The Mistake All Beginner Songwriters Make (and how to avoid it!)
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- Опубліковано 22 вер 2024
- There is ONE very important way that pro songwriters know how to write lyrics that beginners get wrong. I reveal what it is, show examples from chart-whopping Taylor Swift and Harry Styles songs, and show 2 free resources that will help you write great lyrics.
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ABOUT KEPPIE
Hi I'm Keppie! I'm a professional songwriter, and songwriting teacher. I've been teaching song and lyric writing for over 10 years now for some of the best contemporary music colleges in the world- Berklee Online, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music's Open Academy, as well as for the Australian College of the Arts. At other times, I've taught for the Australian Institute of Music, as well as the LA School of Songwriting.
My goal is to help people write better songs! My experience in the classroom, with thousands of students at this point (many going on to find careers and success in music), is that your songwriting, like all things, can get better with meaningful, deliberate practice. My intention is to share the skills, knowledge, information, and ideas that I've gathered with anyone who wants to improve their songwriting.
Keppie's music is here:
www.keppiecout...
These days I simply do it the other way round. I write whatever I have on my mind without thinking about neither the song, rhymes, meters nor structures. I write sentences, lines, phrases, words, paragraphs, quotes and sometimes I even paste parts or articles or interviews or anything related to the topic/theme I'm exploring. After I've written everything that I have on my mind I start looking for phrases from what I wrote that might be the title or the chorus and see what internal rhythm they have that can give to the song. And then move on from there - a kind of jigsaw puzzle with whatever I have - sometimes I add more + end up not using half the things I wrote (but still useful to sort ideas and not forget stuff). I have pages of these info dumps that seem like good ideas but haven't managed to turn into songs yet 😂 I leave them for when I'm not feeling inspired to come up with something completely new.
Anyway well done for this video and channel - always very resourceful and helpful.
@Meeps music that's great - didn't know it about Peter Gabriel
Dude!!! You have to finish!! Sounds like a rad process you have going. I swear a few simple steps, a few precious minutes from crystalline glory. Go man go!! Write motherfucker (said with genuine affection 🤩
it's called destination writing. It's a great approach and your songs will never sound stale or forced.
when does the music come in?
@@MegaMinecraftluver yes!!!
Direct rhyme is not wrong. It just limits yourself in the long run. There are so many other possibilities. Song lyrics do not have to rhyme at all.
Exactly. These rules and regulations are suspect
Great example:
Like father like son
Not flesh nor fish nor bone
A red rag hangs from an open mouth
Alive at both ends but a little dead in the middle
A tumbling and a bumbling he will go
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Could never put a smile on that face
He's a sly one, he's a shy one, wouldn't you be too?
Scared to be left all on his own
He hasn't a, hasn't a friend to play with the ugly duckling
The pressure on, the bubble will burst before our eyes
All the while in perfect time
His tears are falling on the ground
But if you don't stand up, you don't stand a chance ey ey ey yeh-yeh
You don't stand a chance
Go a little faster now, you might get there in time
Mirror mirror on the wall
His heart was broken long before he ever came to you
Stop your tears from falling
The trail they leave is very clear for all to see at night
All to see at night
They come at night
In season, out of season
Oh, what's the difference when you don't know the reason
In one hand bread, the other a stone
The hunter enters the forest
All are not huntsmen who blow the huntsman's horn and by the look of this one
You've not got much to fear
Here I am, I'm very fierce and frightening
I come to match my skill to yours
Now listen here, listen to me, don't you run away now
I am a friend, I'd really like to play with you
Making noises my little furry friend would make
I'll trick him, then I'll kick him into my sack
You better watch out, you better watch out
I've got you, I've got you
You'll never get away
Walking home that night
The sack across my back the sound of sobbing on my shoulder
When suddenly it stopped
I opened up the sack, all that I had
A pool of bubbles and tears, just a pool of tears
Just a pool of tears
All in all you are a very dying race
Placing trust upon a cruel world
You never had the things you thought you should've had
And you'll not get them now
And all the while in perfect time
Your tears are falling on the ground
If you want commercial success, then song lyrics need to rhyme.
@@williamk6605 Especially if it's going to be a song designed to appeal to the simple minded masses. You're right.
Hi folks! I am, quite frankly, loving the controversy that this little video has sparked! The passion!
There have been a few comments here referencing Sondheim and The Beatles etc, so a little more context might help quell concerns that I am relegating the great writers of the canon to beginner status...Perfect rhyming was absolutely the bread and butter of popular songwriting as it emerged in the Tin Pan Alley era, and up until the late 50s, or even early 60s. Essentially, the cultural revolution of the 60s and 70s diversified not only style but expression and taste, and we bare that legacy today. Songs that rely on perfect rhyme, TODAY (as in, in our contemporary era), will sound like a call-back to an older era. It's not about good or bad, really - it's all about effect. If that is the effect you want - go for it. But a quick scan of Billboard charts in almost all genres where lyrics matter from the past 20 years will reveal a different trend. I have found, in my 13 years of teaching at universities, that beginner songwriters tend to default more strongly to that way of writing, possibly (and I suspect) because when we are explicitly taught rhyming during language acquisition (ie early childhood and literacy development years), we are taught perfect rhyming. But our EARS (and subconscious perception) can easily perceive much more subtle and complex rhyme, no problem. Developing as a lyric writer is about tapping into that knowledge, making the implicit explicit. The intended audience of this video is beginner songwriters starting out TODAY, wanting to build a career as a contemporary artist or songwriter, not a critique of songs of the past. Thanks for your all comments, thoughts, and insights. Happy writing!
My ears, by the time I was ten, detected assonance perfectly easily, and not subconsciously. I knew it was a would-be rhyme where the vowels were the same but not the final consonants. It's not a mystery, but (in my book) it's lame craftsmanship.
You do provide useful tips along with an interesting perspective on slant vs. perfect rhymes but I think you fail to make the point clearly enough that perfect rhymes are, in fact, something to strive for. The level of agency with language needed for effectively and artistically using perfect rhymes is far far higher than the one needed for creating slant rhymes. And, if used purposely and properly, every piece of rhymed writing would have a greater effect on the listener if the rhymes are, in fact, perfect rather than slant rhymes.
The difference in the effect created is, you rightly point out, important to bear in mind, especially if the trends in popular music clearly prefer one over the other, however, this has less to do with the listeners flocking towards the specific qualities of slant rhymes and more to do with the low barrier for entry for today's lyric writers and their diminished ability to find and utilize perfect rhymes.
People listen to what is given.
And if that's loosely connected, cliché ridden, rhymezoned to hell and back, poorly written nonsense - then that's what people listen to.
Write what ever kind of stuff you want, but have your paradigm set correctly - perfect rhymes is the ideal you strive for, the rest is what you do for effect or when you can't find your way to the ideal.
Jimmy Webb’s greatest regret, rhyming time and line. I read his book, Tunesmith, about 15 years ago & still refer to it. I bought Clement Wood’s Complete Rhyming Dictionary because Jimmy recommended it. Perfect rhymes are so much harder to write. I don’t think they sound anachronistic if the song is actually good.
Thanks.
.Sondheim...my favorite composer not only had amazinf and clever.lyrics his tunes were always memorable.
Another factor in favour of imperfect rhymes: English is a rhyme-poor language compared to, say, French or Spanish. So English-language songwriters by necessity have over the decades improvised and stretched the rhyme possibilities of the language.
Since you asked for examples - "Baba O'Riley" by The Who rhymes "fields" with "meals", and "living" with "forgiven" (with a perfect rhyme in there as well - "fight" and "right"):
"Out here in the fields
I fight for my meals
I get my back into my living
I don't need to fight
To prove I'm right
I don't need to be forgiven"
These rhymes work because they feel like perfect rhymes, or it's not that noticeable. Living works with forgiven because there's a whole other line before that rhyme comes up. That's good craftsmanship.
@@screamingpirhana Couldn't agree more. Pete Townshend knows what he's doing!
@@screamingpirhanathat’s the whole point of slant rhyming
Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though it's here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday
Here I stand
Head in hand
Turn my face to the wall
If she's gone
I can't go on
Feeling two foot small
Lennon and McCartney would like to have a word
I no longer write anymore but sometimes I wonder if they created this channel to thin out the compilation. They say a lot (not all) of things that goes against what professional writing was in my day.
Yeah, but what about:
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
@@themacocko6311 compilation?
as with most things, the best always break the rules so idk
@@cboisandlin9601 Only a guess but i suspect the word was meant to be Competition .
Maybe a long compilation of competitors that need thinning out :)
Beautifully explained! I've always had trouble writing lyrics, but now I feel a sudden surge of confidence, let's hope it actually lasts! Thank you!
Heart of Glass has the exact example you mention.
"Once had love, and it was divine,
Soon turned out, I was losin' my mind."
Oh, it makes great sense to rhyme the vowel. Especially since we are emphasizing vowels when we sing, not so much the consonants. And yet it hadn't fully occurred to me until you talked about it. Thank you!
Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh I believe in Yesterday
A lyric from the show "Something Rotten" popped into my head. It always makes me laugh:
"Ohhhhh, every time I hear a perfect rhyme I get all tingly,
Because I knoooowww, that to write a perfect rhyme is not an easy... thingly..." 😂
Brilliant ❤
Looooove Something Rotten!
Lol
I wrote my first song(ish) over the past days. Never learned music, so had a few attempts at grasping just enough to work from key and come up with a very simple chord progression.
Glad I finally tried this, as I now have a base to work from. And needless to say, working this way suddenly opens all kinds of musical doors and gives you a basic understanding of what is out there, even if you don't really know the concepts, you can see them in the distance.
So anyone who, like me, has zero musical background and finds themself going in circles... Go for it, and you will be thanking yourself for it. Learn about chord progressions, and take it from there. It's an easier way to learn than totally ground-up IMO, as it will bring you in contact with both the basics of what is a song, as well as the basics of what is a scale, etc. Really helped me make sense of the theory.
If perfect rhymes are "mistakes" that "beginners" make, then the vast pool of mistaken beginners includes Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Paul McCartney, Jimmy Webb, Paul Simon, Gordon Lightfoot, et al.
I was thinking that. The Tremeloes and Kinks too
One of my favorite couplets is ~
"I read some Byron, shelly, and keats
Recited it all for a hip hop beat
I'm having trouble saying what i mean
With dead poets and drum machines "
I love it.
This is great advice and thanks so much for it. I think though that near-rhymes and even non-rhymes are just what is currently in fashion, and conversely perfect rhymes are out of fashion and sometimes seen as clichéd (especially the obvious/overused ones). If we go back a few decades anything other than perfect rhymes was largely frowned upon and seen as lazy or inept songwriting.
So aptly put. Thanks for that (and please see the pinned comment above)!
@@htws there is no pinned comment 🤔
I’m not sure about that. Bands like The Magnetic Fields and The Divine Comedy use straight rhymes and their songs are anything but amateur.
@@MichaelJohnson-composerThere’s no one way of writing a song
My current and first "song" needs to rhyme to keep it all together. Vocals are quite detached, robot like. They somewhat follow the melody, but the timing is quite loose. So if it doesn't rhyme it would be hard to figure out where we are.
Probably bad writing, lol.
Hmm. I would love to know what Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin or any of the Great American Songbook writers... or Broadway writers for that matter... would say about this "amateur mistake." The reality is perfect rhymes make a songwriter work HARDER at the craft of expressing an original sentiment than slant rhymes. And that's a GOOD thing. Imperfect rhymes are much easier and lead to lazy writing. For example, modern country music... all written by "pro writers" using the technique she is advocating above. Imperfect rhymes are absolutely NOT the "bread and butter of great lyric writing." In contrast, look at lyrics by Lorenz Hart or Oscar Hammerstein II, and then compare them to lyrics by Harry Styles. Then ask yourself which set of lyrics are better crafted. Renowned lyricists are who you should learn from, and then apply those principles to your own songs. That's what you should strive for.
Please see pinned comment at the top, Todd!
game changer, thank you. I spend more time creating poetry but this really resonates especially the ideas about focusing on the last strongly stressed syllable
This was a real light-bulb moment for me. It's absolutely absurd that I didn't already know this, but I'm going to forgive myself for that and get back to writing. Thanks Keppie!
The content of this channel is fantastic. Super inspiring!
Sondheim would have vehemently disagreed with this. 🤔He was a very strong believer in the importance of "perfect" rhymes and says he never used rhymes that weren't so. Of course, he was a genius and a purist and wrote for musical theater, not popular music. In any case, thanks for this great video. I'd like to recommend a book I use for finding rhymes, "Surprising Rhymes" by Brian Oliver. It's inexpensive and very easy to use. It also focuses on slant rhymes and not so much on perfect rhymes
I love Stephen Sondheim and agree he was a genius. He offset his perfect rhymes with complex rhyme schemes, and really understood meter, and didn't try to rhyme in simple couplets or quatrains (sorry, more familiar with poetry and know next to nothing about music, so I apologize if there's a word for these in music), and so even though he used mostly perfect rhymes, the listener doesn't really feel exhausted by it. As well, he had a superb vocabulary! I think using only perfect rhymes is very difficult to do well.
Vowels are good, since you tend to hold the sound when you sing. I always start with the story I'm trying to tell and many of the words find me. Thank you for all you do to help writers.
I've only just found you and only watched a few of your vids (this and the Beatles) but it feels like you're revealing awesome secrets that should've been obvious (especially since I thought I knew what a secondary dominant was) but somehow went right over my head. Thank you for making this outstanding information so clear.
So simple, yet I never thought about rhyming the stressed vowel and not the last syllable. Super helpful, thank you!
T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’ includes a type of rhyme where syllable stresses rather than vowel sounds are repeated and a lot of song writers have used this as well, like Kele Okereke (Bloc Party) and Tori Amos.
Thank you Thank you Thank you. Exactly what I've been searching for for the last 50 years or so. I've always has issues writing lyrics, while the music comes easily. Without checking, I suspect the only songs I've written that I'm really happy with have, unknown to me, followed these principles. One thing I always like is rhymes in the middle of a line rather than the all too common' last word'.
Yes!
I too like to write songs
Watching this I recalled something poet Robert Frost said: "Writing unrhymed poetry is like playing tennis with the net down." That sentiment is in a lot of the commentary here.
But poetry is not song lyrics. You recite and hear all the word sounds of a poetic line; but you sing the vowels in a lyric line. So you hear the not-quite-right in lines that end in "time" then "find". But when "time" and "find" are sung, the words "rhyme."
Put another way: you don't sing the way you talk. So using imperfect rhymes takes advantage of that reality.
Love this unpack, thankyou!
I hiiiighly recommend Rhymewave as well. I prefer it over Rhymezone as I feel like it often gives more out of the box options and you can even insert some phrases, for instance "get out". Just an example, but yeah, I always used Rhymezone, but after a while it feels like you keep seeing the same words (duh! :P) and for some reason that felt different for me when using Rhymewave.
But yeah, great video. That vowel-rhyme point you made is so important. I was already doing that, but you laid the process bare, so now I finally have the tools to explain people (outside of the music industry) who say it's only rhyming when the written word shares the most amount of letters with the word you wanna rhyme with, that that's not true.
I have always loved Jackson Browne’s near rhymes, especially in Doctor My Eyes where he rhymes world with unfurled: “ I have wandered through this world, and as each moment has unfurled, I’ve been waiting to awaken from this dream.” Also love how he snuck in the waiting/awaken near rhyme in the same thought.
I tend to naturally throw in rhymes in the middle of the sentence and I love it when it happens. It adds so much somehow!!
I love the way Taylor Swift and Imagine Dragons rhyme.
They don’t just rhyme words but sometimes sentences, and those rhymes are often the opposite of the previous ones (i don’t even know if this makes sense lol).
They’re able to evoke strong feeling with only a couple of words 😮
I’m a beginner at best, and their songs are marvelous to pick apart 😊
Can you give me an example pls
@@FairyRuins For Imagine Dragons, Believer, Enemy and Bones.
Say a lot with deep metaphors and the melodie’s are fire too.
For Taylor, I love anti-hero.
Each line hits hard then relate one before and manage to tell a story chronologically (🤯).
Honestly, this all might be because I don’t have a lot of knowledge on this. So i’m easily impressed.
But I love it either way 😄
@@EllyValentini i think you are not wrong at all. imagine dragons gets an undeserved amount of hate most of the time, i feel like. i get why some people call them corny and sometimes i feel it too, but i think their alternative pop/pop songwriting capabilities are top tier if they actually tap the right nerve while writing. no surprise they come out with a hit basically every year or so.. also believer's "note style" verses and the dynamics in that song are fire af.
Extremely helpful , I find myself looking over all my lyrics!! Thank you so much.
Assonance rather than rhyme. Emily Dickinson used slant rhymes all the time, but she would do the opposite of what is recommended here -- she would change the vowel and rhyme "rides" with "is" or "seen" with "on". Another poet who did it a lot was Wilfred Owen. He would rhyme "seeds" with "sides", "tall" with "toil", and "star" with "stir".
I stumbled upon this very informative article. I always thought songwriting comes straight from the heart without any technical expertise. One of my favourite songs hardly has any rhyme: "The way we were" . There are many others too. But I suppose it depends on what the motivation for songwriting is in each instance.
If you are writing for yourself, then no structure is fine. When writing for a market, then there are rules or guidelines. The cool thing is, that's what makes it fun and challenging. Playing within the rules of a game is what makes the game fun.
Songwriting channels like this or the Berkeley courses are formulaic songwriting. You use their strategies it if you want to get a pop/country song that sounds like all the other bland and boring pop/country songs. It's sad but it sells.
This was interesting!
I have always sought perfect rhymes, and felt disappointed when I've had to "resort to" imperfect/ slant rhymes. I've only ever thought that perfect rhyming is undesirable or amateurish when it forces the writer to construct awkward or unlikely-sounding phrases for the sake of the rhyme.
I'm still not wholly convinced that slant rhyming is _better_ - but I certainly feel as though you've given me permission to use it freely, so thank you! 🙂
To allow false rhymes in service of expression is fine by me. To call them better definitely isn´t. I can´t take that stance seriously. I believe great art is usually born out of restriction.
This video is very useful to me... I've always struggled at writing lyrics because I've always insisted on using perfect rhymes. I also have a tendency to fall into internal rhyming schemes. I don't really do it intentionally because it sounds clever (which, honestly, it does), I just often find myself writing one verse that has an internal rhyme, and then, of course, all the rest of the verses HAVE to have the same internal rhyming pattern. Coupling that with the necessity for all your rhymes to be perfect, you eventually run into a brick wall. There are times when I hear an imperfect (or "slant") rhyme, and I think it sounds strained, or lazy (and that's why avoid them), but other times, I barely notice it. Like rhyming "fields" with "meals" in Baba O'Riley (as another commenter mentioned).
Not a slant rhyme but i love
"where there's a will there's a way, money's gonna find my hand one day"
I expected songwriting and you teach us rhyming.
Excellent advice, just superb! It makes for a more natural, conversational tone and relieves some of the stilted, rather rigid formatting & formulaic nature of far too many compositions. Well done! 😊
Beatles rhymed "night", "fly", "life", "arise" or "night / life" and "fly / arise":
"Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise"
Thanks Geoff! Great example :)
Thank you very much for this lovely kind hearted video. This video has been really helpful for me as a beginner and has changed my way of thinking and improved my song writing alot that to at the comfort of my home. Not many songwriters will share this tip. Made my day 💯❤️
I love the way Slipkot rhymes in Duality
"I have screamed until my veins collapsed
I've waited as my time's elapsed
Now, all I do is live with so much hate
I've wished for this, I've bitched at that
I've left behind this little fact
You cannot kill what you did not create
I've gotta say what I've gotta say
And then, I swear, I'll go away
But I can't promise you'll enjoy the noise
I guess I'll save the best for last
My future seems like one big past
You're left with me 'cause you left me no choice"
Brilliant advice again. Thanks Keppie
So, there's this song that rhymes "Poison" and the words "choice and" and I feel like it's so creative
I love that this video is to help people create new ways to think not something that is a law with consequences. Im actually glad this video exists because im sick of people saying it doesn't rhyme when in poetry you learn near rhymes. This is a helpful tool to expand not a rule you must follow or else! People commenting pointless crap and proof your wrong to be negative or just to prove trolls should just stay under the bridge and hassle anyone who crosses it. The bridge doesnt travel. Looking for problems. Thanks for taking time out of your day to help.
Cowboy chord Dan here. Three chords, and the truth. With feeling, please! Thank you ❣️
Love it!
Thank you, Keppie for this insight. It’s a great insight that has massively opened up my rhyme vocabulary. See you soon for the next song critique.
wait? there's a song critique option?
They sat together in the park
As the evening sky grew dark
She looked at him and he felt a spark
Tingle to his bones
'Twas then he felt alone
And wished that he'd gone straight
And watched out for a simple twist of fate....
My wife is a singer, I'm a prose writer and because her English isn't great I've beem tasked with writing song lyrics for her for a song she's composed. Your videos are such a help, thankyou!
Happy to have stumbled upon your channel, Keppie Coutts! Thank you for sharing your work! Kind regards, Daniel
When I clicked on this video I expected overwriting lyrics to be the issue, but rhyming! Personally, I don’t rhyme much in my songs but when it does rhyme it’s because it s perfect for it to be placed whilst with rhyming every line it can feel forced and negatively impact the song, one of my favourite bands (Youth Fountain) uses a similar concept to this and it sounds amazing as long as you don’t overwrite the lyrics
Whenever I forgot a lyric gigging, this was my go to trick, completely inventing a word with the right vowel sounds 🤣🤣🤣
Besides, Tell-Sell probably has whatever you came up with. It's a thing alright!
i love the app "rhymers block" it suggests rhymes in the way autocorrect would suggest corrections. it saves your lyrics in the app and backs them on the cloud
I do not put much stock in what is said here, the best songs and their lyrics come through inspiration and out of the blue. Townes Van Zandt was asked about his songwriting process and he said….they just come in through the window. Formulaic songs are just that, a formula and they suck. If you think Taylor Swift writes good songs then you’re not someone people should be listening to.
Great video
One of my favourites below
Guy Clark - Let him roll
He said "Every single day it gets
A little bit harder to handle and yet..."
And he lost the thread and his mind got cluttered
And the words just rolled off down the gutter
Almost, but not quite perfect rhyme and IMO a magical lyric.
This. Is. Insane! I use Rhymezone and I have never thought of using rhymezone like this before. Okay, experimental Symphonic Metal musician here! I really liked Klayton's Rhymes in his music projects Celldweller, Scandroid, and Circle of Dust. I always wanted to rhyme like him using futuristic themes and this tip actually opened that up for me. Already, I got Probe, Load, Strobe, Node, Phone, Cyclone, Drone, Clone, Ozone, Zone, Silicone, Mode, Code, Encode, Erode, Corrode, Corrosive, all super cool futuristic words and more if I searched more and this is so hard to do omg! I always wondered how Klayton was able to make amazing lyrics like he does, I don't know if he uses this tactic as I haven't hardcore analyzed his lyrics ever but this is definitely a way! Thank you! Also got aggressive words for the metal aspect, lots more of those actually, everything is there and this is mind blowing!
Thank you, this was a very transformative experience. I've always opted for perfect rhymes. I've seen the imperfect/slant rhymes be used in the poems we analyze in school, but never really understood them before. The tools seem very helpful. Thanks for the walk-through. Beautiful rhymes indeed.
I sold a small book long time ago with my poems but you just changed my rhyming world! Guess it’s a new era for me
Sounds like you're in the Pat Patterson school of Clement Wood's rhyming options.
You can also pronounce words in different ways to match. For instance, "again" can be rhymed with "my brain" or "my friend". It depends on if you say "ah-gane" or "ah-ghen".
Love your work, I will definitely try these ideas out. Thank you.
Interesting video and many good points in there. And of course, slant rhymes are very hip these days in pop music and they can feel very original.
But how you rhyme communicates something as well. If your song is all about how you've had a perfect night, then you might want to use perfect rhymes. If your song is about how things in your relationship are falling apart, imperfect rhymes can help convey that very well.
To me, it's also about where the rhyme occurs. If it's in a storytelling verse, you can get away with near rhymes. But if you want your song title to stand in the spotlight, maybe a strong rhyme will be very useful in that regard.
This is my favourite youtube channel now. Such useful stuff!
"Thought I smelled your ghost
in my winter coat"
-Monsters, The Midnight.
Love that lyric so much.
It’s a good tool to use but every type of rhyme can be used when placed properly. It’s all in the context of the music and the feel you want. If it feels right, and sounds good, do it. If you feel like it’s not working, mix it up and try new things.
Happiness by The 1975 springs to mind as a song that uses hardly any rhymes, but the way the phrases are shaped and delivered just makes it feel right. It feels much more like a train of thought that somehow works alongside the music.
I have a tune where all the lines rhyme with 'education', 'adulteration' etc. all the way through the entire song with just one rhyme. took me months to work out.
There’s about a billion words that end in “-ation”.
A rhyme I like, from Joe Ely: I keep my fingernails long so they click when I play the "piana"/I'm gonna keep 'em that way 'til the swallows come back from Louisiana (Ely also uses "Alabama", and "Texarkana" in the same place).
I like simple but 'flowy' words like "radio".
This video just taught me more about songwriting than I've learned in 20 years. Thank you! 😊
After watching this informative video, I realize that I am not a beginning songwriter. Just talented and unpublished.
I'm learning to play Gentle On My Mind, and I'm fascinated by the way it has many words and lines, but only four rhymes, and only one of those is a slant rhyme, the other three are perfect, and one of those is used twice. and it has no break. Still a beautiful song though.
one a of the greatest songs ever 🤠 witchita linesman is another
@@jesusislukeskywalker4294 Wichita Lineman has that amazing line "And I need you more than want you, And I want you for all time"
I’m and don’t forget Rhinestone Cowboy
Or Galveston
Personally, I look at song writing like an artist. There are many words that can work, but only one word that will complete the picture, and it’s seldom the obvious one that rhymes. It’s also more about breaking rules than to adhere to a strict structure. I’ve even repeat words, not for effect, but because like a puzzle, that is the only piece that fits. Feel free to check out some of my all original music on my channel, and tell me what you think?
I like this rhyme (from one of my own songs): You tried to buck the system, But you never had the time, You think you're full of wisdom, But they made you toe the line. SYSTEM - WISDOM.
this is exactly the resources i needed! here's a proud set of slant rhymes in a song i wrote last year...expect, next, met, breathless
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I just pulled up my notes and one I wrote earlier today was still up. It was a song I wrote in like twenty minutes. Just the lyrics, but I looked at my rhymes in the intro/chorus (I’m not using the basic format for this one) and they are::
MTV, please, me, everything -
In my first verse I have:
retrospect, steps, then, broken -
With a pattern change up before the line with ‘broken’ where I used perfect rhymes of ‘you’ and ‘knew.’
I never write where I’m trying to make things fit in their proper spaces. I pull up my notes or pen/pencil or Apple Pencil and I just write. I have been writing since age five and am now 44, and in 2020 I had to take six months to teach myself the art of songwriting. That was new for me, needing to learn a new way to write. I had a 400 page book published and now I can tell a story in three minutes. It wasn’t easy and still isn’t always natural. I count myself as extremely lucky that I use basically all that I write. Even if I write too much, I’ll cut a part and start another song with it.
- I have to say that Rhyme Zone is added to my Home Screen for easy access but I RARELY use it. And until today, I WOULD look up the ‘near rhymes.’ I’ve always found what I needed there. So I’ll probably continue to use it that way along with the way you said to with the three words.
But I took notes while watching this video and I wrote out a lot more rhymes than the ones you cherry picked, simply bc so many were great for the types of things I tend to write about. I jotted down ones that seemed like I could potentially use. But then again, that’s not really how I write but I’m hoping to get some inspiration from even a single word - that could give me part of a story, with the way my mind runs away from me so easily, and off I’ll go and write. So that was really cool. I don’t agree that one should never use near rhymes, and I don’t believe at all that creatives should be given too strict parameters, but that is for another comment… Artists tend not to like to be told what to do and they will ‘rebel’ if their way is already working. (I’m one of those types..)
Being too strict can even turn people away. But I’m glad I learned something different here. Thanks for this video!
Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, Ira Gershwin, Leiber Stoller, Goffen King, McCartney Lennon, Bob Friggin Dylan, Randy For God's Sake Newman !! Slant rhyme has a place in modern songwriting. But is by no means the most important tool in the writer's box. Not by a longshot. Strong rhyme that conveys a simple but powerful message is the coin of the realm in songwriting. It is what brings universality to the lyric. Always has been. Always will be. And, just as a side note from one of your other videos, there is no correlation between appreciating art by bad people and praying in a cathedral. Those are weak lines. Sorry. As Scatman Crothers once asked Johnny Carson..."man, how did you get this gig??"
Please see pinned comment at the top, Steve!
Amen. Next she's going to make a video called "Keep at it! Bad Music is Actually Good!"
*Question* : Who said/wrote this?
"A great example of this is in Bruce Springsteen’s “The River.” The bridge contains these exquisite lines:
'Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true
Or is it something worse?'
It’s a profound idea, a complex thought, and just a sensational lyric."
*Answer* : Keppie Coutts, in an online article, _Driving Around the Road Cones: Two Easy Strategies for Moving Beyond the First Verse_
July 27, 2016
I have written 100s! of songs and used Rhymzone to help, but I will argue that even though the near rhymes often goes off the rails quickly, I have had many times that some of those off the rails words broke my mind out of the sound I was fixated on that led to better ideas and searches that got me where the story wanted to go. Ultimately these tools will help little if you are not able to be flexible in how you want to tell your story, because sometimes there is just NOT going to be a word to express what you want to say that matches the word you want to rhyme. You will have to let go of the word you where attached to and write the line a different way to stay on story...Story is king! Great video!!!
Many thanks for that. I'm french speaking, and write lyrics in french where 'perfect rymes' is the way that we use to, so i've used this way in english too ! .. my bad, now i understand why my english lyrics sucks ! ... 😁
The tip regarding how to use rhymes zone to find more options by searching for a few slant rhymes was very useful thank you.
Just like most creative pursuits, after society has exhausted the options for "perfect rhyme", then "imperfect rhyme" becomes the fashion. It does not mean that imperfect rhyme is better than perfect rhyme, it means that after the best has been done, we look for something "less good" just to find something new and fashionable. Torn jeans are a perfect example. Un-torn jeans are better, but we have done that, so now we have torn jeans, something clearly worse, but new. This teacher is mistaken when she refers to imperfect rhyme as "better". It is all we have left after perfect rhyme has been done. It is the only way to find new phrasing without cliche. Imperfect rhyme is fashion and fad, not quality.
wanna know how to rhyme? Listen to the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, bunch of rhymes but he doesn't have to stretch or use sketchy metaphor to do it, if you took the rhyming aspect away (like translate it into a language that doesn't rhyme) the lyrics would not seem odd. That's how you know your rhyme isn't lazy, a lazy person would stretch a metaphor or pronunciation, or use cheap lines for the sake of rhyming, when frankly lyrics don't have to.
I mean one of my favourite rhymes is from George Ezra's 'get lonely with me' where he rhymes power and town, focusing and emphasising the"ow" sound
Great video btw
I was a member of the Nashville songwriters association and attended local monthly workshops. Our songs were critiqued by Mr and Mrs mcginnis. They were in charge of the workshops. After a very harsh critique of one of my songs, I asked if I could hear something she had written. She said that they were not songwriters but in charge of the meetings. I got a copy of the craft of lyric writing by Sheila Davis. I have always tried to use perfect rhyme and only use slant(imperfect) as a last resort. She did admit in a later book that many country writers were using half rhymes.
After being self taught for so long, it has been fantastic to find your channel and put a name to some of the methods I have tried ... and also to find new ways to think about writing. I am very much appreciative.
As for some of my favorite rhymes ... or even lines from a song ... Butch Walker has a song called "We're All Going Down" . In the song he has the following :
"All of the kitty cats get out their catty kits
Sit round and talk sh*t bout this b*tch and that b*tch"
I can see this lyric and also it just flows.
Anyways, great video and thanks.
The problem is having a set criteria for what is good and bad. Just in art I mean; not life in general.
TRUTH
I haven't seen your channel before but the other day I wrote a fresh lyric sheet and I realized the reason it felt better than usual was for all the reasons you talked about here
I want to speak at an intimate decibel
With the precision of an infinite decimel
To listen back and hear a true echo
Of something always felt but never heard
I want that sharpened steel of truth in every word.
Great writing knows no rules, when it's genius, it's genius!
my personal favorite rhyming in a song is:
my, alien world, alien face, misshapen alien wings
you're, alien too, foreign to me, foreign to so many things
try, leaving the rest, leaving it all, up to imagination
oh, didn't you know, reality, lies in the observation.
once, nobody knew, all thoughts were knew, oh what a curious world
go, back to the start, before the light, before the story unfurled.
go, back to the start, empty and dark, wasn't it fun back then?
say, wasn't it fun, wasn't it fun... now lets do it again.
Yesterday, all my troubles seem so far away........ I'm not half the man I used to be, there's a shadow hanging over me....Why she had to go, I don't know... Michelle, my bell, these are words that go together well., my Michelle.... Well she looked at me, and I, I could see..... When you get free, to take some tea with me... Band on the run, I hope you're having fun.... Paul, are you reading this? You see, you've got this all wrong....
Another good trick is to rhyme the word BEFORE the last word of the line. Like if the line ends with "knew it," you don't try for a rhyme with "it." What you do is rhyme with "knew." Something like "do it." Other examples might be "doing" (pronounced DOO-IN) & "ruin" or "habit" with "grab it."
Love this. Using Rhymezone in that will be a gamechanger for me. Thank you!
Grt video!! I love this and it is so true so many writers these days go the lazy route rhyming every word well done!! I make this pt also
Its worth noting that the way we sing, there are no actual consonants, they're vowel songs mimicking consonants
I learned that trick with Pat Pattison. And as a native french speaker, it came as a shock. We don't rhyme like that in french, every uttered sound count 😅
Great video, thanks! I'm a fan of Tuomas Holopainen's writing, and there's a lovely example of this in the chorus of _Romanticide,_ using lots of internal rhyme so he can just go hog-wild:
"Leave me be
And cease to tell me how to feel
To grieve, to shield myself from evil
Leave me be
O.D. of lies is killing me
Romanticide
Till love do me part"
The rhythm of the song really emphasises the rhyme (Leave...me be...and cease...to tell me how to feel...), and he hammers it so hard that when you get no rhyme at the end it's extra jarring and draws attention to the final line, where he has the wordplay on love/death, us/me, and two meanings of "part" - to separate, and to cut in two. And it's not even his native language!
My first thought for a rhyme when you mentioned the word ‘walking’ was ‘orphan’.
In Rhymzone I use the near rhyme function sometimes, a lot of times the default search doesn't give me a word I want to use. Example: Time = Redesign, or Redefine. My cat rhymes MOw with Meow, that's all she's got.
Helpful video for non-talented individuals like me. It will make my lyrics sound more interesting. Thanks much. ❤️
Yay for RhymeZone! I also like using the "advanced" feature to find near rhymes (and not so near ones) more quickly.
I've never heard of this or thought about it. I'm gonna pull out the songs I gave up on a few years ago and see if this helps. Thank you!!!
Very well explained. George Armstrong, ASCAP, NMPA, HFA