Songwriting Without Boundaries
Page 19
That has taken him and shaken him and claimed him as its own
Possessed him like the demons that go raving through the night
It has lead him to the bottom of the world without a light
What is this fatal whip that will not let him be
Just a whisper in his head that said every man is free
It will take him in the end sure as morning sure as hunger
It will wrap him round the deepest roots and slowly drive him under
But the words will remain when he goes in the ground
This man died for freedom this is John Brown
PAT PATTISON
John Brown John Brown
Come and lay your body down
Smell the coffin, smell the ground
Hear the bootsteps comin’ round
Pitchforks raised against the night
Wrapped in sheets, clean and white
Color’s gonna bring you down
John Brown John Brown
Both of these are basically tetrameter lines. Though my first line has only four syllables, each one is stressed, creating an almost marching feel, as opposed to the expansive line “Possessed him like the demons that go raving through the night.” Note the nice mix of masculine and feminine rhymes in Gillian’s, combined with wonderful metaphors and similes.
Your turn.
5 minutes: Broken Glass
JESS MEIDER
Pierce the callous thick skin
Wishes shatter, punctured like pins
Zing! the stab flashes into the brain
A sharp shard of hope revisits me again
Glassified tears that hit the floor with a crash
They tinkle one by one smash, crack
PAT PATTISON
Scattered diamonds dust the path
Grab the sunlight, shoot it back
Shattered wineglass tossed away
Eyes narrowed, crimson face
Screaming lungs and curling fists
Duck and cover, fuse is lit
Blue to black to yellow stain
Turn your stomach, sweat like rain
Take a look at the verbs in these two. So much of your strength as a writer depends on your choice of verbs—they are the amplifiers of language. The stronger and fresher your verbs, the more your writing crackles.
Now, you try.
DAY #6
TETRAMETER COUPLETS
This is the last day of tetrameter couplets. As always, keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor. Set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use only tetrameter couplets, and vary your rhythms, using both duples and triples.
Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion
10 minutes: Skydiving
BLEU
Fear swelling up with the pressure of air
A thousand wind fingers grasping at my loose hair
I stare down the farms, like postage stamps, scattered
The physics too real, the gravity, matter(s)
Can’t find the courage, might not find the cord
Forget butterflies, these are horse-flies, swarms
Somebody’s screaming, can’t make out the words
The lips look like “now!”? … my vision is blurred
… then suddenly … silence … floating free
Sky … ground … air … me
SUSAN CATTANEO
Floating and flying, arms aloft
Clouds like towers, full and soft
Rush of air, lungs expand
A human umbrella with open hands
Heart like a piston, high on the speed
Race like a bullet, slice at the breeze
The bloom of the parachute pulls and billows
You touch ground, gentle as a pillow
Smiling up at the blue and the light
Like Icarus, you are born for sky and flight
Both Bleu and Susan take you right there with some lovely sense-bound writing. Look at the metaphors, “a thousand wind fingers,” “the bloom of the parachute,” and the simile “clouds like towers.”
Your turn.
5 minutes: Rocking Chair on the Front Porch at Sunset
BLEU
Grandma’s fingers stringing beans
Cicada soothing me to sleep
Fireflies blinking, honeysuckle breeze
Simple, southern, harmonies
Two crescents of wood, on older wood
This porch knows the way great-grandma stood
So I rock, slow and slower still
And hum the Lonesome Whippoorwill
CHANELLE DAVIS
Little peepers lace the pond
Sun is setting orange on blonde
Pour a wine and settle in
Toast the cool and silent wind
A rocking chair for company
He drifts inside a memory
I like the beans/sleep assonance rhyme—it doesn’t lock down; rather, it relaxes the structure. Look at the rhyme breeze/harmonies, using the secondary stress harmonies. Be careful rhyming secondary stress with primary stress: If you place the secondary stress on a stronger musical beat than the primary stress, you’ll distort the natural shape of the word. The same would be true for company/memory. For more on this, check out my “Writing Lyrics to Music” online course at Berklee College of Music, available through http://patpattison.com/patsonlinecourses.
Your turn.
DAY #7
COMMON METER
For more on common meter, look at chapters fourteen, fifteen, and eighteen in Writing Better Lyrics, and chapter three in The Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure.
The best way to create sections larger than couplets is to vary line length. Start with this tetrameter line:
DUM da da DUM da DUM da da DUM
Give her a chance to sing by herself
Next, add a shorter, three-stress line (trimeter), keeping the same triple feel:
DUM da da DUM da DUM da da DUM
DUM da da DUM da DUM
Give her a chance to sing by herself
Give her the room to shine
You tap your foot four times in line 1, but only three times in line 2. Your body feels the imbalance—there are some matching rhythms between line 1 and line 2, but the differing lengths of the lines causes instability, throwing the section off balance. Since you are off balance, you must continue to move forward.
Match the third line with the first line, and rhyme with it. You’ll create strong expectations for a fourth line:
DUM da da DUM da DUM da da DUM
DUM da da DUM da DUM
DUM da da DUM da DUM da da DUM
Give her a chance to sing by herself
Give her the room to shine
Watch as she smiles and everyone melts
Now the pressure builds. The structure is still unstable, with its odd number of lines. Because lines 1 and 3 match, you expect something quite specific:
A fourth line to balance with an even number of lines
A line that matches the length and rhythm of line two (the odd-duck line)
Specifically, you want to hear
DUM da da DUM da DUM
giving you this section:
DUM da da DUM da DUM da da DUM
DUM da da DUM da DUM
DUM da da DUM da DUM da da DUM
DUM da da DUM da DUM
Give her a chance to sing by herself
Give her the room to shine
Watch as she smiles and everyone melts
Hearing a voice divine
You feel the resolution. It is called common meter. You will find it everywhere, because it, like the tetrameter couplet, fits perfectly into an eight-bar sequence.
Today you’ll use common meter. You have your choice in common meter of rhyming alternate lines, abab …
Give her a chance to sing by herself
Give her the room to shine
Watch as she smiles and everyone mel
ts
Hearing a voice divine
or rhyming lines two and four, xaxa …
Give her a chance to sing all alone
Give her the room to shine
Watch as she smiles and everyone melts
Hearing a voice divine
For the next two days, simply rhyme the trimeter lines. After that, you’ll rhyme alternate lines.
Keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor. As usual, set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use the whole time, whether you complete your final four-line section or not. Use common meter, rhyming only the trimeter lines (xaxa).
Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion
10 minutes: Whistling
ANDREA STOLPE
Wrinkled and puckered she purses her lips
Angry and close to tears
Everyone else can whistle a tune
But she hasn’t whistled in years
Airy and flimsy and flattered with spit
Forcing the air she tries
Till somebody mentions that field grass
Held with her thumbs is fine
Plucking a blade young and green
Cupping her fingers around
She strokes the air with effortless skill
Releasing a covetous sound
JESS MEIDER
Puckered and folded like a circular fan
Breath pulls in like a thread
The hollow resounds a mini wind song
Air and shape wed
Lips give birth to thin high-pitched notes
The tip of the tongue taps
Dividing the melody coming up from the throat
Mimic the bird’s rap
Both rely primarily on triple meter, and work the four-stress/three-stress of common meter very well. Note that the adjacent strong stresses in Jess’s “shape wed,” “tongue taps,” and “bird’s rap” force either a musical rest or longer notes when set to music.
Your turn.
5 minutes: Falling in Love
STAN SWINIARSKI
Give me a song to remember the night
Let the candle burn low
And soon I will tell you a love that is lost
That’s how these stories go
Give me the scent of magnolia trees
And sweet tea on the lawn
And soon that glass will be smellin’ like bourbon
That’s how fast love is gone
Give me a beauty with hazelnut eyes
And I’ll tell you of promises
Like the moon smells of lilacs and fresh-cut grass
And broken dreams and wishes
ANDREA STOLPE
Streamers on bicycles ribbons on balloons
dancing on pockets of air
spinning and sailing and landing with ease
when love is everywhere
Rocky and jagged and bitter to taste
bruising and jarring the soul
cursing the life that love would touch
dying the day it goes
Stan’s first four lines have only the candle to engage your senses, as opposed to Andrea, who pulls you in immediately. But when Stan hits line 5, everything starts to crackle, especially “the moon smells of lilacs and fresh-cut grass.” Nice. I love how Andrea wrote opposing quatrains, as positive and negative aspects of falling in love.
Note especially Stan’s rhyme promises/wishes. The secondary stress ses against the weak syllable shes lets the idea float off into dreamland. There are good reasons to use less- than-perfect rhymes. They create instability, which is right on target for his piece. Open your ears and learn how and when to use your rhyme types.
Now, you try.
DAY #8
COMMON METER
Keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor. As usual, set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use the whole time, whether you complete your final four-line section or not. Use common meter, rhyming only the trimeter lines (xaxa).
Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion
10 minutes: Ballerina
SARAH BRINDELL
Plastic ballerina spins
Inside my jewelry case
Twirling in her little room
Of pink sateen and lace
She dances till the song is gone
Then freezes for a while
Ripped tutu and some chipping paint
Reveal her half-gone smile
This home that once held pearls and gold
Is now an empty shell
And all her ballerina days
Are bidding their farewell
CHANELLE DAVIS
The feel of satin on her skin
It stretches shiny and tight
Rose pink to match her shoes
Sweeping to the light
And there she pauses for a moment
The people simmer down
She twirls and twirls to the orchestra
Her body floats to the ground
Lights bounce off her silky silhouette
A piece of string in the breeze
Twists and turns caught in midair
Moving graceful, free
Both paint lovely pictures. I love Sarah’s music box approach, which could even be a metaphor for lost youth. And check out Chanelle’s metaphor “her silky silhouette/A piece of string in the breeze.” Nice.
Your turn.
5 minutes: 18-Wheeler
SUSAN CATTANEO
A farmer’s tan on his left bicep
His USMC tattoo
Camel smokes in his checkered pocket
He swigs a Mountain Dew
Detroit to San José and back
He keeps those wheels a’rolling
He pushes miles between memories
To keep those ghosts from calling
SARAH BRINDELL
The flick of a lighter, the twitch of a shoulder
A man holds tight to the wheel
The revving motor, the sound of thunder
Brakes let out a squeal
High beams blind your dim-lit path
On this sweaty deserted night
No more wasted freeway drives
Where no sleep warps your sight
Nice sense-bound writing. And I love Susan’s consonance rhyme rolling/calling, which creates a spooky feeling to support the trucker’s flight from his memories. And Sarah’s “no sleep warps your sight.” With this relaxed rhyme scheme, you should be able to finish two quatrains.
Your turn.
DAY #9
COMMON METER
Keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor. As usual, set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use the whole time, whether you complete your final four-line section or not. Use common meter, rhyming both your tetrameter and trimeter lines (abab).
Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion
10 minutes: Ocean Waves
SCARLET KEYS
Salty fingers reach and pull
Bring your tired feet
Bring your hungry lonely fools
Here to walk my beach
They’ll love the way the sun sinks low
And slows the city pace
I’ll send a gentle wind to blow
The curls from her face
Run through my water jump in the waves
Let me salt your skin
Dip her body from her waist
Here’s where love begins
Trace her name in the sandy shore
Draw a heart with a shell
Take her where she’s …
CHANELLE DAVIS
Ocean waves come rushing in
Over the sandy beach
Stop to touch your summer skin
The water licks our feet
Dogs are chasing driftwood sticks
Swimming for the prize
When
he’s done he shakes and flicks
There’s water in our eyes
Chocolate ice cream and waffle cones
Cooling on my tongue
Afternoon sun warms my bones
Salt air fills my lungs
Look at the point of view in Scarlet’s piece. It’s as though the waves themselves are talking, and the result is lots of energy. That’s the power of direct address (see chapter ten, Writing Better Lyrics). In both Scarlet’s and Chanelle’s poems, the language is very active, which is partially a result of direct address and how it presents the opportunity to give commands with verbs, the amplifiers of language:
Bring your tired feet
Bring your hungry lonely fools …
Run through my water jump in the waves
Let me salt your skin
Dip her body from her waist …
Trace her name in the sandy shore
Draw a heart with a shell
Take her where she’s …
Stop to touch your summer skin
Your turn.
5 minutes: Magnifying Glass
ANDREA STOLPE
Pungent sickly crackling smoke
of frantic frying ants
Floated up from the beam that shone
through deathly convex glass
I stood and smoothed my wrinkled dress
and kicked the sand a bit
A stain on the concrete was all that was left
that summer my parents split
SUSAN CATTANEO
Giant spider legs wiggle
Eyes the size of boulders
Mary Whitman starts to giggle
Her science teacher scolds her
Petrie glasses growing mold
A skeleton hangs from a hook
Johnny Duncan picks his nose
While he doodles faces in his book
The tang of sulfur, boiling beakers
Test tubes in a row
Pencils scribbling, untied sneakers
Hair wrapped in a bow
I love Andrea’s punch line, especially after the cruel, macabre picture she paints. The ants are a wonderful metaphor for the anger and pain inside the child. Susan, as usual, draws the reader in with strong sense-bound language. I was back in Mr. Conroy’s science class instantly.
Both handle the tighter rhyme constraints with aplomb.
Now, you try.
DAY #10
COMMON METER
Keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor. As usual, set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use the whole time, whether you complete your final four-line section or not. Use common meter, again rhyming both your tetrameter and trimeter lines (abab).
Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion
10 minutes: Slot Machine