I was notified of a local theater production hosting a staged reading and I wanted to audition. The auditions aren’t for another few weeks, but as part of the audition, I need to sing 32 bars of a modern musical song and then give a conflicting one minute monologue. I can handle the monologue, but what the hell is a bar?
In: 5
they’re asking for 2 verses. or a verse and a chorus.
Wake me up by avicii. the count is 2. verse is 32 bars, the chorus is 16.
Another one bites the dust by Queen, the count is 4, the verse is 8 bars, as is the chorus.
personally i feel that wake me up has double length verses. great song tho.
ok others have told you what a bar is. but not sure that’s useful. if you’ve got the sheet music or maybe there guitar tab you should be able to see the bars being shown, literally by the lines that break the music up into bars. get the sheet music if you can.
otherwise you’re going to have to work it out. songs get very creative with time signatures so it might be tricky. usually there’s a 4 count in the song, sometimes a 3 count (yes there might be 2, 6 or 8 count. if you listen to stargazer, all bets are off, they manage to get people dancing to different rythms inside the same song).
if you can find the count, that’s the repeating way of counting on the beat of the song that repeats and breaks the song up in a logical way. you might have heard a band member starting a song with “one, two, three, four” that’s the count) one count to 4 will often be a bar. the count will normally be quite slow, around 2 a second, but again, varies by song. the beat is consistent tho, it’s not the same as the melody notes, which might hang and pause over the top of the beats.
there’s no space in the count, it’s “1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4” consistently. if you find yourself counting to 3 and hanging for a bit, you’ve got a 4th beat that the song is just not accenting. some songs swing, with “1 … 2,3 … 4,1 … 2,3 … 4,1 …” but that’s usually the most variance.
often there’s a kick or bass drum that’s your best resource, and it usually hits on beats 1&3 of a 4 beat bar (like everything, this varies). high energy dance might hit the kick every beat (4 on the floor).
so find the beat, find the count, find the length of the count, that’s your bar. group your bars into 4 bars. that’s often a line. 4 lines is a verse. 32 bars is usually 2 verses or a verse and a chorus.
and as always, not always, depends on the song. playing with structure and rhythm is what adds interest to a lot of songs. subverting expectations and bringing something new.
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