5. Punch is Sometimes Secured by Trick of Repetition
Anatol Friedland, who composed the music of "My Persian Rose," and L. Wolfe Gilbert's "My Little Dream Girl," in discussing this question, said:
"Ten notes may be the secret of a popular song success. If I can make my listeners remember ten notes of a song that's all I ask. Whenever they hear these ten notes played they'll say, 'That's. . .,' and straightway they'll begin to whistle it. This is the music punch, and it depends on merit alone. Now here's one angle of the musical punch trick:
"To make a punch more punchy still, we repeat it at least once, and sometimes oftener, in a song. You may start your chorus with it, repeat it in the middle, or repeat it at the end. Rarely is it repeated in the verse. High-brow composers call it the theme. For the popular song composer, it's the punch. Clever repetition that makes the strain return with delightful satisfaction, is one of the tricks of the trade—as well as of the art of popular music."
6. A Musical Theme Might be Practically the Entire Song
If what Friedland says is so, and you may turn to your well-thumbed pile of music for confirmation, the theme or the punch of popular music may prove the entire song. I mean, that in its final sales analysis, the magic bars are what count. To carry this logical examination still further, it is possible for a popular song to be little more than theme. As a musical theme is the underlying melody out of which the variations are formed, it is possible to repeat the theme so often that the entire song is little more than clever repetitions.
One of the most common methods is to underlay a melody with what E. M. Wickes, [1] one of the keenest popular song critics of today, calls the "internal vamp." This is the keeping of a melody so closely within its possible octave that the variations play around a very few notes. Try on your piano this combination—D, E flat, and E natural, or F natural, with varying tempos, and you will recognize many beginnings of different famous songs they represent. Either the verse of these songs starts off with this combination, or the chorus takes these notes for its beginning. "Sweet Adeline" and "On the Banks of the Wabash" are but two of the many famous songs built on this foundation. Of course, there are other combinations. These few combinations taken together might be considered as the popular idea of "easy music."
[1] Mr. Wickes has been contributing to The Writer's Monthly a series of valuable papers under the general caption, "Helps for Song Writers."
And now it is through the consideration of the importance of the variations of the theme that we may come to an understanding of what, for the want of a better phrase, I shall call unexpected punches.
7. Punches not Suggested by the Theme