Lyrics and Melody - A Wedding Made in Heaven, or Hell
Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 08:17PM Listening to a friend’s CD a while ago and not being satisfied with what was happening, I couldn’t stop examining my discomfort and finally realized that it stemmed from the way the lyrics were joined to the melody.
The problem for me was the manner in which he and his lyrical collaborator broke up the phrasing, so that it was unnatural to the ear.
Let me demonstrate what I mean. Take the phrase, "we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
The normal place to break that phrase up to accommodate an existing melody would be:
“We’ll cross that bridge” would be the first melodic phrase
“when we come to it” would be the second melodic phrase.
What was happening on these songs was like this:
“We’ll cross that”
“bridge when we come to it”
And because the lyric phrases were not wedded to the melodic phrases, I was constantly being pulled out of the song. Even though the melodies and the production were wonderful, I was constantly being yanked out of the ambiance by the awkwardness of the combination of lyrics and melody.
And the lyrics were not bad, they were just not paying any attention to the melody. And my friend bore this out when he told me he sent the melody to his collaborator, who then put lyrics to the melody. And I suspect he already had the lyrics and just crowbar-ed them into the existing melody.
When you are writing lyrics to a melody, after you have something that you think you like, speak the lyric in the same way that you have broken it up with the melody. If it does not sound like conversation, it better sound like poetry, otherwise you have done it wrong.
Pick one of your favorite songs and speak the lyrics without the melody. Do you see how they lyric phrase makes sense? Just by way of example:
“when I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary sings to me
Speaking words of wisdom
Let it be”
It doesn’t read:
“When I find my
Self in times of trou
Ble Mother Mary sings to
Me speaking words of wis
Dom let it be.
This is what they lyrics were doing to me. Pay attention to your phrasing and make certain that there is a mutual awareness of lyrics and melody. I think that it might be a really good idea.
Reader Comments (2)
one of the things I like about music besides listening to it of course is to read good lyrics in detail, for example one that I like very much is a song titled "Oh My Sildenafil" by the British rock band 4rx I have listened to it like 69 times in the last three days!
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