ABA form is like a musical sandwich. You have the 2 slices of bread with the contrasting meat and cheese on the inside. Instead of bread and meat, you use musical materials. Perhaps an 8-bar phrase for the A section followed by a 4 or 8-bar phrase for the B section. A nice little musical sandwich.
A piece of music made from ABA form can last anywhere from 45 seconds to 5-6 minutes or longer DEPENDING ON HOW THE COMPOSER UTILIZES THE TOOLS OF REPETITION AND CONTRAST!
For example, I can take an 8-bar phrase, repeat that twice, play another 8 bars for the B section, then back to the A section again for another repeat (with variations of course). Now, how long will that last? It depends on tempo or how fast the piece moves through time. Most small ABA sections don't last longer than 2-3 minutes. Why? Because if they were repeated for longer periods of time, the music would become dull and repetitious.
BUT, if we create another section of music - the C section, it provides the relief the ear is searching for and we can then repeat the entire thing again so the form would look like this: ABACABA. This form extends ABA and provides the necessary contrast to create longer pieces.
Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music's online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/piano_lessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!
Is The Theme Reinforced In The Ending? Creative Writing Tips - By now you should have an idea that your theme has to reach its conclusion just as your story does. But our theme has to do more than r...
How To Choose a Baby Formula Breast milk is the most natural food for your baby, but if you can't breastfeed, or have chosen not to, then learning how to choose a baby formula is relatively...
How to Build Your Mailing List Here are seven wise ways to collect email addresses and build your mailing list. If you`re wondering why you need emails, there`s a key point to remember: your ...
Politicians Are Like Car Sales People Well, another election has come and gone in the US and no matter which way you voted there are some important marketing lessons to learn. First, you need to pu...
Growing a Sustainable Garden! Learn the simple basics of growing a sustainable vegetable garden. There's nothing magic or hard to understand, just follow the Pro's directions, and you'll ha...
How to Get Your Customer Talking Before we can sell our products to our prospective customers, we must first get to know them and their needs. The best way to do this is to get them talking.
Branding: Bring Back the Jingle! Did you grow up in the '70s and '80s? If so, you probably have a slew of campy jingles from various TV commercials filed away in your brain. Today, advertisers ...
Caring for Tattoos Tattoos are more popular now than at any time in recorded history. Current estimates have one in seven, or well over 43 million people in North America alone, w...
eBay: Dont Believe All the Hype Three billion dollars (that's billion with a "B") in revenues, 135 million users, millionaires all over the place at eBay! Yeah, eBaby!!!, to steal a line form ...
Knowledge Processing E-Business Today's knowledge economy CEO's wanted companies all information on fingertips. Computer based reports are now become very old fashion. Companies wanted to acce...
How You Can Avoid The New Dangers Of Spam Until recently, spam has been an annoyance, a definite
load on your email system and network, a waste of productive
time and money, but we are about to find th...
Educated Choice How to control health care costs continues to dominate discussions among benefit administrators, chief financial officers, CEO's, insurance brokers and health b...
Print this page