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.
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 🤩
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
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.
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.
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 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
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 "
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
Probably out of all your videos this is one of your best I have watched again and again and ask other people to watch... it just doesn't seem to get old...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..." 😂
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'.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
lol, don't let the youtubers beat you up (pun intended) from a serious musician this is a great tip and weapon to ad to your arsenal of songwriting skills, anyone that mistakes great advice as an end all be all only solution, or the only way to do something is exactly not what you said. Thanx 4 the vid!
There's a ton of clever slant-rhymes to the word "surface" in "Surface Pressure" from the movie Encanto. For example (emphasis mine): Under the SURFACE I hide my NERVES and it WORSENS I WORRY something is gonna HURT US I don't think we should avoid perfect rhymes, by the way. We just shouldn't demand our rhymes always be perfect. It feels too restrictive. This is the first time I've ever seen one of your videos, and it's really well done. You just got yourself a new subscriber!
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
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 💯❤️
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! 😊
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.
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".
lol this is so cool and you're very funny. I've been writing songs since I was a kid and during that time I did a lot of noob rhyming. I would like to think that I progressed over time a little bit better. This will help me out a lot I think. So, thank you!
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 ! ... 😁
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!
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.
My favorite rhyme of all time is in Mercury Rev’s Goddess on a Hiway: She’s a goddess on a highway A goddess in a car A goddess going faster Than she’s ever gone before The rhyme of car and before strikes me strongly.
Your incredible for real!!! Subscribed!! Watched the 1st video & thought homie you should teach, then on this video discover you a professor, makes sense..
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.
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).
I mean the bridge of one of my songs is built around plain rhymes and idk I've been wanting to share it with the world. So not sure if it's exactly like this cause I don't have my notebook with me but it's: With the growing of my mind's altitude, Got an "I can fix him" attitude, I'd spend 100 years in solitude.... And his arm from his hand to his shoulder is tattooed, Seems there's nothing I can do. It might sound awkward reading it out but it fits with the melody, I'm wanting to get opinions on the writing.
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!
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.
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"
THIS IS ART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 YOU HAVE REALLY CHANGED THE WAY I SEE THE WORLD
This video single handedly elevated my poetry to the next level. I now routinely use the methods I learnt from this video to come up with interesting rhymes, so thank you!
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.
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
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.
Hello from Northern California. I’m enjoying your lessons. Another way to find a rhyme is to make up a word. In Tom Waits song November he ends with Go away, you rainsnout Go away, blow your brains out November Sondheim used a rhyming dictionary as well. I’ll come up with the exact one in a bit. I think he liked it because of how it was layed out. He also said that writing lyrics was the hardest part.
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.
Amazing advise. Looking forward to getting involved with this. Ive got the Patt Pattison book aswell, but not the best at understanding when it comes to reading. Youve explained this very well. Cheers
it's a bit of an overstatement to say that the consonant sound doesn't matter "at all". Some imperfect rhymes are more imperfect than others. A closer rhyme will often sound better to the ear than one that's further away. For example, "ache" and "late" might sound better than "ache" and "base". Not that you couldn't use the latter if needed. But I'd prefer the former.
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 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"
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've been utilizing this idea, without quite understanding the mechanics of it. Thanks! Another item I use along with a rhyming dictionary (and is just as useful to me) is a thesaurus. :)
0:46 my first thought hearing you say this is to form some similarly poignant line, and end it with "mine" or something. It's a slant rhyme sure, but THEN the goal is to make the rest of that line pretty enough to make that not matter so much.
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.
@@williamk6605 not everyone makes radio music 🤷🏾♂️
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.
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!
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
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!
Heart of Glass has the exact example you mention.
"Once had love, and it was divine,
Soon turned out, I was losin' my mind."
Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh I believe in Yesterday
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 :)
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 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!
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
I knew this intuitively but subliminally. So only after you tell us do I now know it consciously, so thank you! You have great advice
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.
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.
Probably out of all your videos this is one of your best I have watched again and again and ask other people to watch...
it just doesn't seem to get old...
So simple, yet I never thought about rhyming the stressed vowel and not the last syllable. Super helpful, thank you!
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.
Brilliant advice again. Thanks Keppie
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.
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
Time and a place for everything. Some folks can make a 3 string guitar sing. Typical beginners overuse perfect rhyming.
The content of this channel is fantastic. Super inspiring!
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.
Extremely helpful , I find myself looking over all my lyrics!! Thank you so much.
just found your channel. nice pace and explaining, sub and binge watch :)
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.
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
Love this unpack, thankyou!
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
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.
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.
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?
Happy to have stumbled upon your channel, Keppie Coutts! Thank you for sharing your work! Kind regards, Daniel
This was really useful ! exactly what I needed to unlock my writing. Many thanks for making this knowledge accessible to all :)
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.
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.
Thanks
Thanks for the support Paddy, much appreciated!
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.
Very well explained. George Armstrong, ASCAP, NMPA, HFA
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
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.
lol, don't let the youtubers beat you up (pun intended) from a serious musician this is a great tip and weapon to ad to your arsenal of songwriting skills, anyone that mistakes great advice as an end all be all only solution, or the only way to do something is exactly not what you said. Thanx 4 the vid!
Cowboy chord Dan here. Three chords, and the truth. With feeling, please! Thank you ❣️
Love it!
There's a ton of clever slant-rhymes to the word "surface" in "Surface Pressure" from the movie Encanto. For example (emphasis mine):
Under the SURFACE
I hide my NERVES and it WORSENS
I WORRY something is gonna HURT US
I don't think we should avoid perfect rhymes, by the way. We just shouldn't demand our rhymes always be perfect. It feels too restrictive.
This is the first time I've ever seen one of your videos, and it's really well done. You just got yourself a new subscriber!
I love this example. I watched Encanto again 3 days ago with my 5 yr old, and we thinking about this as we listened to that song!
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
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
.
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 💯❤️
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! 😊
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.
Love your work, I will definitely try these ideas out. Thank you.
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!!!
The tip regarding how to use rhymes zone to find more options by searching for a few slant rhymes was very useful thank you.
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".
lol this is so cool and you're very funny. I've been writing songs since I was a kid and during that time I did a lot of noob rhyming. I would like to think that I progressed over time a little bit better. This will help me out a lot I think. So, thank you!
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 ! ... 😁
Love this. Using Rhymezone in that will be a gamechanger for me. Thank you!
Thanks!
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!
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.
My favorite rhyme of all time is in Mercury Rev’s Goddess on a Hiway:
She’s a goddess on a highway
A goddess in a car
A goddess going faster
Than she’s ever gone before
The rhyme of car and before strikes me strongly.
Your incredible for real!!! Subscribed!! Watched the 1st video & thought homie you should teach, then on this video discover you a professor, makes sense..
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!!
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).
This is my favourite youtube channel now. Such useful stuff!
I expected songwriting and you teach us rhyming.
I mean the bridge of one of my songs is built around plain rhymes and idk I've been wanting to share it with the world. So not sure if it's exactly like this cause I don't have my notebook with me but it's:
With the growing of my mind's altitude,
Got an "I can fix him" attitude,
I'd spend 100 years in solitude....
And his arm from his hand to his shoulder is tattooed,
Seems there's nothing I can do.
It might sound awkward reading it out but it fits with the melody, I'm wanting to get opinions on the writing.
What a great tip, I've never heard that before. 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
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!
You are teaching in the way I understand, you have my gratitude!
B rhymes was a weird app to me until I understand this video
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.
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 :)
THIS IS ART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 YOU HAVE REALLY CHANGED THE WAY I SEE THE WORLD
This video single handedly elevated my poetry to the next level. I now routinely use the methods I learnt from this video to come up with interesting rhymes, so thank you!
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.
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
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.
How come it seems to take a lifetime to find people like this to help us.Great help thank you
Brilliant channel. I've just stumbled across it and I'm very impressed.
Helpful video for non-talented individuals like me. It will make my lyrics sound more interesting. Thanks much. ❤️
Awesome! Thanks for sharing this! So glad I found your videos, it's going to take my songwriting to the next level!
Thank you so much for this! This was a big help 👍🏾☺️
Hello from Northern California. I’m enjoying your lessons. Another way to find a rhyme is to make up a word. In Tom Waits song November he ends with
Go away, you rainsnout
Go away, blow your brains out
November
Sondheim used a rhyming dictionary as well. I’ll come up with the exact one in a bit. I think he liked it because of how it was layed out.
He also said that writing lyrics was the hardest part.
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
Amazing advise. Looking forward to getting involved with this. Ive got the Patt Pattison book aswell, but not the best at understanding when it comes to reading. Youve explained this very well. Cheers
it's a bit of an overstatement to say that the consonant sound doesn't matter "at all". Some imperfect rhymes are more imperfect than others. A closer rhyme will often sound better to the ear than one that's further away. For example, "ache" and "late" might sound better than "ache" and "base". Not that you couldn't use the latter if needed. But I'd prefer the former.
Wow. Super helpful, as I am sure you already know, but thank you.
Iv recently written a song that used Collide & Tide haha
“I feel our hearts collide
Like a crashing ocean tide”
Superb!!! I have only watched a few of your videos but you are very impressive. I will be watching quite a few more
I studied with Pat Pattison at Berklee. This is right on. Thanks for the reminder!
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 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"
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've been utilizing this idea, without quite understanding the mechanics of it. Thanks! Another item I use along with a rhyming dictionary (and is just as useful to me) is a thesaurus. :)
I get it. I get it. _I'm walking / the chalk line / around your heart._
0:46 my first thought hearing you say this is to form some similarly poignant line, and end it with "mine" or something. It's a slant rhyme sure, but THEN the goal is to make the rest of that line pretty enough to make that not matter so much.
Yay for RhymeZone! I also like using the "advanced" feature to find near rhymes (and not so near ones) more quickly.
Amazingly informative video! Thanks so much!
Thank you for your work. This is very helpful
GREAT advice - thanks!