higher register than the verse, and make more use of the tonic chord in their harmony. However, there are songs where the melody and the chords in both the verse and the chorus are nearly identical. Two great examples of songs that have nearly the same melody and chords for their verse and chorus are Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA and Elvis Presley's Hound Dog. So this begs the question, if both the verse and the chorus have roughly the same melody and chords, how can we tell which is which? The answer is simple, listen to the lyrics. I haven't discussed lyrics in great detail in my songwriting courses, but I cannot overstate the importance of the…

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