[Getting Lyric Rhythm And Stress Right.]

In that instance the person at pronoun is stressed rather than the noun to make a point. ie your asking too much and I'm not the one for you. " it ain't ME babe" and that is a normal exception. And you can do whatever you like as long as there is a good and valid reason for doing it. 

 

Cheers

 

Gary

[Song Form]

Hi Omenrama I'm glad you got something from it. Cheers Gary

[Getting Lyric Rhythm And Stress Right.]

I agree with you, Gary, to a great extent, but sometimes you have to reverse the order of words, or use other ways of phrase modification, in a poetic way to get the meter of the song sounding in synch. Kind of like poetry. For example, a line in a song I wrote.. Instead of saying... 'I can see so many wondrous things in your eyes.'. I phrased it like this.. 'In your eyes.. I can see.. so many wondrous things..' to show or illustrate the passion of the character in that verse, the pauses adding that 'special something'.

Hi Joe This is a good example and something that I missed pointing out in my original post. That is if the stress isn't working, going with word reordering is a good option to avoid problems with melody variation. Also the phrase "In your eyes.. I can see.. so many wondrous things.." Is interesting because it can be stressed different ways to give a slightl different flavour. If for example the "I" fell on a stressed first beat. It could be, that you don't think your up to much, but "I" do. This would be an example of stressing a pronoun which is normally unstressed, but doing it for a purpose, and it subtly alters what the lyric is saying. If on the other hand the stresses fell on "eyes" "see" "man" and "drous" as you have written it, then it just means what it says. Without that connotation. I guess the point of this is, to go back over your lyric and consider every line,and use stress as tone of voice for your song, as well as making it flow conversationally. To use stress to put lines in context and to show what the lyric is saying. It is that extra bit of communication that will make the song the best it can be. Cheers Gary

[The Chicken Or The Egg]

Hello Gary   Thats for a very interesting subject!! I like your blogs a lot Gary Refrain is indeed a important part of the song, refrain needs to be interesting and catchy for the listener, and is indeed most important in the end of the day.   But as from songwriter view though (speaking for myself and how I work),  I feel the refrain is the part of the song that should support the verse both melodically and lyrically..and reflect the verses and the story I have put into the verses. So in other words, the verses for me is vital to have nailed to have a framework to work from to develope refrain and bridge and other things... First of all I need to figure out a good opening lyrically to introduce the listener to the story I am taking them into. The verse is challenging because this is first impression and should be the part that build up the song to a climax (refrain)   When I make the verses, and I am very happy with them,. the refrain sometimes appear out of nowhere for me.. and lyrically I use more simple lyrics that I repeat or maybe I just use fewer words (so is easier for the listener to get the lyrics stuck in their head..) Melodically I also find it easier to make hookes and catchy melody in refrain, when I have the verse: Because then I am so used to the verses I made so is easier to find a melody that makes sense right after the verses. I get inspired from the verses you could say  and is easier for me to be creative, if I have some basics (verses) to work out from.   The bridge is the last thing I work on, because sometimes is nesseary in a song, sometimes not.  I really need to hear the two main parts (verse and refrain) together, to hear if is needed or not.. Sometimes I use refrain or verse as a bridge, but just do some twists around a chord or just strip it downs for instruments.   The outro and intro could be either elements from verse,m refrain or bridge. Depends.. I go with my gutfeeling here   With that said: Sometimes a melody is coming to me out of nowhere and that can be the a obvious refrain with lyrics.. so then I write refrain first. But then I find myself work harder on the verses.     Probably very individullay how people work I suppose.   So I guess in the end of the day it varies a lot for me,     Thanks for interesting subject Gary! I liked it.   (sorry bad grammar)

Hi If you are talking about the set up which I think you are. It is very important say in country story telling songs. You can't say either which is the most important part of a song like that because they are all interdependent. And to a large degree this post is about unplanned writing. If the writing is planned that is you have the beginning middle and end of the story written down then you know where you are going with it before you start writing the actual song. In that case I think you can write in what ever order you want. I have the feeling that armature song writers would hate the concept of planned writing because it becomes more like work rather than play. But it is quite efficient, working writers have to produce songs when they have no inspiration because the song is due Monday for a session. And it just has to be done. So that is totally different than writing when the inspiration hits you. It is impossible to tell with a writer like Lennon for example which songs are jobs of work and which ones came from inspiration. Yet 50 percent of his Beatle stuff was written as jobs of work. Because McCartney drove the album making process to a large extent so when he had eight songs or so they would start to record. Lennon would usually only have three or four and would have to sit down and write four more for the sessions. And even when you know which ones they are there is no difference in the quality of the writing. So it sounds to me like you are writing to a plan of some sort and if you are doing that then it's more like a professional approach. And because you know what is going to happen in the song, you can write whatever bit you like first. And alter what happens to suite. I do find planned writing very efficient because if I can't get the development and the conclusion of the story to work in story board form I can move on to another idea without wasting time writing something that isn't going to work. But I have to say it is more like work than play when I do that. Cheers Gary

[I Have Writers Block What Can I Do]

Gary, another pearl of wisdom from the great man. Sometimes the answers we seek are right in front of us and too obvious to see. Now, where is Kel's hook book?

We must do a lyric one day where we are all writing from the same hook. It is interesting the different slants people come up with. Cheers Gary

[The Chicken Or The Egg]

The easiest songs I ever wrote were from the hook. Because it is almost like doing no work at all, if you have a hook running around in your head for a week while your driving around or whatever. When you actually sit down to write the words just seem to come straight out of your mouth. I guess Kel out of your sub conscious mind where they have been brewing for a week or so. Cheers Gary

[The Chicken Or The Egg]

Yes James you can not stop that happening. But when it does it is so hard to write the rest because it's got to sit alongside the killer inspirational lines. So sometimes you get uneven quality in the verses. And issues getting in and out of the chorus. But there is nothing you can do about that because it just happens. But to write like that deliberately is making life hard. I actually don't even write the chorus until I have written a plan of the song and I should really have done a post about that before the writing order. Because you know whether a songs going to work or not before you start writing it. Some ideas just don't work so that is a time saver.

[Song Form]

Thanks James Cheers Gary

[Writing: The Art Of Therapy]

Good advice Cheers Gary

[Song Form]

I did read something the other day on melody writing which was very good. I'll have go back and look at the song form ones. Cheers Gary

[I Have Writers Block What Can I Do]

Well Sam that has to be a good thing. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for you too have more hooks than you can write songs for. Cheers Gary

[#8 Is A Rhyme A Crime Or Just In Time?]

Aha I have just learned that the type of rhyme you use can create a feeling in the lyric separate from the actual words. Actually to call these rhymes is a bit of a misnomer. More like sonic connections than rhymes. Because songs are sung not red rhymes in songs are vowel biased. The consonants do not matter as much. Here s a list of rhyme types going from the most stable to the least.

The function of stability in rhyme is it controls the movement in the lyric. This is why rhyming couplets AA make a song drag because the rhyme scheme completely resolves and the song does to a stop.

The list

Rhyme. Type

Blame/game. Perfect

Mug/blood. Family

Cry/smile. Additive

Smile/cry. Subtractive

Ran/cat. Assonance

End/bond. Consonance

As I said when you get down to assonance and consonance it is better to call them sonic connections rather than rhymes. That is why when you read a lyric tat seems to have few rhymes it still works and you not quite sure why.

Sonic connections.

Cheers

Gary