The Mistake All Beginner Songwriters Make (and how to avoid it!) 

@Meeps music that's great - didn't know it about Peter Gabriel

Dude!!! You have to finish!! Sounds like a rad process you have going. I swear a few simple steps, a few precious minutes from crystalline glory. Go man go!! Write motherfucker (said with genuine affection 🤩

it's called destination writing. It's a great approach and your songs will never sound stale or forced.

when does the music come in?

@@MegaMinecraftluver yes!!!

Exactly. These rules and regulations are suspect

Great example: Like father like son Not flesh nor fish nor bone A red rag hangs from an open mouth Alive at both ends but a little dead in the middle A tumbling and a bumbling he will go All the King's horses and all the King's men Could never put a smile on that face He's a sly one, he's a shy one, wouldn't you be too? Scared to be left all on his own He hasn't a, hasn't a friend to play with the ugly duckling The pressure on, the bubble will burst before our eyes All the while in perfect time His tears are falling on the ground But if you don't stand up, you don't stand a chance ey ey ey yeh-yeh You don't stand a chance Go a little faster now, you might get there in time Mirror mirror on the wall His heart was broken long before he ever came to you Stop your tears from falling The trail they leave is very clear for all to see at night All to see at night They come at night In season, out of season Oh, what's the difference when you don't know the reason In one hand bread, the other a stone The hunter enters the forest All are not huntsmen who blow the huntsman's horn and by the look of this one You've not got much to fear Here I am, I'm very fierce and frightening I come to match my skill to yours Now listen here, listen to me, don't you run away now I am a friend, I'd really like to play with you Making noises my little furry friend would make I'll trick him, then I'll kick him into my sack You better watch out, you better watch out I've got you, I've got you You'll never get away Walking home that night The sack across my back the sound of sobbing on my shoulder When suddenly it stopped I opened up the sack, all that I had A pool of bubbles and tears, just a pool of tears Just a pool of tears All in all you are a very dying race Placing trust upon a cruel world You never had the things you thought you should've had And you'll not get them now And all the while in perfect time Your tears are falling on the ground

If you want commercial success, then song lyrics need to rhyme.

@@williamk6605 Especially if it's going to be a song designed to appeal to the simple minded masses. You're right.

These rhymes work because they feel like perfect rhymes, or it's not that noticeable. Living works with forgiven because there's a whole other line before that rhyme comes up. That's good craftsmanship.

@@screamingpirhana Couldn't agree more. Pete Townshend knows what he's doing!

@@screamingpirhanathat’s the whole point of slant rhyming

I no longer write anymore but sometimes I wonder if they created this channel to thin out the compilation. They say a lot (not all) of things that goes against what professional writing was in my day.

Yeah, but what about: Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings and learn to fly All your life You were only waiting for this moment to arise

@@themacocko6311 compilation?

as with most things, the best always break the rules so idk

@@cboisandlin9601 Only a guess but i suspect the word was meant to be Competition . Maybe a long compilation of competitors that need thinning out :)

I love it.

My ears, by the time I was ten, detected assonance perfectly easily, and not subconsciously. I knew it was a would-be rhyme where the vowels were the same but not the final consonants. It's not a mystery, but (in my book) it's lame craftsmanship.

You do provide useful tips along with an interesting perspective on slant vs. perfect rhymes but I think you fail to make the point clearly enough that perfect rhymes are, in fact, something to strive for. The level of agency with language needed for effectively and artistically using perfect rhymes is far far higher than the one needed for creating slant rhymes. And, if used purposely and properly, every piece of rhymed writing would have a greater effect on the listener if the rhymes are, in fact, perfect rather than slant rhymes. The difference in the effect created is, you rightly point out, important to bear in mind, especially if the trends in popular music clearly prefer one over the other, however, this has less to do with the listeners flocking towards the specific qualities of slant rhymes and more to do with the low barrier for entry for today's lyric writers and their diminished ability to find and utilize perfect rhymes. People listen to what is given. And if that's loosely connected, cliché ridden, rhymezoned to hell and back, poorly written nonsense - then that's what people listen to. Write what ever kind of stuff you want, but have your paradigm set correctly - perfect rhymes is the ideal you strive for, the rest is what you do for effect or when you can't find your way to the ideal.

Jimmy Webb’s greatest regret, rhyming time and line. I read his book, Tunesmith, about 15 years ago & still refer to it. I bought Clement Wood’s Complete Rhyming Dictionary because Jimmy recommended it. Perfect rhymes are so much harder to write. I don’t think they sound anachronistic if the song is actually good.

Thanks. .Sondheim...my favorite composer not only had amazinf and clever.lyrics his tunes were always memorable.

Another factor in favour of imperfect rhymes: English is a rhyme-poor language compared to, say, French or Spanish. So English-language songwriters by necessity have over the decades improvised and stretched the rhyme possibilities of the language.

Brilliant ❤

Looooove Something Rotten!

Lol

So aptly put. Thanks for that (and please see the pinned comment above)!

@@htws there is no pinned comment 🤔

I’m not sure about that. Bands like The Magnetic Fields and The Divine Comedy use straight rhymes and their songs are anything but amateur.

@@MichaelJohnson-composerThere’s no one way of writing a song

My current and first "song" needs to rhyme to keep it all together. Vocals are quite detached, robot like. They somewhat follow the melody, but the timing is quite loose. So if it doesn't rhyme it would be hard to figure out where we are. Probably bad writing, lol.

I love Stephen Sondheim and agree he was a genius. He offset his perfect rhymes with complex rhyme schemes, and really understood meter, and didn't try to rhyme in simple couplets or quatrains (sorry, more familiar with poetry and know next to nothing about music, so I apologize if there's a word for these in music), and so even though he used mostly perfect rhymes, the listener doesn't really feel exhausted by it. As well, he had a superb vocabulary! I think using only perfect rhymes is very difficult to do well.

Love it!

Can you give me an example pls

@@FairyRuins For Imagine Dragons, Believer, Enemy and Bones. Say a lot with deep metaphors and the melodie’s are fire too. For Taylor, I love anti-hero. Each line hits hard then relate one before and manage to tell a story chronologically (🤯). Honestly, this all might be because I don’t have a lot of knowledge on this. So i’m easily impressed. But I love it either way 😄

@@EllyValentini i think you are not wrong at all. imagine dragons gets an undeserved amount of hate most of the time, i feel like. i get why some people call them corny and sometimes i feel it too, but i think their alternative pop/pop songwriting capabilities are top tier if they actually tap the right nerve while writing. no surprise they come out with a hit basically every year or so.. also believer's "note style" verses and the dynamics in that song are fire af.

Yes!

I too like to write songs

If you are writing for yourself, then no structure is fine. When writing for a market, then there are rules or guidelines. The cool thing is, that's what makes it fun and challenging. Playing within the rules of a game is what makes the game fun.

Songwriting channels like this or the Berkeley courses are formulaic songwriting. You use their strategies it if you want to get a pop/country song that sounds like all the other bland and boring pop/country songs. It's sad but it sells.

To allow false rhymes in service of expression is fine by me. To call them better definitely isn´t. I can´t take that stance seriously. I believe great art is usually born out of restriction.

I tend to naturally throw in rhymes in the middle of the sentence and I love it when it happens. It adds so much somehow!!

TRUTH

wait? there's a song critique option?

Thank YOU.

Dirty purple work shirt

Besides, Tell-Sell probably has whatever you came up with. It's a thing alright!

B rhymes was a weird app to me until I understand this video