Rockin’ Out

Abstract

The breakout chorus is a hallmark of rock music. Such a chorus contrasts with its preceding verse by conveying an increase in intensity with regard to loudness, rhythmic and textural activity, timbral noise, lyrical content, and/or pitch level. The last of these techniques, modulating the pitch level, often entails a full-scale change of tonal center from a minor tonic to its relative major, a motion that, when heard against analogous changes in other musical parameters, could be deemed an “expressive modulation.” In light of myriad examples of this musical technique, we can safely assert that the breakout chorus is, for rock music in general, a predictable place at which to encounter an expressive relative-major relocation. Yet expressive modulations in verse-chorus form are not always so formulaic. Variations on the technique abound, and this paper will lay out some common alternatives as well as some notably unique treatments. Modulations to more distant tonal centers, modulations that are oblique or ambiguous, and modulations that play against the breakout stereotype will be identified in verse-chorus songs representing all six decades of rock history.

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