Writing Better Lyrics

by Pat Pattison

  door

  one

  floor

  So rhyme guides our ear. Can a lack of rhyme maroon our ear without a guide? As in:

  Her hat is hanging by the door

  The one she bought in Mexico

  It blocked the wind and stopped the rain

  She'd never leave that one

  So she can't be really gone

  Our ear feels a little lost. And how is our hero feeling? Yup. Lost.

  Is this to say that the lack of rhyme supports the emotion of the verse? Yup. It's huge. And, with a little practice, you can do it, too. These are tools, ready for use in any situation. Just apply the right tool in the right place and watch your song take on more color and more meaning.

  Listen to “The Great Balancing Act” and see how Janis Ian and Kye Fleming create prosody with their abbb rhyme scheme.

  Prosody comes from many directions, and rhyme scheme can be a big player. There's much more of this to come in chapter nineteen, “Understanding Motion.”

  5. Rhyme Types Remember this?

  RHYME TYPES:

  SCALE OF RESOLUTION STRENGTHS

  Remember, rhyme types create opportunities to add color and emotion. Use them to color your meaning, the same way a film score comments on the action on the screen.

  There are no rules, only tools.

  She'd never leave that one

  So she can't be really gone

  Here, the consonance rhyme, one/gone, conspires, along with the other elements of structure (number of lines, line length etc.), to help pull the rug out from under our hero, as well as to increase our feeling that something's not quite right. Good stuff.

  So, did Gary Burr think about all this stuff as he wrote “Can't Be Really Gone”? Maybe, maybe not. The important issue is: You can.

  The point of lyric analysis isn't to discover what a given writer intended to do. That's a fool's errand. Rather, lyric analysis digs into effective songs to discover what makes them work, to unearth tools for our own use.

  Take the songs that move you and go beyond what they say and see how they're put together. You'll see how the film score of structure creates an extra dimension, adding emotion at every turn. Then use these structural tools to make your own songs dance.

  Let's finish by looking at the five elements at work in Don Henley and Bruce Hornsby's “The End of the Innocence”:

  Remember when the days were long

  And rolled beneath the deep blue sky

  Didn't have a care in the world

  With mommy and daddy standin'by

  Stable or unstable? Right. Stable. And how stable was my childhood? Well, my childhood had an even number of equal-length lines that rhymed perfectly at the second and fourth lines.

  But happily ever after fails

  And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales

  The lawyers dwell on small details

  Since daddy had to fly

  Stable or unstable? Right. Stable. And where is it the most unstable? Right. The last line, where daddy leaves. How did daddy's leaving affect me? Well, it made me feel like my life sped up with consecutive rhymes, then dropped me over the edge with a short, unrhymed line. Darn it, daddy!

  But I know a place where we can go

  That's still untouched by men

  We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by

  And the tall grass wave in the wind

  Stable or unstable? Hmm. Both? Yes. An even number of lines with matched alternating line lengths, rhyming lines two and four. That's what I'm promising you — a place where everything will feel stable again. But alas, though it might still feel better, there's not much you can do about the damage daddy's leaving did. No matter how stable the place we go feels, there's that darn men/wind consonance/additive rhyme, making everything hang. Real stability is now just an illusion. No perfect rhymes in sight.

  You can lay your head back on the ground

  And let your hair fall all around me

  Offer up your best defense

  But this is the end

  This is the end of the innocence

  Stable or unstable? Yep — very unstable. We'll never get our innocence back. Our life is always destined to be an odd number of unequal-length lines topped of by another consonance rhyme, defense/innocence.

  A remarkable journey, where the structure supports — indeed, helps create — the emotional intent of the song.

  Structure is your film score. Learn how to use it. Learn the effects that various structures can create, and use them to support your own ideas. Sometimes, you can even use them to create emotions underneath what you're saying.

  In the next chapter, we'll take a systematic look at the effects of various structures. Fasten your seatbelts.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  UNDERSTANDING MOTION

  One of the best ways to give your lyric extra punch is to understand how to make your lyric move, and how to make that motion support what you're saying — how to create prosody.

  Sometimes, you may accidentally trip onto this sort of writing, unaware of the choices you're making. But if you tune into your lyrics' motion consistently, you'll not only write and rewrite your songs more effectively, but, more important, you won't rely on lucky accidents or divine inspiration to drop those good bits into your lap.

  Lots of great ideas float by every day if we're awake and pay attention to what's inside us and around us. But it's how we deal with those magical ideas that create a better song.

  In this chapter, we'll look at how lyric structure creates motion, which, in turn, creates emotion to be harnessed in support of what you want to say. You'll find plenty of exercises ahead to shape your motion muscles. If you do them all, you'll finish this chapter with tools and abilities you probably don't see now. I promise.

  MOTION CREATES EMOTION

  We feel something when a song speeds up, slows down, wants to move forward to the next place, wants to come to a resolution, and then arrives at home.

  All by itself, the motion we create can take listeners on an interesting journey — a journey of feelings and attitudes. Lyric structure, all by itself, can:

  move us forward to create excitement, anticipation, or an expectation of what's coming next.

  slow us down to create a sense of holding back or a sense of unresolved feelings.

  draw attention to a specific word (a spotlight), creating surprise, delight, humor, or any important emotion.

  resolve, creating a feeling of stability.

  leave us hanging and unresolved, creating a feeling of instability.

  Again, motion creates emotion.

  The primary emotion-producer in a lyric is the idea — the intent of the lyric, expressed in words and phrases. Since words “mean something,” they create emotion. If we also understand certain structural principles, we can amplify and support our ideas with dramatic results.

  When we look at lines like this:

  Turn down the lights, turn down the bed

  Turn down these voices inside my head

  — Mike Reid/Alan Shamblin

  It makes us feel something. And I'm suggesting it's worth investigating what it makes us feel and why.

  In lyrics, there are two elements that create motion and emotion:

  1) the words and ideas themselves, and

  2) the overall lyric structure, which consists of:

  a. groupings of lines, and

  b. line structure, a combination of three things:

  rhythm of the line

  length of the line (line length is determined by the number of stresses in a line), and

  rhyme scheme used in the combinations of lines.

  When you control the way a lyric moves, you're able to affect your audience on two levels simultaneously, rather than just on the level of meaning.

  Motion creates emotion. Or, maybe better: Motion creates and supports emotion.

  Let's first look at how the motion of a lyric, using four of the five basic structur
al elements (we'll leave out rhyme types) — an even number of lines, matched line length, stable rhythm, and stable rhyme scheme — can create a stable feeling:

  Rhyme

  Stresses

  Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

  a

  4

  That saved a wretch like me

  b

  3

  I once was lost, but now am found

  a

  4

  Was blind, but now I see

  b

  3

  It's a stable common meter; the first and third lines both have the same line length, as do the second and fourth lines.

  The rhyme scheme is abab, the same configuration as the line lengths (a four-stress line followed by a three-stress line, then another four-stress line followed by a three-stress line). The rhythms move along in a regular duple pattern (da DUM).

  To notate the way a structure moves, let's use capital letters (e.g., A, B, C) to stand for lines that have both the same line lengths and the same rhyme scheme. Each line labeled with the same letter will:(1) rhyme with, (2) have the same number of stressed syllables as, and (3) have the same basic rhythm as every other line in the section with the same letter, as shown here in the far right column:

  When these features (line length, rhyme, and number of stressed syllables) line up, the section's motion becomes clearer. This will also help you understand and control the way musical phrases work with lyrical phrases and help to you organize them in stable or unstable ways.

  Once you get a feel for it, you'll be able to control motion in the real world of lyric writing, where mismatches can create productive tensions, as when rhyme scheme differs from the arrangement of line lengths. (For example, you can create tension when you have four equal-length lines that rhyme abab instead of aaaa. We'll see more of that later, but for now, let's keep it simple.)

  In cases where the arrangement of line lengths doesn't match the rhyme scheme, we'll simply omit the capital As and Bs.

  So, the five elements of structure, our friends from chapter eighteen, make your lyric structures move:

  the rhythms of the lines

  the arrangement of line lengths

  the rhyme structure

  the number of lines

  the rhyme types

  Let's review each of these elements to see how and when they affect motion.

  The Rhythms of the Lines

  The rhythm of a line is the first structural thing you hear in a song.

  After hearing only the first line of a song, you don't yet know much about the motion of the whole section, but you might start to have a sense of what the intended emotion could be.

  Rhythm is a prime mover in songwriting, and it can get complicated really fast. It has so many facets. In terms of its effect on our lyric sections, we can at least say this:

  Regular rhythms create stable motion.

  Irregular rhythms create less stable motion.

  Two lines with matched rhythms create stability.

  Two lines with unmatched rhythms create instability.

  Since lyric rhythms work so intimately with musical rhythms, we'll have to leave the majority of this subject to another time. Look at chapter three of my book Songwriting: Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure, and also my online course “Writing Lyrics to Music,” available through patpattison.com.

  For now, we'll stay with fairly regular rhythms and concentrate our efforts on the effects of line lengths, rhyme scheme, and number of lines on the movement of a section.

  Structurally, the first line, by itself, communicates motion with its rhythm, and also with its length. It sets a standard, preparing us for what's to come in the remaining lines in the section. For example:

  Rhyme

  Stresses

  I hitched to Tulsa worn and soaked

  a

  4

  It's a steady duple rhythm (moving in twos — da DUM), and is four stresses long.

  The Arrangement of Line Lengths

  By the end of the first line, you know another basic structural piece of information: line length.

  Starting at the second line, you will create structural motion, either by:

  A) matching the first line, which will stop the motion, as seen here:

  Rhyme

  Stresses

  I hitched to Tulsa worn and soaked

  a

  4 = A

  A little bent, a lotta broke

  a

  4 = A

  B) or not matching the first line, which pushes the motion forward, as seen here:

  I hitched to Tulsa worn and soaked

  a

  4 = A

  I couldn't find a ride

  b

  3 = B

  Because these lines aren't matched, the structure keeps the motion moving forward, rather than slowing down or stopping it.

  So, line lengths can create motion by the end of line two.

  The Rhyme Structure

  The earliest I can hear rhyme structure, and the motion caused by it, is at the end of the second line:

  Example 1: aa rhyme structure with lines of matching length

  I hitched to Tulsa worn and soaked

  a

  4 =A

  A little bent, a lotta broke

  a

  4 =A

  But often, we don't hear a section's rhyme structure until after line three:

  Example 2: aba rhyme structure with the second line having a different length

  I hitched to Tulsa worn and soaked

  a

  4 =A

  I stopped to get a bite

  b

  3

  The waitress stared before she spoke

  a

  4 =A

  And sometimes it takes until the section is over before we are able to identify the rhyme structure:

  Example 3: xaxa rhyme scheme

  I hitched to Tulsa tired and worn

  x

  4

  I stopped to get bite

  a

  3 =A

  A little bent, a lotta broke

  x

  4

  A single quarter light

  a

  3 =A

  Note the way the line structure and the rhyme structure line up in this example as compared to the previous examples.

  Line length and rhyme scheme are two independent tools. When they match, they form a couplet and the motion stops (example 1). But often, rhyme structure is created later than the motion created by line lengths (examples 2 and 3).

  The Number of Lines — To Balance or Not

  Obviously, you don't hear the total number of lines in a section until the end of the section, so it's one of the last two determiners of motion. Strong expectations have already been created by rhythm, rhyme scheme, and line length, but we still don't know for certain how the section will end.

  In a stable section, the final line delivers resolution. An even number of lines gives it a solid footing. The expectations set up by the section are fulfilled, as in “Amazing Grace.” We feel like it's said its piece and really means it.

  In an unstable section (like in “Can't Be Really Gone”), the final line could create a surprise or feeling of discomfort because the expectations are not completely fulfilled. An odd number of lines can certainly create a sense of discomfort. The final line could also lean forward toward the next section, in many cases moving into a contrasting section (e.g., a verse moving into a chorus).

  The Rhyme Types

  As we saw in the previous chapter, the kind of rhyme you choose can affect the stability of a section. More remote rhyme types will destabilize even the more stable constructions, as in lines 9–12 of “The End of the Innocence”.

  As you go through the exercises in this chapter, try using stronger and weaker rhyme types in some of the closing positions to see what differences they make. We won't put rhyme types into the mix here, since there is more than enough work
to do with just line lengths, rhyme scheme, and number of lines. No need to multiply examples with different rhyme types. But you already know what a huge tool rhyme types can be, so please stop every now and then to try out other possible types in the same structure.

  With the tools you're about to acquire, you'll be able to control how stable or unstable your section will be — anything from a granite boulder to a wobbly table to a capsizing ship.

  STABILITY VS. INSTABILITY

  Okay, it's time to get practical. You'll be looking at wheelbarrows full of different kinds of sections, organized according to their numbers of lines, and listed from the most stable sections to the least stable sections.

  Think of the following examples as a handy reference guide to stable and unstable structures, there for you to try in support of that idea you've got. Is the idea stable or unstable? And then you go through the examples to find something that might work for you.

  We'll start by looking at two-line sections, then spend a bit of time on three-line sections. Though three-line sections are more rare as standalone sections in lyric writing, looking at them will give you a good view of what causes a section to move. Then we'll go on to four-line and five-line sections, and, finally, a few interesting six-line sections. Since larger sections are usually made up of smaller pieces, understanding how these smaller sizes move will get you ready for pretty much anything else. If you stay with it and dig into each example to see how it feels, you'll add a whole new dimension to your lyric writing.