Note: If you have not read my previous post, “The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1” first, I strongly suggest that you do that now, if possible.

Here fate takes a far different turn than one might expect.  As discussed in my previous blog post, a rant against the decline of craft in one of America’s most brilliant of the arts, the quality of lyric writing today seems to be in a great tailspin.  Perhaps I stand as one self-appointed member of the resistance to this trend.  I gladly wear the badge.

I try to uphold the traditions set forth by the greats ranging from Berlin to Hammerstein to Sondheim and write with prefect scans and perfect rhymes in a world where no one any longer seems to care about what went before.  A standard was set which I studied and emulated and have sweated over for years to uphold, not because of tradition, but because I truly saw and understood the worth of these time-honored principles.

Now, not only do I continue the standard in my own work, but I also teach it and insist on it with my students.  If a student refuses to follow the laws, I simply do not teach them.  It’s as simple as that.

Most students look at me, roll their eyes, and groan at my insistence – the work and time spent usually being far more than they signed up for – but if they have any talent at all, they soon see a tremendous improvement to their songs if they stick with it.  It ain’t easy, but then greatness never is, no matter how easy it looks to be.

Now fate steps into my life and does its twist on my psyche.

Lyrics are not poetry and poetry is not prose.  Lyrics and prose are far afield from one another even though they both involve words.  The repeating rhythms of the lines of lyrics are rarely attempted in prose and this is certainly one of the major differences between the two styles of writing.  Also, of course, prose does not try to incorporate the rhyming of words.

Without getting too technical, it’s important to know that the *Iambic rhythms of lyrics are what make the repeating of melodies in song so powerful.  When matching, for instance, a second verse to a first verse, it’s crucial that the rhythms and accents or stresses of the words match so that the melodies are repeated perfectly.  When an extra syllable or word is thrown into the mix in the second verse, the melody is pushed out of its previous first verse musical statement and the listening brain becomes confused.  It, in essence, asks, “Well, just which melody is it that you want me to remember, the first or the second?”

The end result is that it remembers neither because they are different.  No longer is your song “sticky” or melodious.  It doesn’t stick with you because you can’t remember it because the non-scanning-ness of the second verse confuses the brain as to what is the truth.

Your inability to perfectly match the two verses has hurt your song and simply made it less memorable.

So now along comes a new project, a new and exciting challenge that throws much of this out the window for me and confronts the very fundamental in me with spectacular defiance.  To be continued…

Note to reader: Yes, in the interest of your good time, we shall break this rather long post up into 3 or 4 parts.  Think of it as one of those old serial westerns you used to watch as a kid where the cowboy was just falling off the cliff and that dreaded “To be continued…”screen would come up informing you that you would have to wait to see how it all turned out.

Also for those more serious about lyric writing I attach the following from Wikipedia on Iambic pentameter:

*“Iambic pentameter is a commonly used metrical line in traditional verse and verse drama. The term describes the particular rhythm that the words establish in that line. That rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables; these small groups of syllables are called “feet“. The word “iambic” describes the type of foot that is used (in English, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable). The word “pentameter” indicates that a line has five of these “feet.”

These terms originally applied to the quantitative meter of classical poetry. They were adopted to describe the equivalent meters in English accentual-syllabic verse. Different languages express rhythm in different ways. In Ancient Greek and Latin, the rhythm is created through the alternation of short and long syllables. In English, the rhythm is created through the use of stress, alternating between unstressed and stressed syllables. When a pair of syllables is arranged as a short followed by a long, or an unstressed followed by a stressed, pattern, that foot is said to be “iambic”.

Iambic rhythms come relatively naturally in English. Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry; it is used in many of the major English poetic forms, including blank verse, the heroic couplet, and some of the traditional rhymed stanza forms. William Shakespeare used iambic pentameter in his plays and sonnets.”