by Mark Simos
Lyric pace. A natural rhythmic pace lends itself to lyric rhythm and the rhythm of the vocal phrase. This pace bears close connection to rhythms and pace of natural speech, though of course, sung lyrics involve emotional heightening and thus might be delivered more quickly or slowly than conversational speech. There are natural limits to how much lyric syllables can be shortened or elongated. Song lyrics are sung by human singers with limited lung power and heard by human listeners with limited ears and attention span. By contrast, the pace of an instrumental rhythm might be much quicker than vocal pace. We generally don’t sing syllables for every strum of the guitar!
Speech rhythm proportions. Just as important as overall pace is maintaining characteristic lyric proportions between shorter and longer durations in the rhythm. Since they’re based on syllables and meter, lyric rhythms tend to cover a relatively small range of durations, modeled on those found in speech. Lyric rhythm tends to involve just a few durations clustered around a basic syllabic pace. Certain proportions between durations suggest qualities of spoken language; ratios of 1 to 2 or of 2 to 3 are basic proportions creating a sense of alternating strong vs. weak stresses. If you build rhythmic patterns out of mostly eighth notes, with some quarter notes for emphasis, some sixteenth notes as passing triplets, you’re working with a “vocally friendly” range of durations.
However, these durations can be extended, even with very elongated syllables and held notes, or—to some degree—shortened as well. As long as the proportions among durations of syllables stay similar, the phrase can still retain aspects of spoken or sung speech. This is what allows us to use acceleration and deceleration, within or between song sections, for prosody or contrast. We can slow lyric pace and still have a natural-sounding, audible, and comprehensible lyric.
Varying durations. Speech involves successions of strong and weak stresses on syllables. In pure rhythm, sans the element of dynamics, metrical placement and duration are the primary ways to convey these stress variations. This means sequences of rhythmic events of varying durations have a more vocal or rather lyrical quality.
As we sing longer series of consecutive notes of similar duration, the rhythm begins to suggest an increasingly instrumental rather than lyrical effect. Even when moving at a comparable pace to lyrical or vocal rhythm, instrumental rhythms tend to be more uniform in terms of durations—for example, long series of regular eighth notes. As an interesting, possibly related phenomenon, as lyric pace slows or speeds up to extremes (relative to a pace approximating the cadences of natural speech), there’s a tendency for syllables to converge toward notes of similar duration. In effect, vocal rhythm begins to be more imitative of instrumental rhythm.
Pattern. Lyric rhythm flirts with pattern as does instrumental rhythm. But lyrical patterns are typically loose; percussive or instrumental patterns are more strict. As a rhythmic pattern is repeated successively without variation, we move from lyrical toward more instrumental rhythmic effects.
Breaths. Vocal phrases end with a breath; lyric rhythms thus naturally break into phrases, punctuated by pauses or rests of some duration. By contrast, instrumental rhythms are often cyclic. They loop and dovetail with a forward-rolling momentum. When such cyclical rhythms are put into the context of vocal melody, the “join” may need to be handled with overlapping vocal parts, call-and-response lead and background vocals, or adjusted phrasing.
Line endings. Lyric lines end in distinctive ways, depending on whether the final syllable is stressed, unstressed, or a secondary stress. (These line endings may or may not coincide with breaths.) A rhythmic phrase that lends itself to a lyric setting will suggest a characteristic line-ending of this kind.
Vocal interpretation. Some interpretive freedom is intrinsic to lyric rhythm. Musical effects such as anticipations and delayed phrasing, syncopations, elongations, triplets, and other counter-rhythms or polyrhythms are characteristic of vocal delivery. Songwriters should articulate a clear foundation for the vocal melody, determining which rhythmic effects are structural to the lyric, and which are up to the discretion and interpretation of the vocalist. Hearing your song sung by an artist or demo singer quickly sensitizes you to these issues.
Vocal imitation of instrumental rhythm. In some styles and for some songs, lyric rhythm intentionally (or perhaps unintentionally) imitates instrumental effects. Lyrics can be set via so-called wrenched stress—phrasing forced into “riffy” rhythmic patterns or successions of notes of the same duration. Speak the following lines to a regular eighth-note rhythm:
Where you going my baby where you goin’ tonight?
Can’t you find some sweet time for me, the feeling’s so right
In the example, “baby,” “goin’,” and “feeling” are all technically mis-set. In addition, pronouns like “my” and “you,” and the all-important word “the” all get strong stresses set into the regular rhythmic pattern. Such effects are prevalent in contemporary pop styles, from mainstream country to hip-hop, neo-soul, and R&B. Though distortion of natural speech rhythm inevitably results, that distortion might be desired, creating pleasing effects for the ears of some writers and listeners. The effect certainly brings rhythmic patterns to foreground attention, and also strongly communicates a distinctive attitude and persona. This can be suitable for particular themes and lyrics, though possibly overpowering a lyric more dependent on narrative clarity and focus.
The following exercise helps you manage this range of textures and the creative tension between instrumental and vocal rhythms.
Exercise 3.5. Regular to Irregular Lyric Rhythm
Set a lyric line first to a succession of even eighth notes. Now incrementally transform the lyric line, shifting the rhythmic setting to bring out the emotion and meaning of the lyric. With each change, you should feel the rhythm make the lyric more expressive—more “lyrical.” You can move toward a less energetic, more conversational lyric rhythm, or a more intense and emotionally charged setting. You may lengthen syllables at will, or change eighths to sixteenths. (But don’t introduce shorter durations, or you’ll go down the rabbit hole! If you start hearing both sixteenth and thirty-second notes, shift all durations to half time so that eighth notes become the norm again.)
The following example shows several transformations simultaneously. For yours, make them sequentially, and stop to evaluate each intermediate version.
FIG. 3.5. Shifting Regular to Irregular Rhythmic Setting
In the transformed version, the remaining even successions of eighths (“Can’t you…,” “rea-son”) take on different emotional tone in relation to the variations surrounding them. Anticipations (“up…”) emphasize key words. The resulting setting conveys emphasis that, in ordinary speech, might be conveyed with other elements such as dynamics and pitch. Here, the different emphases of the notes are conveyed entirely through rhythmic variations.
Rhythmic Events
The rhythmic phrase threads together distinct rhythmic patterns in melody, lyric, and harmony. The rhythmic component is expressed differently in melody, harmony, and lyric respectively, and rhythmic elements of each of these can move independently. These layered rhythmic interactions, within and across facets, can be surprisingly complex, even in apparently simple musical textures. It’s challenging work to manipulate these varied rhythms independently, even for percussionists, trained to hear and play highly sophisticated instrumental rhythms. The key in rhythm for songwriting is not complex rhythmic patterns for their own sake, but rhythms inherent to vocal melody, that complement emotion and meaning for the phrase or line as a whole.
In each facet, rhythmic events are created by changes in material in the stream of musical time. Any musical event (syllable, note, or chord), considered as a rhythmic event, has two attributes:
placement: the event lands or hits on a given beat in the metrical framework
duration: the event lasts or is held for a set amount of time
As we’re working with it here, rhythm has an inherently m
etric or measured aspect—it’s not free, rubato, breathing time. Both placement and duration are reckoned in terms of beats in the metric framework. A series of rhythmic events in a given facet is grouped into the sequences we can call rhythmic phrases. We can compose rhythmic phrases the same way we might compose a melodic phrase or a lyric line.
The rhythmic events that make up the separate threads of the rhythmic phrase are different in quality for each facet:
In a lyric, rhythmic events or changes are created by singing a new syllable.
In vocal melody, a rhythmic event is created by moving to a new pitch.
In harmony, a rhythmic event is created by moving to a different chord.
We can even discern rhythmic aspects unfolding at larger hierarchical levels: phrase groupings and overall song form. As the temporal scale of rhythmic events stretches, we respond experientially more to perceptions of balance and expectations of form and structure than rhythm per se. Still, it can be helpful to view these larger structures in rhythmic terms.
Consider a song section with four four-bar phrases, then a concluding fifth phrase of six bars. The inherent instability in this structure can be attributed in part to a rhythmic effect, albeit one unfolding at a relatively slow temporal level. In a sense, one could call this level phrasal rhythm. We’ll revisit this in the chapter on structure, in the context of phrase structure. We could speculate that surprising, asymmetric, or unbalanced temporal units highlight rhythmic aspects, while regular or symmetric groupings highlight structural aspects, at whatever hierarchical level of structure we are working.
This detailed view of lyric, melodic, harmonic, and even structural rhythm lets us work with rhythms in each facet as independent though interwoven aspects. It also helps to distinguish core or compositional aspects of rhythm, intrinsic to the song, from other functions of rhythm in the creative process and the final song. A rhythmic event in melody, harmony, or lyric is part of the core rhythmic material of the song, manifesting in the rhythmic phrase. Rhythmic groove, riff, and other accompaniment aspects can affect the writing process, and overall arrangement, production, and performance of the song, but are only indirectly part of the compositional core of the song. Similarly, changing aspects of the temporal framework such as tempo, groove, or beat can shape the melodies, lyrics, and chord progressions you write. But those changes are, in the end, inscribed in the rhythms of melody, lyrics, and harmony.
Rhythmic Pace
We’ve characterized rhythm as a stream of events of varying durations, occurring within an overall metrical framework that links syllabic placement, changes of melodic pitch, and chord changes. Rhythmic events land with varying durations. A sense of rhythmic pace is created when one duration value occurs most frequently within the phrase, creating an overall sense of flow and continuity.
Pace can be determined either by the duration occurring most frequently
in a given rhythmic passage—the norm—or by the duration lying midway between the extremes (longest and shortest durations) occurring in the passage—the mean. Norm and mean are not always the same. In the first example of figure 3.6, the eighth notes establish pace as a norm, the most frequent duration heard. In the second example, durations range from sixteenth to whole notes. Though there are more occurrences of eighth-note durations (three) than of other durations, these don’t dominate the texture by virtue of their frequency. A quarter-note pace better describes the feel, set by the mean.
FIG. 3.6. Rhythmic Pace as Norm vs. Mean
In notation for songwriting, it’s often convenient to set the basic syllabic pace as eighth-note durations, with triplets represented by sixteenth notes, and some syllables getting longer emphasis. This allows for showing both acceleration (faster triplet syllables) and deceleration (through extended durations), as variations pulling against the basic pace. Reserve a sixteenth-note pace for special-effect fast lyrics, like Gilbert and Sullivan–esque humorous rapid-patter songs, or rapidly delivered hip-hop. (Note that in such songs, the sixteenth-note pace is the norm—the most frequent duration—but not the mean.)
Pace is heard in relation to the metrical framework but is distinct from it. The metric framework rarely changes over the course of the song (unless we switch time signatures or between duple and triple pulse, for example). Pace can be shifted, especially for sectional contrast. We notice these shifts. When we feel the overall pace speed up, we get a feeling of acceleration; when it slows down, we get a feeling of deceleration. These rhythmic effects have emotional and energetic associations. But these impressions can be subtle and many-layered, since you can create simultaneous acceleration in one rhythmic aspect, deceleration in another.
Pace is key to lyric rhythm, since it’s an attribute of natural spoken language. In most languages, conversation tends to settle on a particular pace of delivery for syllables, measured by the flow of both stressed and unstressed syllables. While unstressed syllables may take shorter durations than stressed syllables, the differences are not extreme. Of course, sung lyrics often evoke the rhythms not of casual conversation but of emotionally heightened speech. (The late Henry Gaffney liked to refer to lyric rhythm as “speech rhythm on steroids.”) That heightening is conveyed in part through durational changes, both absolute (relative to the tempo of spoken conversation) and relative (proportions of short to long syllabic length within the phrase). Still, some lyric pace is established, though it may not be completely naturalistic in delivery.
Pace can accelerate or decelerate, usually at the sectional level. (If pace changes continually within a section, a pace is never established!) Material in different facets can establish different, even counterpointing paces in the same passage, phrase, or section. Melodic, lyric, and harmonic pace interact in a variety of subtle ways, as we’ll explore in subsequent chapters.
Rhythmic Patterns
A rhythmic pattern is a regularly repeating sequence of rhythmic events and durations. A rhythmic phrase need not create a particularly distinct, repetitive rhythmic pattern. But our ears do seek out bits of order in the stream of rhythmic information. By “pattern,” I generally mean something more marked than even successions of steady rhythmic values (as shown in pattern 1 of figure 3.7), though these definitely do sound “pattern-y” to our ears. In such highly repetitive passages, the underlying metric framework pokes through as rhythmic articulation.
FIG. 3.7. Varieties of Rhythmic Patterns
More interesting patterns offer recognizable figures in the rhythmic stream—landmarks for our ears. Accompaniment rhythms usually rely
strongly on a repertoire of such repeating patterns, often stylistic markers as well. Pattern 2 in figure 3.7 shows a two-bar pattern of this kind (vaguely suggestive of something tango-like). Skilled accompanists vary these in performance to create variety for the ear.
Vocal rhythm, on the other hand, must carry the narrative and sense of the line. Rhythmic patterns that “speak” to us tend to be longer, more irregular, and more expressive, relying on the qualities of vocal rhythm discussed earlier. As the pattern gets longer and less predictable, it moves in the direction of a unique rhythmic phrase—though skilled songwriters may exactly match the rhythmic phrasing of entire lines, from one line to another in a chorus, or across verses. An example of a rhythmic phrase used as a pattern for lyric matching in this way is shown in pattern 3. Other patterns are repeated figures heard more locally, within a line or phrase for example, as shown in pattern 4. Patterns set up powerful aural expectations in the listener’s ear, allowing small variations to have dramatic effects. As shown in the bracketed moments in each example pattern, adding (ornamenting) or removing (thinning) even one rhythmic event in a repetition creates longer arcs and higher-level patterns. Patterns of such repetitions and variations become primary ways that rhythm participates in overall structural aspects of the song, as we’ll explore in the “Structure” chapter.
Working with the Rhythmic Phrase
Our first versions of lyric, melodic, or
harmonic ideas arrive with rhythmic settings already embedded in their first expressions. There are limits to how well placed or expressive these rhythmic phrases can be, especially when writing in an improvisational way. If we want rhythmic emphasis, we’ll tend to repeat rhythmic patterns fairly literally throughout the phrase. If our focus is more on lyrics and melody, rhythmic phrasing will tend to be random and a bit scattered.
A simple but powerful writing and revision strategy is to experiment with or “sketch” different rhythmic settings for a lyric line or melodic phrase, before settling on one and locking it in through repeated performance. Rhythmic skills help you isolate and modify initial rhythmic settings, and experiment with setting lyrics, melodies, or chord progressions in varying rhythmic ways.
Exercise 3.6. Write a Rhythmic Song Section
Write a song section consisting of four or five rhythmic phrases, each of about four bars in length, entirely as a rhythmic template only. Don’t think about melody, chords, or lyrics—or subject matter or emotional tone of the emerging song. Don’t repeat exactly the same rhythmic pattern four times; try to make rhythmic phrases outline and reinforce initial and cadential lines of the section.
You can think of the section as any structural section—verse, chorus, etc.—or you can choose not to worry about this. After writing the section, notice whether you’ve written it with a closed, balanced kind of cadence (typical of the verse of a verse/refrain song, or a chorus), or a more open, unstable kind of sectional cadence (more typical of a verse or prechorus leading to a chorus, or a bridge). Then write a second section, not connected to the first, that uses the other kind of closure.