Usually, coming up with the first four
or eight bars of music is not so bad. It's that question of what do I do next
that haunts composers and music makers. The best first step you can take into writing longer pieces of music
is the ABA form, or Small Ternary. Today we're going to break down the
three parts of the Small Ternary Form, what makes each of them unique, and why you
can't just shuffle them around in any order. And we'll use some of the same examples as
previous videos I made with music from Yasunori Nishiki's 'Octopath Traveler' score because not
only is the writing really well crafted and clear but looking at the same music from different
angles can really deepen our understanding. The first step in an ABA form is of course
your first A section. We'll call this our main section or main theme. It can be any
melody type you like but 'sentence' and 'period' are reliable forms to go with.
For example the main theme from 'Cyrus, the Scholar' uses a period form that
begins and ends in the home key of f minor. 'Cyrus, the Scholar' ends with a nice perfect
authentic cadence which means that if the piece stopped right there we'd feel satisfied
that the music had resolved or returned home. But you don't have to resolve, for example
'Therion, the Thief' also uses the period form, this time in e minor, but ends with
a half cadence on the B major chord. The author Cedric Thorpe Davie, who kind of
sounds like an Octopath character, in his book 'Musical Structure and Design' would call
'Cyrus' a closed form and 'Therion' an open form. Overall, it's a great book but honestly I'm
not convinced those terms really help you decide which one to use when. Just know that you
can end the a with an authentic or half cadence, either way is fine. But there still has to
be some sort of cadence which is crucial. We need that feeling of punctuation that
the section has come to some sort of end in the same way a chapter of a novel or a
scene in a movie doesn't just end mid-sentence. Back in college a teacher looked through
one of my pieces and said 'You don't have any cadences'. Which I thought was
ridiculous. How could that be possible? And it's only more recently that I really
fully appreciated that those cadences need to be crystal clear and even emphasized for your
audience to get their bearings in the piece. I have so many students that
are so afraid of inactivity that they never stop to let the piece
breathe. Do not underestimate the cadences. The only other thing to consider about
the first A theme is the structure which is usually pretty tight. By tight
I mean that it's fairly even and balanced like a nice square four bars plus four bars.
'Ophelia, the Cleric' is an exception to this where that final 'F' is
drawn out with a suspension. But, overall, I think that just
gives us some extra breathing room and the a section still feels pretty balanced. Next up we have the B section,
or middle part of the form. The first question of course is where do you get
the material for the B theme? You can come up with something brand new, but I think the best place to
get ideas for your B theme is from your A theme. The basic idea for the B theme in 'Therion,
the Thief' is this eighth note rest, a following scale into a strong beat that
moves down by step, and then down by leap. And if you look at the basic idea of
the A theme; it's an eighth note rest, a rising scale into a strong beat that
moves down by step, and then down by leap. Two minor changes; having the scale fall
instead of rise, and shifting the idea forward two beats and we get what feels
like a brand new idea for our B section. The A theme from 'Cyrus, the
Scholar' has this rising arc shape and so for the B theme he
uses a falling arc shape. The more similar your ideas, the
more consistency your piece will have and even if people can't recognize the
similarity, which honestly most people can't, there will still be a sense that this
B theme must go with this A theme. It wouldn't be as satisfying to just
shuffle a handful of themes around and stick them together. That would be more like
a medley. Now a crucial difference between the A theme and B theme, at least in the way Yasunori
Nishiki writes them, is with the opening harmony. He pretty much always starts his A theme with the
nice and safe I chord and his B theme with not the I chord. For example, 'Therion' starts on the
flat six and 'Cyrus' starts on the four minor. I would say that starting on the IV chord
is the most common way to begin a B section, but of course it's not the only option.
The point is that we're trying to use the harmony to take us away and make
it feel like we're going somewhere. Starting on something other than I makes
it feel like we've gone away from home and it will be the job of the rest
of the B theme to bring us back. Bringing us back is a really important point
because if we know that we're going to follow our B theme with a return to A, we know we'll need
a satisfying resolution back into our I chord. So, you're pretty much guaranteed to end your
B theme with a half cadence in the home key. A half cadence doesn't have to mean the literal
classical V chord because in 'Therion' he uses the flat seven chord, D major, but we still
get that same sense of pull back to I. I mentioned before that the A
theme is usually pretty tight structurally. Your B theme can contrast
this by being looser. For example, in 'Cyrus' the entire B theme is half as long
as the A theme which makes it feel more hurried. In 'Ophelia, the Cleric' the A theme is nine bars
long and the B theme is unbalanced against it by being 16 bars long so the balance of the
piece is really emphasizing the later part. Also, remember what I said about
harmonically starting somewhere different? In the case of 'Ophelia' the
A theme modulates to the four key of b flat then starts the B
section on the four chord of that key. Another way we can have looseness in the
B theme again comes back to harmony like in 'Therion' the A theme is squarely an e
minor with e harmonic minor on that cadence but the B theme gets much
more adventurous. The d minor, g minor, and especially the e flat major chords
definitely don't come from e minor and this sense of being far away from home is part of what helps
this section feel like it belongs in the middle. Even 'Cyrus, the Scholar' reserves
its single non-diatonic for the B section with the secondary dominant of V. Finally, we have our return to A, or we
can call it A prime. And if you've made it this far into the video there's a very
good chance that we're interested in the same kinds of things. So, please
make sure you like and subscribe so you don't miss out on everything
we've got coming up! I appreciate it. It's important that the return to the A theme
is clear. Again, to that point of helping your audience stay oriented and understand where
they are in the piece. So don't be shy about starting a prime exactly the same way you
started A. If your first A theme ended with an authentic cadence or sense of return to home
then you could even copy paste that again here and be done with it. In the case of some of these
video game tracks that's exactly what's happening. Because the composer is taking advantage of the
ABA form to create an endless A-B-A-B-A-B loop. Very smart for any of those cases where you
don't know exactly when the music will end. But, if you're writing a standalone piece or your
small ternary is one section within a bigger form, I don't recommend just copy and pasting. In the
case of 'Cyrus, the Scholar', Nishiki uses the momentum of that truncated B section and balances
it out with a truncated return to the A section. Instead of playing the entire A theme, he only uses the consequent phrase
or second half of that period form. We've already heard the A theme so we don't
need to go through the entire thing again. This is especially useful to keep in mind when you
have a track that is going to loop indefinitely to make sure it doesn't get too repetitive. But I think it's worth pointing out that
even though the material is the same he brings it up an octave so we still
do get some sense of development and progress in the form even if we're ending
with the same material we started with. Another thing you can do with your return to
A is push it farther than we've yet heard the theme go. Which you can do by extending parts
of the theme, repeating moments for emphasis, and a lot of other things that
I talk about in this video here which you really need to watch if you're
serious about getting better at your craft! Thanks for watching, I will
see you in the next one.
