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- Coursera - Songwriting: Writing the Lyrics
- taught by Pat Pattison of the Berklee College of Music
- He recommends the following books:
- Writing Better Lyrics (2nd Edition) ← his book
- Songwriting: Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure ← his book
- Songwriting: Essential Guide to Rhyming ← his book
- Songwriting without Boundaries: Lyric Writing Exercises for Finding Your Voice ← his book
- The Complete Rhyming Dictionary
- NW: As of 2019.12.03 there is no Kindle edition, but you can find a low-resolution PDF copy online here.
- Aligning Your Lyrical Phrases with your Melodic Phrases
- This is just a short blog post.
- The main idea is that when you're writing your lyrics you should try to write them so that you don't have unnatural pauses in the middle of phrases.
- I agree, but I would've liked to have seen the author show how the same song could have been written better. To my ears, it sounds like the writer was just in a tough spot, because the keyboard establishes a pattern of a long pause every two beats, which just makes it really hard to say anything substantial. What pattern of 3-syllable → 2-syllable → 2-syllable → 2-syllable phrases could have established his theme better?
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- This isn't an intro to songwriting.
- You can go through this entire book in 2-3 sittings.
- Get The Complete Rhyming Dictionary by Clement Wood.
- NW: As of 2019.12.03 there is no Kindle edition, but you can find a low-resolution PDF copy online here.
Introduction: Do I have to rhyme?
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