Word of the Day: Outtro
Friday, December 29th, 2006
outtro (n.): the end portion of a song
“Outtro” is a neologism in widespread use among rock musicians as the opposite of “intro.” I’m pretty sure it’s denigrated among serious musicians, who prefer fancy-pants terms like “coda” and “fine” (pronounced fee-NAY, per the Italian), but it serves a different and specific purpose. A coda is exclusively an ending portion that differs from the main structure of the song or piece — for examples, see the “somebody got hurt” part at the end of “Break My Body” by the Pixies, or the “love is all you need” repeats at the end of “All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles. Those are codas, whereas a song like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” doesn’t have a coda — it has an outtro, which consists of repetitions of the verse chords with guitar licks over them.
“Fine” just means end; it’s used in phrases like “D.C. al Fine,” which stands for “Da Capo al Fine,” meaning, “from the head to the end” — when you see that phrase, you go back to the beginning and play through to the final bar line. There’s no real way to express how the song ends using “fine,” that is, what the ending contains.
In chord charts and tabs, though, you see little notations all the time like “Outtro = intro,” or “Outtro: repeat riff A and fade.” It’s a wholly necessary term, invented by musicians and songwriters who write in sections. I suppose if classical musicians had things like intros, verses, choruses, bridges, and breakdowns and referred to them as such, some similar term might be in use and they wouldn’t look down their noses at it. But hey, fuck them.
not to drop names or nothin’, but when i played guitar w/ billy corgan, he called the bridge a “middle eight”, referring to the fact that it came in the middle and was usually eight measures. he also said it was “normal” for the middle eight to be in a completely different key from the rest of the song.
do YOU, being a SERIOUS musician, use “coda” and “fine”? and don’t classical musicians write sectionally too? although i think theirs is more like… focused to building to a climax; obviously, they have no use for verse/chorus/verse/bridge/chorus/outtro or whatever.
i use “outtro”, and i use it similarly when referring to something completely different from the song, or when it’s just a repeated measure. does this mean i’m not serious??!!?! fuck fuck fuck
“Middle eight” is common — it comes from the days of 32-bar songs like “I Got Rhythm.” Lots of people still use it (including Morrissey, in the lyrics of “Tomorrow”) despite the fact that the modern bridge isn’t bound by those constraints. “Normal” is a relative term.
Don’t get me wrong, “coda” has its place, but it’s highly specifically defined — “outtro” is an umbrella term that I find much more useful. I’d say the fact that you use it for all those various purposes makes you more of a serious musician, not less so — but not, y’know, one of those Carnegie Hall types.