Learning Song Forms
With all that you have learned, you now have the knowledge and the tools to sing any style of music. It is recommended that you get together with other musicians as often as possible, as well as think about performing live.
You should also be singing along with albums every day, sometimes copying what you hear and sometimes improvising, as well as learning melodies sung by your favorite singers, and analyzing them in terms of chord and note choices and use of rhythm.
To sing with other musicians, you need to build a repertoire. Get a book with a large collection of standards and start learning as many songs as you can. Make a habit of memorizing them and then transposing them to other keys that suit your voice. As you learn more songs, you will find that there are certain progressions which come up regularly, the most common being 2 5 1 . If you sing with Jazz musicians, there are certain song forms which they will assume you know from memory. These include Rhythm Changes (a chord progression based on George Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm) and several variations on the 12 bar Blues form.
Rhythm Changes is a typical example of 32 bar Song Form, or AABA form. This consists of an A section played twice, followed by a B section (called a bridge) and then a return to the A section (or sometimes a variation of the A section). There are literally thousands of songs which use the AABA form.
Play-Along Recordings
A great way to become familiar with the form of a song is to use a play-along recording of it. There are many play along recordings available which feature a rhythm section but no melody instrument.
Many of them contain either standard songs or progressions which are very much like particular songs. Once you can sing the basic melody along with the rhythm section, you can start improvising phrases over the form until you are comfortable with it. By the time you can do this, you are ready to perform the song live.
Some Jazz Terminology
Jazz musicians have added many new terms to the musical dictionary.
- Tune – A song or composition used as the basis for improvisation.
- Changes – The underlying chord progression of a song (a series of chord changes).
- Head – The melody of a song, usually played at the start and finish, with solos in between.
- Chorus – Once through the entire form of the piece.
- Bridge – The B Section or "middle eight".
- Blowing – Improvising, taking a solo.
- Trading Fours – Musicians taking turns to improvise four bar phrases.
- Bop – Bebop style (e.g., Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk).
There are many more, but these will help you out in Jam sessions.
