© 1991 Berklee College of Music, BERKLEE PRESS, BOSTON

(Reproduced with kind permission from Pat Pattison)

Page 53  FORM: TOSSING THE BALLS TOGETHER

Until now I have asked you to build only lyric sections.  In this chapter you will link sections together to form larger groups.  Start by thinking of each lyric section as either a CENTRAL SECTION or a DEVELOPMENTAL SECTION.  Everything within the lyric moves toward or departs from a CENTRAL SECTION.  Like ancient Rome, all roads lead to a CENTRAL SECTION and every other place is just a stop along the way.

The CENTRAL SECTION should contain the CENTRAL IDEA, or main point, of the lyric.  The CENTRAL SECTION is the structural centerpiece of the lyric.  The CENTRAL IDEA is the main message of the lyric.   Put them together.

DEVELOPMENTAL SECTIONS contain DEVELOPMENTAL IDEAS: ideas that lead up to or develop the CENTRAL IDEA.  They should move forward until they get to a CENTRAL SECTION. You, of course, have to decide what you want your lyric to say -  what your CENTRAL IDEA will be.  Once you have decided, construct a CENTRAL SECTION for it.  Then construct your DEVELOPMENTAL SECTIONS to serve THE CENTRAL SECTION.  Each section in your lyric will have its own job to do. Here are the most typical jobs, so typical that they have names:

VERSE

CHORUS

BRIDGE

REFRAIN

HOOK

A lyric does not have to have all these elements to work properly.  A clock doesn't have to have an alarm to keep time.

1. To introduce ideas

2. To set up the CENTRAL IDEA

3. To develop or continue ideas

4. To set structural standards for the lyric,

thus,   5. Verses should close down.

The first three deal with idea development, a subject for another whole book.  For now let's concentrate on verse structure.

Verses establish BALANCE, PACE, FLOW, CLOSURE, AND CLOSURE TYPE for the lyric, setting a point of comparison for other structures in the lyric. Verses establish your expectations for the lyric, much like a juggler who establishes a pattern so he can surprise you with variations…

Because every song that has a Chorus has one or more verses, a Chorus is usually a contrasting element.  The verse ideas move toward or "come home" to the Chorus.  Because the Chorus is a CENTRAL SECTION — a place where ideas are completed  —  the end of the Chorus should stop forward motion. This creates the feeling of "starting over again" in the next section…

1. It is a DEVELOPMENTAL section.

2. It develops a new perspective or contrasting idea. 

3. It unbalances the section by moving away from established structures, creating structural tension.

4. It is resolved by a return to previously established structures,

thus,   5. It is frequently the lyric's most unbalanced section.

 I have heard it called by many names:

Pre-ChorusVestRamp

Climb or LiftVerse ExtensionPrime

This section is used for so many jobs, none of these descriptive names quite fit all of them:

1. It is a DEVELOPMENTAL section.

2. It introduces a pivotal idea as a transition between Verse and Chorus.

3. It is always enclosed in a Song System, almost always between a verse and a chorus.

A Refrain usually comes either at the beginning or the end of a verse. In older "Standards" of the 30's and 40's it usually came at the beginning of the Verse. Recently it comes more often at the end. What is important is:

1. It contains the CENTRAL IDEA

2. It is part of the Verse

3. It is repeated in other Verses

4. It is NOT a separate section

The content of a Refrain should be the CENTRAL IDEA of the Verse. The rest of the Verse develops or leads up to this Central idea. The Refrain contains the TITLE of the song, but can contain other repeated material.

Pat Pattison is a professor of music and songwriting at Berklee College of Music in Boston.  He has taught lyric writing and poetry at the College since 1975.  He played a central role in developing Berklee's unique songwriting major, the first complete songwriting degree offered anywhere.   

(© 1996 Reproduced with kind permission from the author)

The idea is: a lyric has be more than pronouncable, it has to sound beautiful. There are hits songs which are trite, hit songs which are vacuous, hit songs which are utterly non-sensical. There has never been, and there never will be a hit song that is not eminently singable.  Here are some great singable lyrics:
 

The ultimate test of singability is ... do your lyrics sound good when you sing them?  Good lyrics are hard to read without singing a little.  They are choreography for the tongue.   Here's a chorus idea a friend of mine sent me:

A reliable way to produce singable lyrics is to start babbling along to the music.  Even if you can't improvise meaningful sentences, you will at least hit on some nice rhythms and vowel sounds. I like to call this method "bottom up" songwriting.  "Top down" is when you start with a scenario or a title, for instance.  I usually need to work from both directions to finish a song.
 

My goal here is not to discourage the use of words in these categories, but to encourage thinking about word choice.  Some words, like, "love", "tonight", etc. stand out as particularly well worn song vocabulary, and should be handled with caution.  Big words are often hard to make singable (Many have really funky meter, though. Paul Simon especially likes to use this resource).
 

More on big words: don't sacrifice the clarity and directness of your lyrics in the name of erudition. You will end up with a lousy, pompous song.  As Strunk and White say in Elements of Style, their apt book on writing, don't choose a ten-dollar word when you have a five-center handy.
 

 Your biggest concerns when you are rhyming should be:
 

1. avoiding triteness
2. avoiding writing "forced" sounding rhymes, ie. couplets which sound as though the whole purpose of one of the lines is to make the rhyme go.
    

Do not hesitate to make a list of possible rhymes, or consult a rhyme dictionary!  This practice builds your rhyming muscles.  But be similarly swift in discarding the words on the list based on singability, and their congruence with the mood of the song.  Be ruthless, or be insipid.
 

Its impact on music with regard to promotion, commercial distribution, licensing, ownership, royalty payments and subsequently piracy, is unfolding into a field of conjecture and debate as technology finds it's 'groove' (or 'standard') in terms of user-friendliness, access, availability and affordability.

The end consumer will ultimately determine this 'standard' since the user experience and number of 'clicks' to access any product ranks high on the consumption scale.

The focus however, shifts from organising live tours to organising and promoting web casts, ensuring availability and access to their music through web distribution services, developing marketing skills and techniques to ensure self promotion through both Artist (and Label) websites. 

Labels recognise that there is a huge demand for 'affordable' music with the consumer wanting easy access to more music for less money and preferring to 'try before they buy'.  

New markets for the use of music also are evolving as individual, mobile phone ring tones and computer games grow in popularity.

The question of tangible vs intangible product is also in debate and the outcome appears to have a relationship with the demographics of the consumer – the older consumer preferring to purchase CDs whilst the younger is quite comfortable with downloading music.

Storage and portability of this downloaded music has created yet another demand.  Rather than storing and accessing music from the computer desktop, technology has responded with the development of electronic formats that are portable and with a huge memory storage capacity.  Examples cited are Mobile phones, watches, purpose built players. 

Again, easy access, affordability and user friendliness are prime considerations in the development of such players and the end consumer will ultimately decide.

© 1987 Molly-Ann Leikin.   Published by Hal Leonard Corporation.  Revised, 1989, 1994, 2001

Reproduced with kind permission by the author.

To play this game, open your dictionary at random. Drop your finger down on the page. Choose the closest picture or proper noun to your fingertip. Write it on a piece of paper under the column heading "Nouns." Make sure the noun is not one you use regularly in your songs. If you land on "love" or "loneliness" or "heart," keep your finger moving down the page until you find a more unusual word.

Find nine more pictures or proper nouns in the same fashion. Make sure you don't get them all from the same letter in the dictionary. This an equal-opportunity exercise. Stop when you get ten nouns. Then do the exercise ten more times choosing adjectives you've never used in a song but would say to someone in conversation. Write the adjectives down in a column next to the nouns. Match each adjective with each noun.

Write the results on another piece of paper. Then cross-pollinate each noun with each adjective. Somewhere in this list of pairs you will stumble over something you've never thought about before. You could find a terrific title. You could find a great phrase. You could assimilate the beginning of a song. The rhythm of the words might suggest a melody.

If you get things that don't make sense, like "reindeer detergent," or "polyester pie," don't throw them away. You might want to try writing a silly song, maybe even a commercial for a fictional product. You use the same creative muscles to create a silly song as you do in writing a love song. You just have unusual subject matter. If it's fun and seemingly stress-free, you won't make the same demands on your writing that you associate with "real" songs and it'll whiz by, making you feel you're on a hot streak.

I give this assignment to each of my new clients and they have fun with it. Remember, writing is supposed to be fun. As the second part of this assignment, take one of the pairs of words from your lists twice a week and write a stream of consciousness story about each of them. Write down whatever comes into your head. Never mind spelling, punctuation, grammar or logic. It can be as whimsical or romantic as you let it be. I recommend you introduce the element of magic and the unexpected in your story. One of my clients recently found the phrase "crackerjack Porsche" by playing the dictionary game and it sparked a story about a shiny red Porsche that ran on Cracker Jacks, not gas, and so instead of zooming down the street the way those cars normally do, this Porsche bounced like popping corn. Another client found "sizzling redhead," but instead of writing just another story about a hot-looking woman who seduced him in a bar, he wrote a saga about a guy who was a frustrated melody writer who couldn't give away his songs on earth. He was taken by this sizzling redhead to a planet where they didn't have any songwriters — just programmers who designed rhythm tracks, and nobody had anything to sing. On this planet, everything he wrote was a hit. But then, bored with easy success, he hitchhiked home to earth. It was a marvelously creative experience for my client, who'd been feeling stale lyrically up to then, and it opened up a hot creative streak for him that hasn't stopped yet.

If you play the dictionary game every day before you start work, you'll find yourself with exciting new things to think about all the time. And with new things to think about, you'll certainly have unlimited material to write about. That way the blank page won't be your enemy, but your ally in helping you to get this endless flow of ideas committed to paper.

Once I had to borrow my neighbor's van. Driving it after my Rabbit convertible was astounding. Riding up that high made me feel like a trucker. I assumed a different persona. I was Molly-Belle, the singing teamster, on my way to Chattanooga with a load of chickens. I drove like a maniac. It was an adventure. When it was over I was glad to have my little Rabbit back, but I was invigorated from the experience.

As creative people, we are both drawn to and afraid of new things. If we can learn to overcome the fear, we can jump into new experiences. With our curiosity about the world unleashed, we'll never be stuck for new ideas.

If you do your five miles, you usually feel a sense of completion and pride and can then move on to the next task at hand — writing. Accomplishing something physical the first thing in your day is a wonderful way of warming up for cerebral exercise. Completing one thing gives you courage and incentive to start another.

I don't jog — I walk.  I'm not lazy.  I have a delicate lower lumbar region.  But I still do my hour of exercise every day. I used to have a set path along which I walked every morning. Now I find deviating from that path is a lot more stimulating. Lately I was really drawn to the ocean and marked out a four-mile path along it. Currently you'll find me at sunup walking through the alleys of Santa Monica, because this week I'm having rural longings. Being unable to take a vacation just now, I trick myself into thinking I'm in the country by taking the alley route, which looks just like back roads. When I come home from my walk, I'm invigorated both physically and mentally, I take my shower and I'm all ready to write.

Though I tell myself I walk for my health, the truth is it gets me out into the world where things are going on. I can't imagine stumbling over much of interest in my kitchen, unless I've been trying to cook again and something explodes. I have to go out into the world, rather than expect the world to come to me. While I'm walking, admiring the flowers and the birds and wondering about the psychological differences between those of my neighbors who build fences and those who don't, my subconscious is at work, too, clearing out the cobwebs and getting ready for a good day at the piano or the word processor.

When I first started to meditate, it was difficult making the time and sitting still that long. But like anything else, the more you do it, the easier it gets. Now I look forward to the peace and tranquility of those fifteen minutes as much as I look forward to my oatmeal in the morning. I find I'm overtaxed and cranky if I don't meditate. And I always feel refreshed and re-stimulated afterward. This is a keeper. I recommend it highly.

The wonderful thing about the brain is, the more you know, the more you want to know. It's not like a closet that gets full and closes down. A successful man once told me, When you want something done, ask someone busy to do it. That's because there's an energy, a rush that goes with activity. Somebody whose machinery is already oiled and pumping is ready to go to work. So if you're revved up with interest about the yen/dollar ratio, it is contagious and helps you with your love songs, too.

The bottom line is this: try new things, go new places, talk to new people, try new foods, drive new cars, drive down new streets, and constantly change your life patterns to allow for new experiences, which will continually surprise you. You will have new things to think about and write about with renewed enthusiasm, energy, excitement and vigor.

When you're feeling uncreative, dull and listless, here's a checklist you can use to help get back on track.