The Language of Phrasing

As writers, we may fancy ourselves poets or storytellers. But as lyricists, we’ve got to keep a strong hold on those reins of free-flowing prose. Connecting with our listener requires signals, keying them in to when sections begin and when they end and which phrases are most central to the main point and which are not.?

Imagine that lyrics are like the map of a theme park. Now imagine the musical structure was the actual theme park itself. As you walk past the cotton candy kiosk of?melodic?phrasing, around the giant teacup ride of harmonic rhythm and over the walking bridge to the Tilt-a-Whirl of rhyme scheme, you follow each point on your map. But when you finally arrive at the rickety, ex-con–operated thrill ride of a simple 2-5-1 chord progression, you realize that your map actually shows a food court in its place. Thinking that you’ve misread the map, you spend the next moments trying to coordinate yourself with other landmarks. Everything else checks out, but you can’t shake the feeling you’re not where the map says you’re supposed to be.

To put this metaphor more simply, lyric has structure that is made up of lines and music has structure that is made up of phrases. The signals of structure and rhyme that are present in a lyric must coincide with the signals of structure and rhyme in the music. Even when we write lyric alone we can get an idea of what the music will look like because of the lyric structure and rhyme scheme we choose.

To illustrate this idea with lyrics, we know that we can write our lyrics on the page to show the length of the lines and the number of lines in the section. Let’s take this little ditty from Taylor Swift, called “Willow:’’

I’m like the water when your ship rolled in that night

Rough on the surface but you cut through like a knife

And if it was an open shut case

I never would have known from that look on your face

Lost in your current like a priceless wine

This is a five-line section, where the 3rd and 4th lines are half as long when sung as line 1, 2, and 5. Those short lines help the inside of the verse gain momentum. Lines 3 and 4 each sing to a single measure, while every other line sings to two measures each. Try this language of 5-line phrasing out in your own verse section, particularly if you find yourself writing balanced 4-line sections often.

The rhyme between lines three and four is an important part of keeping the momentum. The short phrases and back-to-back rhymes cause a kind of tight-knit intensity. Structure always has an effect on our content, and many times we need to play with the structure to experience the effect rather than clairvoyantly know what the effect will be.

In the chorus, we hear a new rhyme scheme. Each line of lyric, and therefore melodic phrase, is 1 measure long. We get our familiar ABAB rhyme scheme, but then unexpectedly at the end, we get immediate rhymes.?

The more that you say?

the less I know

Wherever you stray?

I follow

I’m begging for you

to take my hand

Wreck my plans

That’s my man

This twisting of the scheme is what creates interest. The words that are said in the area of the twist pop a little more than they would if the rhyme scheme went on as ABAB. Had she continued the same rhyme scheme throughout, we might feel somewhat deflated by their meaning. In other words, the lyrics may not live up to the responsibility the balanced and expected structure would put on them:

The more that you say?

the less I know

Wherever you stray?

I follow

I’m begging for you

to take my hand

(to carry me home)

That’s my man

The bottom line is, our rhyme scheme and structure is the map of our songs. It tells the listener what to expect and when to expect it. We do that by repetition and setting up an expectation. When we deliver on that expectation all the time, the ride is either calm, perhaps dull in the instance it’s not doing the message justice. But in all cases, structure is where to look for giving our songs their tension and release, their momentum as well as their constant foundation. And the good news is, once we start digging into the structures we use in our songs, we find the control is ours to change and shape it for the best experience with each song we write.

Stay creative,