This is how you should structure your next progressive house song!

Hey everybody. Welcome back to a new analysis we have done on progressive house. I am very excited to show you the results of our analysis on the song structure of 50 of the most popular progressive house tracks of all time. Many of the songs used for this analysis can be found in our article on the best progressive house songs. Understanding how you should structure your songs is fundamental. When you know how the structure of your song is going to look like when it’s finished you can build your song much quicker. Because almost every genre of music consists of a few sections that repeat throughout the song. This is very much true for progressive house as well. We analyzed the song structure of two very popular songs. High on Life by Martin Garrix and Calling by Sebastian Ingrosso & Alesso. You can learn a ton from listening to these songs while looking at the image down below.

Song Structure Progressive House

Song structure is the arrangement of all the different sections of a song. Most songs consist out of an Intro, Verse, Pre-Chorus (Build-up), Chorus (Drop), Post Chorus & Bridge. The Chorus contains the “main idea” of the song, in most genres of EDM this will be the drop of the song. The drop is the most energetic part of the song and can contain vocals. For instrumental songs, the verse of a Progressive House song contains a melody that is leading up to the drop. For songs with a vocal, the verse consists of one part with low and one with high-energy that is also more catchy. The low-energy part always comes before the high-energy part.

What became apparent immediately is that most songs are build in sections of 8 bars. And a few tracks use sections of 4 bars. This is done in many genres of music and makes the songs predictable. A song has to be somewhat predictable to make a nice listening experience, this also makes a song more catchy.

What song structure should I use?

ABCABC is the most common song structure for progressive house. These songs start with a verse [A], the verse of the song might have vocals. From the verse the song goes into the Pre Chorus [B], this is the part where the song gets a lot more energy and builds into the drop. Pre Chorus can also be called build-up for progressive house. At the end of the Pre Chorus, the kick is ofter filtered away and the track goes into the Chorus [C]. The Chorus is also called the drop in progressive house. Some progressive house songs have a Bridge [E] in between the first Chorus and the second Verse. A few progressive house songs have a Post Chorus [D], the Post Chorus comes right after the Chorus (drop) and has almost the same energy as the drop itself. The picture down below shows how common various song structures are in progressive house.

How long should each section be?

Many progressive house songs have an intro, this is a short part of the song that often plays the chords of the song before the first Verse starts. The intro of the song is 1, 2, 4, or 8 bars long in most cases. An intro of 4 or 8 bars gives enough space to play the chord progression one or 2 times, most chord progressions repeat every 4 or 8 bars. After the Intro comes the first Verse of the song, the length is the verse is almost always a multitude of 8. The same can be said for the build-up and the drop of the track, as can be seen in the picture down below.

After the first drop of your track you can place a bridge to switch the song up a little. As can be seen in the picture down below, not many progressive house songs do this. Another interesting find is that the second verse is often shorter in this genre. On the other hand, the second build-up and drop increase in length. Quite a few songs go from 8 to 16 or from 16 to 24 bars for the second drop.

That was all I wanted to share with you today. Thank you so much for reading another article, if you want me to go over any subject related to EDM music, please let me know. If you want to receive our latest research as quickly as possible, please follow us on Instagram @lemonadeloopsaudio.