Song Writing Exercises - Part Two
Friday, December 19, 2008 at 10:53PM So it’s Friday, December 19, 2008 and we are closing the office here at Beachwood Recordings til the new year. I’ll be posting thru the holidays, just not with my usual schedule of three posts a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I don’t want you to come back from the holidays and have too much reading to catch up on.
The other day I was talking about songwriting 
and I have one more exercise for you all to implement during the holidays and/or perhaps afterwards. This one is different than I have ever suggested and different than I have ever tried, so I’ll be doing this same exercise just to see what shows up.
What they call the Great American Songbook is, essentially, the songs of the last century, written in the thirties and forties with perhaps a little fifties thrown in. It was the time of the Big Bands and orchestrations; a time when a song had to be very carefully written with all the expertise and due diligence of Bach’s two part inventions.
Melodies had to be interesting, chord progressions innovative, and lyrics had to be amazingly tight, with utterly NO false rhymes, something that abounds in today’s writing. It was, I believe, a much more disciplined time with regard to songwriting and it was so restrictive and careful that I believe it was part of the cause of the backlash that was rock and roll. That melding of rhythm and blues and country music, rockabilly.
In any event, and whether you like that style or not, it required some very careful lyric writing and here’s what I am suggesting today. Take one of those classic songs from the thirties or forties, something that you have known all your life, if only peripherally, and write another verse to it, using the same meter and the same exact rhythm and accent that made these songs what they were.
Let us say you choose My Funny Valentine. Okay, here’s the first verse:
My funny valentine
Sweet comic valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable
Unphotographable
Yet you’re my favorite work of art
Okay, now here’s the assignment. Write another verse to that melody and using this verse as a template, do not stray from the rhyme scheme or the meter or the melody. See if you can do it.
I guarantee when and if you come up with a verse as well written as that one, you will have a whole new appreciation for what these fellows did on a regular basis.
There are no false rhymes (a false rhyme would be, for instance, “time” and “shine” a true rhyme would be “time” and “rhyme” or “line” and “shine” Rap music is jammed with false rhymes; Much easier to do and much less impressive to me.
And they not only had these rhymes, but they had internal rhymes and rhyme schemes that went much further than the end of each line. Notice that the third line and the sixth line rhyme.
Pick whatever song suits your particular fancy and write one verse like that...make it conform to what the original writer conformed to and please send us some of these in the comments. This will be fun, instructive and, I promise, humbling.
Til next week sometime, I wish you luck, and I hope that you all have a happy holiday and that the new year brings you more joy and positive life than the last eight years have brought, tho that’s not a difficult wish to make come true.
See you in a minute.
Reader Comments (7)
COOL!...I shall report back with my results
and By the By...incredible pic of Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash
The Man That Got Away (second verse)
The man that won you
Has run off and undone you
That great beginning
Has seen a final inning
Don't know what happened
It's all a crazy game
No more that all time thrill
For you've been thru the mill
And never a new love will be the same
(And my continuation:)
"There IS no daytime
There IS no night
So WHY even bother
To get up
And to fight
You never ever find a hero
You only find tears and shame
So you just keep your head down
Never make a wimper
Never make a sigle sound
Because when it's all said and its all done
You've only got one man to blame"
hmmm seems abit incomplete
James,
This is a great way to learn. I had a terrific teacher once upon a time who,when we studied poetry would assign us to write in the style and form of the poet in question. We dod sonnets, odes, ballads, blank verse, you name it. Believe me,nothing gives you an appreciation for a style or form than trying to follow it yourself!
I promise to give it a try and flex those mental muscles. Thanks for the assignment!
Eva
eva, thanks for the corroboration. bobby, good verse, you nailed the exercise. i do have asuggestion of adding the word ever to your last line.
a never a new love will ever be the same. i can't remember the melody there, so perhaps it doesn't work, but it seemed logical to me.
james
"never a new love will be the same " ends the verse before...the one I used as my example...as I have it written and it did take me some time to figure it out...i have written a verse that will go into the next verse...
"There IS no daytime
There IS no night
So WHY even bother
To get up
And to fight
You never ever find a hero
You only find tears and shame
So you just keep your head down
Never make a wimper
Never make a sigle sound
Because when it's all said and its all done
You've only got one man to blame"
the above would lead into the second to last verse of the song which goes:
"Good riddence G'bye
Every trick of his
You're on to
But fools will be fools and where's he gone to?"
And the last verse:
"The road gets rougher
Get's lonier and tougher
With hope you burn up
Tomorrow he might turn up
There's just no let up
The live long night and day!
Ever since this world began
There's nothing sadder than
A one man woman
lookin' for the man that got away
The man that got away...."
I dont know if that makes it clearer or not...
I'm actually just proud that I got the excercise right...I think thats owed to two things my love of the Great American Songbook and the fact that When my friend Cyrus and I wrote songs he would give me these humourous songs with great melodies...So I would only sing them when we recorded them if i could rewrite the lyrics so i had to make everything fit...it was challenging...but like any good work out it was very fufilling...
Namaste,
Bobby
Because when it's all said and its all done
You've only EVER got one man to blame"
Is the above what you meant by adding "ever" to the last line?
That just kinda hit me in the face like a ton of bricks
OK Teach, here's my "homework" <G>
I went with Gershwin. I wasn't quite up to Cole Porter or Larry Hart, but I probably should have stuck to my first instinct (Porter) because I forgot that the simpler something is,the more difficult it is. <G> At any rate, I made my choice and took my chance <G>
Ethel Merman once said that "You never change a thing about a Gershwin song." Well...with apologies to Ethel and George and Ira, herewith is an addendum to "Our Love Is Here To Stay".
Here's the original for those who don't know it.
It's very clear
Our love is here to stay ;
Not for a year
But ever and a day.
The radio and the telephone
And the movies that we know
May just be passing fancies,
And in time may go !
But, oh my dear,
Our love is here to stay.
Together we're
Going a long, long way
In time the Rockies may crumble,
Gibralter may tumble,
There're only made of clay,
But our love is here to stay.
And here's my addition:
It's simple dear,
Our love is here to stay.
Through joy and fear
Dark night and shining day.
The musicals and the videos
And the tech things that we know
Are today's little playthings
That in time we'll outgrow.
Now can you hear,
"Our love is here to stay"?
That's the tune that we're
Forever going to play.
In time China's Great Wall,
Agra's Taj Mahal;
Will both become passe.
But, our love is here to stay.
The sound you hear is the composers spinning in their graves <G> But boy this was fun :)
Eva