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

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Ditch the verse

Ditch the verse - Sibelius Tutorial

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

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Ditch the verse

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- [Instructor] Another interesting way to play with the expectation created by the standard verse chorus bridge song form, is something I like to call ditching the verse. Ditching the verse is not a technique we see too often in Pop music, and it's actually more common in musical theater. It essentially builds out the size of a pre-chorus, and uses it to substitute for the verse we would normally hear after the first chorus of a song. A great example of a song that uses this technique very effectively is Keane's Somewhere Only We Know. By moving straight from the first chorus back into a pre-chorus, it keeps the song's forward momentum going. Let me show you how we can achieve this effect with a song you know and love, I Don't Know You. First, I'm going to play the song structured in the typical verse, pre-chorus, chorus format. Notice that I'm singing a verse with a length of eight bars, followed by a simple pre-chorus that's only four bars long, followed by a chorus that's eight…

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