>> Rhyme can sometimes feel like a monkey on our back.
It's something that we know
helps a lyric to feel connected,
and it agrees with what's going on
musically when we cadence or close a melodic phrase.
It can feel like, yeah,
that's where rhyme should go.
And when it doesn't fall there,
then we can feel this awkwardness or lack of
connection between what's happening
lyrically and what's happening musically.
So we know we need to use rhyme,
but then this pressure to have rhyme in
our lyrics confines us sometimes.
Where we feel like, "If I could just say what I want to
say and not be swayed by what rhymes."
Sometimes the position of a rhyme,
as well as the kind of rhyme that it is,
can hijack the lyrics content and make it say,
here I am, perfect rhyme,
it's all about me at this moment, and we don't want that.
So we want the best of both worlds.
We want our rhymes to feel natural,
for them to agree with what's going on
musically and we want them to serve the content,
to always let the content be king.
So how did we do this?
Well, there's a few ways that we
can enhance our use of rhyme,
make it more effective.
We can choose to use different types of rhyme.
So not limit ourselves to perfect rhyme,
but use what we call looser rhyme types, family rhyme.
We can use additive subtractive rhyme,
assonance rhyme, and consonants rhyme.
These looser rhyme types.
Now that takes care of adding
some other possible content,
new rhyme, new words,
to the pot of ideas that we have.
But it doesn't explore
a deeper meaning of rhyme to our songs,
and that meaning is that
the rhyme that we choose, in other words,
the closure that that rhyme
provides and the connection that those two words have,
they are like body language in our song.
So let me explain in terms of music.
If you limit yourself to perfect rhyme,
you might think of that the same as if
you only wrote songs with the one major chord,
the four major chord, and the five major
chord, and that's all you did.
Perfect rhyme can be extremely useful,
and if we're lucky,
can get the right content into
our songs and we're happy with it there.
But what about all the nuance that we
can create with a two major chord,
a borrowed chord, or a major seven chord?
What about the body language that we can suggest with
these little richer chord moments?
Now in terms of rhyme,
that might mean that we decide to rhyme
the word road with
below or street with here.
Now they feel pretty far away.
Those two are an assonance rhyme here and street.
But if we begin to look at lyrics that we know and love,
we will soon start to see
a lot of these different rhyme types,
looser rhyme types that were there all along,
we just weren't distracted by them.
We're going to continue to look
for rhymes that truly serve our content
with less consideration to how perfect
those two words feel when
they're spoken right next to each other.
Just like with music,
we don't choose chords at random,
but we choose them to express an emotion and
a mood that we want the song to have at that point.
And as it is with rhyme,
we choose them for their motion,
their ability to create closure or leave things open.
Sometimes the structure of
our section begins to suggest, "Hey,
you should put a rhyme here," and then
of course a rhyme goes here,
and sometimes we need to break that structure.
And so deciding to not rhyme
or shorten that line and
have the rhyme come a lot earlier,
or lengthen it and have the rhyme come
a lot later than expected,
are really nice ways to add interest
to a section and play around with rhyme.
The big thing with rhyme is that
rhythm shows the listener where to expect rhyme.
When we write very boxy four-line sections,
everything is as it should be,
then we're putting the rhymes
exactly where our rhythms say they should go.
When you change that up,
then what you're doing is
establishing a rhythmic pattern.
Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white
as snow and everywhere that Mary went,
the lamb was sure to walk.
Didn't happen where we thought it would happen.
Now if the rhythm is saying,
here's where the rhyme goes and
the rhyme doesn't sit there,
then it can feel awkward, a bit like that did.
If there's no reason for using
that device of not rhyming within the content,
then it's going to feel a little weird,
but check this out.
Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white
as snow and everywhere that Mary went,
the lamb would go. Now it's shorter.
Now I could try something else.
I could try a completely different rhyme scheme.
Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as
snow and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb would go.
He'd always know,
that she would pay the rent.
Look I extended the section just by shortening that line,
adding to it and rhyming again,
and then choosing another line to rhyme with earlier on.
So when you write lyrics,
you can lay down
really interesting rhyme schemes that then translate into
really interesting musical structures
that had we not had the lyric guiding us,
we might never have ventured into.
So enjoy thinking about rhyme,
rhyme scheme, and rhythm,
and how they all interact,
and how they can expand your musical style as well.