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Lesson 45: Hook to Chorus: Rolling Stone

This lesson explores expanding a hook into a whole chorus. This is the usual "next step" in writing a song after you've written a hook (Lesson 44: Hook Melodies).

To learn ways to expand a hook into a chorus, we'll study how "real songs" do it. For this lesson, we'll look at Like A Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan (link at end of lesson). If you don't remember this Rolling Stone's hook, then first review:

• Lesson 34: Starting a Song: Hook Chords
• Lesson 44: Hook Melodies

To review, the Rolling Stone hook (at 1:05 in the recording) consists of:

• A melody phrase ("How does it feel?")
• A chord phrase:

    C   F     G        
  | / / / / | / / / / |

Repeating the Hook Phrase

How did Bob expand this hook into a whole chorus? It's driven by the lyrics. Bob continues with more short phrases, like lines of poetry:

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like A Rolling Stone?

To set these lines to music, Bob does the obvious thing: He repeats the two-measure chord phrase (C F G) over and over. And, he also more-or-less repeats the hook melody (at least the melody rhythm) over and over, along with the 2-measure chord phrase. Here's a sketch of the chords and lyrics together:

Melody Pitches

How does Bob choose the melody notes? Most of the pitches in this melody don't seem that important to me; it wouldn't matter much if they were changed a bit, and lots of them are just the tonic (the note C, which is also this song's key). The most important pitches are the last one in each phrase. This song is in the key of C; here is the scale degree, in the key of C, of each of these last-in-the-phrase notes:

… feel:	note E = degree 3
… feel:	note E = degree 3
… home:	note E = degree 3
… unknown:	note E = degree 3
… Stone:	note C = degree 1

The 1st 4 phrases end on degree 3, which does not sound particularly "final"; then the last phrase, the words "Like A Rolling Stone", ends on degree 1, the key's tonic, which does sound "final". Ending the melody on degree 1 like this is not a rule, but it's very, very common.

Stretching the Ending

After singing the last word in the chorus, "Stone", Bob could have simply finished the 2-measure chord phrase ( | C F | G || ) and continued straight on to Verse 2, like this:


However, what Bob actually does is this:


This "actual" chorus does several things to stretch the ending:

• Repeats the 2-measure chord phrase an extra time
• Plays a harmonica lick to fill the extra time
• Stretches the last G chord from 1 measure to 2 measures

These "stretching" ideas are totally optional. They create a "dramatic pause" before Verse 2, but the song "works fine" without them. If you like them, add them to your bag of songwriting tricks.

Do It Yourself

This Like A Rolling Stone example is just one way out of thousands to expand a hook into a chorus. To get started creating your own chorus, you can use ideas from this example if you want. However, as you go on, to avoid feeling like you're just copying Like A Rolling Stone all the time, you'll want to learn hook-expanding ideas from many songs. So, I'd suggest adding activities like these to your writing exercises (from Lesson 2: Practicing Songwriting):

• Analyze how the hook is expanded into a chorus in songs you like.
• Practice using the ideas you find. Try mixing ideas from different songs, so your own chorus doesn't sound too much like any other particular song. Try inventing your own original variations of ideas you find.

Next:
Start exploring adding a verse to a chorus, in Lesson 46: Melody Rhythm: Rolling Stone.

Song link:
For Like A Rolling Stone, I used the recording from The Essential Bob Dylan ($1.29 at Amazon as of this writing).