Re: Writing Better Lyrics Pat Pattison Pdf Free Download
Gema Shisila
Things then slow down as you dive deeper and begin to breathe slower, and Pat shows you every possible which way to do rhyme, rhythm and metre, position ideas in the song, use repetition (or not), structure your song, and so much more besides. The exercises can become a bit tedious here if you are just out for kicks, but for the serious student of songwriting wanting to do better, finding the best time and place to work on these and keep yourself motivated and creatively inspired will surely pay dividends. I worked through many of them, often surprising myself with the results.
And of course, in my book The Art of Songwriting I go into more detail about how lyrics work, and how you can train your brain to churn out great lyrics without worrying about rules or intricate theories.
Metaphors are not user-friendly. They're difficult to find and difficult to use well. Unfortunately, metaphors are a mainstay of good lyric writing-indeed of most creative writing. ...metaphors support lyrics like bones.
Featuring updated and expanded chapters, 50 fun songwriting exercises, and examples from more than 20 chart-toppings songs, Writing Better Lyrics gives you all of the professional and creative insight you need to write powerful lyrics and put your songs in the spotlight where they belong.
Pattison taught Philosophy and Logic at the University of Notre Dame for two years before leaving that position to tour with his band, featherrain. Pattison began teaching at Berklee College of Music in 1975, first as an English instructor, then as the developer of Berklee's philosophy and poetry electives. He offered a course in literary criticism, and added song lyrics to create the course: Analysis of Song Lyrics. That course aided in the development in Berklee College of Music's songwriting major. Pattison has published in Home and Studio Recording Magazine and written two books, The Essential Guide to Rhyming, now in a revised second edition in 2014,[1] and The Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure. He published his third book, Writing Better Lyrics in 1995 and an expanded second edition in 2009.[2] Pattison's fourth book, Songwriting without Boundaries: A Lyricist's Guide to Finding Your Voice (2012), is an interactive book of four (4) fourteen-day challenges, and focuses on the creative process through Object Writing and Metaphor. In 2013 Pattison wrote and began instruction of a Songwriting Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) through Coursera.[3] The course has now had over 700,000 registrants in its several offerings. He authored a 2015 piece: Co-Writing:The No-Free Zone for American Songwriter.[4]
"I like to think that we're providing everybody who goes through the major with something of value in terms of their listening skills, their writing skills, and their life skills. I mean, when you become a better writer, you become a better person, right? I'd like to believe that. At least you become a more focused and perceptive person."
"Then we have students do a lot of writing, but we never have them write in any particular style, at least not in Lyric Writing 2, which is a critique class. There we just have them write whatever it is that they write. They can bring in a folk song, a country song, a hip-hop song, and we deal with whatever it is. We talk about the use of the tools, talk about how they might be better applied, and talk about what really works in it."
6. Blogging \u2014 I love blogging. While I don\u2019t use it as often as I used to, writing for an audience is a great habit to be in. Knowing that someone was likely to be looking at my blog (even if only one person was out there) is a great way to capture shareable ideas whenever they arrive. I find I write better for a blog than when free writing. Capturing blog ideas is very similar to capturing new song ideas.
10. The Bible \u2014 What better place to start when writing songs? I love this because there are so many creative aspects that come together \u2013 honesty, history, poetry, and truth all at the same time. I love the idea of Psalming that my friend, Krissy Nordhoff, introduced me to in her lovely book \u2018Writing Worship: How to craft heartfelt songs for the church\u2019. It\u2019s also golden stuff.
I started coming up with better lines, and whenever I needed a lyric, I could come up with something instantly. I even had a set of virtual dice programmed so I could make a game out of it (this is available in the Speed Songwriting System too).
While instructional books are perfect for getting a solid understanding of the terms, methods, and basics of songwriting, the biggest hurdle many of us face is actually sitting down to write. To continue to practice getting better at the craft this monthly workbook is broken up into three sections:
I hope you give object writing a try. If you stick to the routine and do it daily, you'll soon notice a couple changes. For starters, you'll be waking up the writer within you early in the morning, and by consequence, (s)he'll be joining you for the entire day ahead. Always listening, always observing, always looking for inspiration for your next songs. And with time you'll also notice that your song lyrics may become more interesting, as you'll no longer just be talking about a moment. You'll be sharing that moment with your listeners. Inviting them to experience it with you.
Writing a song from a title is a songwriting strategy that assistssongwriters in many ways; it helps students to quickly generate song ideasand provides them with a productive songwriting approach. In the classroomthis strategy assists collaboration, reflects professional songwritingpractice and connects everyday conversational language with popular lyric.This strategy also introduces students to the topic of literary prosody byengaging them in setting lyrics to music through using the technique of frontand back heavy lyrics. Lyrics that are placed on the first beat of a bar canbe called front heavy, whereas back heavy lyrics are placed later in a bar ofmusic. Writing from a title highlights the stress-based nature of the Englishlanguage and this introduces linguistic prosody and the dynamic aspects ofspeech. Writing from a title can also introduce the compositional techniqueof contrasting sections.
Writing from a title is a highly productive approach for quicklygenerating song topics and ideas. It is helpful because a popular song titleis generally utilized as the central theme or topic of a song (Blume 2004).It is helpful for students to realize that writing from a title isproductive, is utilized by accomplished writers and is used in well-knowncommercial songwriting environments such as Nashville (Pattison 2009).Students can be informed that in such communities, where co-writing is verycommon, a general practice is for writers to continually collect song titles.Mark Simos (2014) likens song titles to 'song seeds' that can begrown into fully completed songs. Another way that writing from a title isbeneficial is that (in most cases) a word and / or phrase that comprises asong title will be included in the lyrics. This then points to the fact thatlyrics, aside from containing semantic meaning (i.e. song titles containinglyrical themes), also convey meaning through linguistic aspects such aspitch, volume, speed, stress and rhythm (Pattison 2009). The topic oflinguistic prosody utilizes terms such as pitch and stress to describe (whatis known in this area as) suprasegmentals; suprasegmentals within linguisticprosody are recognized as the basis of sound in language. Alerting studentsto the possibilities of the pitch, volume, speed, stress and rhythm of a songtitle can enhance their performance of original material.
Once a song title has been created, a songwriter can use it tohelp structure a song, ensuring that the important words of the title arematched with the stressed beats of a musical bar or bars. This process can befollowed without the use of a musical instrument by either thinking ortalking the words while tapping out a beat. This process is at the heart ofsetting lyrics to music (Webb 1998), although the music at this stage is onlyrhythm; these basic elements can convey different types of meaning andemotion. This songwriting approach introduces to students that word stresswithin a sentence or song lyric will contribute to meaning. The shifting ofstress on specific words within a lyric can contribute to a completelydifferent communication.
In summary, writing from a title generates inspirational songideas and as a strategy it can provide songwriting students with a logicaland productive place to start. Once a song title has been created it can leadto the compositional exercise of creating lyrics that are either front and /or back heavy. Using this technique can help to ensure that a song title isnaturally welded with a certain song structure, has placement within arhythmic structure and is woven into a song as a central idea and hook.Involving students in the classroom with writing from a title is an idealopportunity to introduce the stress-based nature of the English language, theideas of literary and linguistic prosody, and contrasting sections. By usingcontrast in classroom examples students work towards completing a song.Experimenting with the pitch, volume, speed, stress and rhythm of a lyric inthe classroom highlights to students the sonic quality of the Englishlanguage (Simos 2014).
These three main song structures are beneficial for songwritingstudents because they provide different options for the development of a songtitle and / or idea. The A-A-A folk format is flexible enough to include asmany verses as required; therefore this structure is excellent for deliveringdetailed and expansive stories. This format generally includes the song titleat the start or end of each verse. An A-A-B-A song structure is differentfrom A-A-A folk format in that it has a contrasting section. In songwritingclasses I highlight that this B section is a chance for a songwriter tochange a song in relation to lyrics, rhythm, harmony, melody and / orperformance. Generally the B section within an A-A-B-A song structure is theonly section that does not include the song title and this assists inproviding contrast. The popular structure ofverse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus allows a song title to be repeatedcontinually. Consequently, with this structure it is important that the titlemelody / hook is catchy and well-suited to being repeated many times over.These three main song structures give students a variety of options in orderto develop and complete a song title and /or idea.
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