Song Structure Reference Sources

[Telecasterseattle]

I am a guitar player who is struggling to build drum tracks to play guitar with. As I work through this process, it's become clear to me that my knowledge of various song structures (e.g. 12 bar blues, AA BB forms, etc.)is not a good as I thought it was.

I am wondering if anyone on this site can recommend a good book or other reference tool on song structures and formats that might help me in this process.

One book I saw in another thread was: "How to Write Songs on the Guitar" by Rikky Rooksby (great name ). Has anyone used this book and, if so, would it work for my needs?

Thanks!

[levitator]

well I've got that Rooksby book. There's 10 pages in it on song structures, listing a bunch of typical structures, with examples of songs that use them, together with some less common ones. It's focused on 'popular' music btw - pop, rock, blues etc

It's geared towards how to come up with interesting song structures yourself - I guess it'll help some depending on exactly what you're looking to do...

Still, if you're at all interested in working on your songwriting on guitar I'd recommend it anyway

Got the book right here so feel free to ask if you want some more info

[garret]

One of my favorite resources, and a free one at that, is Alan Pollack's Beatles analyses:

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DAT ... s_on.shtml

Loads of great info about song structures, harmony, arrangement, etc...

[cheul]

Hmmm could be really interesting, I intented to analyze some Beatles' stuff somwhere down the road. Thanks for the link.

[flippya2000]

Mixing the right instruments, & the song structure are the hardest parts of making music for me & not really covered in traditional music theory books (especially for people who make music with their PC).

The only advise I can give is to listen to your favourite tracks & note what methods are used to: link different sections, what instruments the different sections consist of, what parts are kept the same throughout sections, etc. Also, depending how good you are at playing, you can just keep jamming until you find things that just naturally work

Cheers for the link levitator, will check that site out soon