Songwriting Without Boundaries Read online

  That has taken him and shaken him and claimed him as its own

  Possessed him like the demons that go raving through the night

  It has lead him to the bottom of the world without a light

  What is this fatal whip that will not let him be

  Just a whisper in his head that said every man is free

  It will take him in the end sure as morning sure as hunger

  It will wrap him round the deepest roots and slowly drive him under

  But the words will remain when he goes in the ground

  This man died for freedom this is John Brown

  PAT PATTISON

  John Brown John Brown

  Come and lay your body down

  Smell the coffin, smell the ground

  Hear the bootsteps comin’ round

  Pitchforks raised against the night

  Wrapped in sheets, clean and white

  Color’s gonna bring you down

  John Brown John Brown

  Both of these are basically tetrameter lines. Though my first line has only four syllables, each one is stressed, creating an almost marching feel, as opposed to the expansive line “Possessed him like the demons that go raving through the night.” Note the nice mix of masculine and feminine rhymes in Gillian’s, combined with wonderful metaphors and similes.

  Your turn.

  5 minutes: Broken Glass

  JESS MEIDER

  Pierce the callous thick skin

  Wishes shatter, punctured like pins

  Zing! the stab flashes into the brain

  A sharp shard of hope revisits me again

  Glassified tears that hit the floor with a crash

  They tinkle one by one smash, crack

  PAT PATTISON

  Scattered diamonds dust the path

  Grab the sunlight, shoot it back

  Shattered wineglass tossed away

  Eyes narrowed, crimson face

  Screaming lungs and curling fists

  Duck and cover, fuse is lit

  Blue to black to yellow stain

  Turn your stomach, sweat like rain

  Take a look at the verbs in these two. So much of your strength as a writer depends on your choice of verbs—they are the amplifiers of language. The stronger and fresher your verbs, the more your writing crackles.

  Now, you try.

  DAY #6

  TETRAMETER COUPLETS

  This is the last day of tetrameter couplets. As always, keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor. Set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use only tetrameter couplets, and vary your rhythms, using both duples and triples.

  Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion

  10 minutes: Skydiving

  BLEU

  Fear swelling up with the pressure of air

  A thousand wind fingers grasping at my loose hair

  I stare down the farms, like postage stamps, scattered

  The physics too real, the gravity, matter(s)

  Can’t find the courage, might not find the cord

  Forget butterflies, these are horse-flies, swarms

  Somebody’s screaming, can’t make out the words

  The lips look like “now!”? … my vision is blurred

  … then suddenly … silence … floating free

  Sky … ground … air … me

  SUSAN CATTANEO

  Floating and flying, arms aloft

  Clouds like towers, full and soft

  Rush of air, lungs expand

  A human umbrella with open hands

  Heart like a piston, high on the speed

  Race like a bullet, slice at the breeze

  The bloom of the parachute pulls and billows

  You touch ground, gentle as a pillow

  Smiling up at the blue and the light

  Like Icarus, you are born for sky and flight

  Both Bleu and Susan take you right there with some lovely sense-bound writing. Look at the metaphors, “a thousand wind fingers,” “the bloom of the parachute,” and the simile “clouds like towers.”

  Your turn.

  5 minutes: Rocking Chair on the Front Porch at Sunset

  BLEU

  Grandma’s fingers stringing beans

  Cicada soothing me to sleep

  Fireflies blinking, honeysuckle breeze

  Simple, southern, harmonies

  Two crescents of wood, on older wood

  This porch knows the way great-grandma stood

  So I rock, slow and slower still

  And hum the Lonesome Whippoorwill

  CHANELLE DAVIS

  Little peepers lace the pond

  Sun is setting orange on blonde

  Pour a wine and settle in

  Toast the cool and silent wind

  A rocking chair for company

  He drifts inside a memory

  I like the beans/sleep assonance rhyme—it doesn’t lock down; rather, it relaxes the structure. Look at the rhyme breeze/harmonies, using the secondary stress harmonies. Be careful rhyming secondary stress with primary stress: If you place the secondary stress on a stronger musical beat than the primary stress, you’ll distort the natural shape of the word. The same would be true for company/memory. For more on this, check out my “Writing Lyrics to Music” online course at Berklee College of Music, available through http://patpattison.com/patsonlinecourses.

  Your turn.

  DAY #7

  COMMON METER

  For more on common meter, look at chapters fourteen, fifteen, and eighteen in Writing Better Lyrics, and chapter three in The Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure.

  The best way to create sections larger than couplets is to vary line length. Start with this tetrameter line:

  DUM da da DUM da DUM da da DUM

  Give her a chance to sing by herself

  Next, add a shorter, three-stress line (trimeter), keeping the same triple feel:

  DUM da da DUM da DUM da da DUM

  DUM da da DUM da DUM

  Give her a chance to sing by herself

  Give her the room to shine

  You tap your foot four times in line 1, but only three times in line 2. Your body feels the imbalance—there are some matching rhythms between line 1 and line 2, but the differing lengths of the lines causes instability, throwing the section off balance. Since you are off balance, you must continue to move forward.

  Match the third line with the first line, and rhyme with it. You’ll create strong expectations for a fourth line:

  DUM da da DUM da DUM da da DUM

  DUM da da DUM da DUM

  DUM da da DUM da DUM da da DUM

  Give her a chance to sing by herself

  Give her the room to shine

  Watch as she smiles and everyone melts

  Now the pressure builds. The structure is still unstable, with its odd number of lines. Because lines 1 and 3 match, you expect something quite specific:

  A fourth line to balance with an even number of lines

  A line that matches the length and rhythm of line two (the odd-duck line)

  Specifically, you want to hear

  DUM da da DUM da DUM

  giving you this section:

  DUM da da DUM da DUM da da DUM

  DUM da da DUM da DUM

  DUM da da DUM da DUM da da DUM

  DUM da da DUM da DUM

  Give her a chance to sing by herself

  Give her the room to shine

  Watch as she smiles and everyone melts

  Hearing a voice divine

  You feel the resolution. It is called common meter. You will find it everywhere, because it, like the tetrameter couplet, fits perfectly into an eight-bar sequence.

  Today you’ll use common meter. You have your choice in common meter of rhyming alternate lines, abab …

  Give her a chance to sing by herself

  Give her the room to shine

  Watch as she smiles and everyone mel
ts

  Hearing a voice divine

  or rhyming lines two and four, xaxa …

  Give her a chance to sing all alone

  Give her the room to shine

  Watch as she smiles and everyone melts

  Hearing a voice divine

  For the next two days, simply rhyme the trimeter lines. After that, you’ll rhyme alternate lines.

  Keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor. As usual, set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use the whole time, whether you complete your final four-line section or not. Use common meter, rhyming only the trimeter lines (xaxa).

  Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion

  10 minutes: Whistling

  ANDREA STOLPE

  Wrinkled and puckered she purses her lips

  Angry and close to tears

  Everyone else can whistle a tune

  But she hasn’t whistled in years

  Airy and flimsy and flattered with spit

  Forcing the air she tries

  Till somebody mentions that field grass

  Held with her thumbs is fine

  Plucking a blade young and green

  Cupping her fingers around

  She strokes the air with effortless skill

  Releasing a covetous sound

  JESS MEIDER

  Puckered and folded like a circular fan

  Breath pulls in like a thread

  The hollow resounds a mini wind song

  Air and shape wed

  Lips give birth to thin high-pitched notes

  The tip of the tongue taps

  Dividing the melody coming up from the throat

  Mimic the bird’s rap

  Both rely primarily on triple meter, and work the four-stress/three-stress of common meter very well. Note that the adjacent strong stresses in Jess’s “shape wed,” “tongue taps,” and “bird’s rap” force either a musical rest or longer notes when set to music.

  Your turn.

  5 minutes: Falling in Love

  STAN SWINIARSKI

  Give me a song to remember the night

  Let the candle burn low

  And soon I will tell you a love that is lost

  That’s how these stories go

  Give me the scent of magnolia trees

  And sweet tea on the lawn

  And soon that glass will be smellin’ like bourbon

  That’s how fast love is gone

  Give me a beauty with hazelnut eyes

  And I’ll tell you of promises

  Like the moon smells of lilacs and fresh-cut grass

  And broken dreams and wishes

  ANDREA STOLPE

  Streamers on bicycles ribbons on balloons

  dancing on pockets of air

  spinning and sailing and landing with ease

  when love is everywhere

  Rocky and jagged and bitter to taste

  bruising and jarring the soul

  cursing the life that love would touch

  dying the day it goes

  Stan’s first four lines have only the candle to engage your senses, as opposed to Andrea, who pulls you in immediately. But when Stan hits line 5, everything starts to crackle, especially “the moon smells of lilacs and fresh-cut grass.” Nice. I love how Andrea wrote opposing quatrains, as positive and negative aspects of falling in love.

  Note especially Stan’s rhyme promises/wishes. The secondary stress ses against the weak syllable shes lets the idea float off into dreamland. There are good reasons to use less- than-perfect rhymes. They create instability, which is right on target for his piece. Open your ears and learn how and when to use your rhyme types.

  Now, you try.

  DAY #8

  COMMON METER

  Keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor. As usual, set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use the whole time, whether you complete your final four-line section or not. Use common meter, rhyming only the trimeter lines (xaxa).

  Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion

  10 minutes: Ballerina

  SARAH BRINDELL

  Plastic ballerina spins

  Inside my jewelry case

  Twirling in her little room

  Of pink sateen and lace

  She dances till the song is gone

  Then freezes for a while

  Ripped tutu and some chipping paint

  Reveal her half-gone smile

  This home that once held pearls and gold

  Is now an empty shell

  And all her ballerina days

  Are bidding their farewell

  CHANELLE DAVIS

  The feel of satin on her skin

  It stretches shiny and tight

  Rose pink to match her shoes

  Sweeping to the light

  And there she pauses for a moment

  The people simmer down

  She twirls and twirls to the orchestra

  Her body floats to the ground

  Lights bounce off her silky silhouette

  A piece of string in the breeze

  Twists and turns caught in midair

  Moving graceful, free

  Both paint lovely pictures. I love Sarah’s music box approach, which could even be a metaphor for lost youth. And check out Chanelle’s metaphor “her silky silhouette/A piece of string in the breeze.” Nice.

  Your turn.

  5 minutes: 18-Wheeler

  SUSAN CATTANEO

  A farmer’s tan on his left bicep

  His USMC tattoo

  Camel smokes in his checkered pocket

  He swigs a Mountain Dew

  Detroit to San José and back

  He keeps those wheels a’rolling

  He pushes miles between memories

  To keep those ghosts from calling

  SARAH BRINDELL

  The flick of a lighter, the twitch of a shoulder

  A man holds tight to the wheel

  The revving motor, the sound of thunder

  Brakes let out a squeal

  High beams blind your dim-lit path

  On this sweaty deserted night

  No more wasted freeway drives

  Where no sleep warps your sight

  Nice sense-bound writing. And I love Susan’s consonance rhyme rolling/calling, which creates a spooky feeling to support the trucker’s flight from his memories. And Sarah’s “no sleep warps your sight.” With this relaxed rhyme scheme, you should be able to finish two quatrains.

  Your turn.

  DAY #9

  COMMON METER

  Keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor. As usual, set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use the whole time, whether you complete your final four-line section or not. Use common meter, rhyming both your tetrameter and trimeter lines (abab).

  Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion

  10 minutes: Ocean Waves

  SCARLET KEYS

  Salty fingers reach and pull

  Bring your tired feet

  Bring your hungry lonely fools

  Here to walk my beach

  They’ll love the way the sun sinks low

  And slows the city pace

  I’ll send a gentle wind to blow

  The curls from her face

  Run through my water jump in the waves

  Let me salt your skin

  Dip her body from her waist

  Here’s where love begins

  Trace her name in the sandy shore

  Draw a heart with a shell

  Take her where she’s …

  CHANELLE DAVIS

  Ocean waves come rushing in

  Over the sandy beach

  Stop to touch your summer skin

  The water licks our feet

  Dogs are chasing driftwood sticks

  Swimming for the prize

  When
he’s done he shakes and flicks

  There’s water in our eyes

  Chocolate ice cream and waffle cones

  Cooling on my tongue

  Afternoon sun warms my bones

  Salt air fills my lungs

  Look at the point of view in Scarlet’s piece. It’s as though the waves themselves are talking, and the result is lots of energy. That’s the power of direct address (see chapter ten, Writing Better Lyrics). In both Scarlet’s and Chanelle’s poems, the language is very active, which is partially a result of direct address and how it presents the opportunity to give commands with verbs, the amplifiers of language:

  Bring your tired feet

  Bring your hungry lonely fools …

  Run through my water jump in the waves

  Let me salt your skin

  Dip her body from her waist …

  Trace her name in the sandy shore

  Draw a heart with a shell

  Take her where she’s …

  Stop to touch your summer skin

  Your turn.

  5 minutes: Magnifying Glass

  ANDREA STOLPE

  Pungent sickly crackling smoke

  of frantic frying ants

  Floated up from the beam that shone

  through deathly convex glass

  I stood and smoothed my wrinkled dress

  and kicked the sand a bit

  A stain on the concrete was all that was left

  that summer my parents split

  SUSAN CATTANEO

  Giant spider legs wiggle

  Eyes the size of boulders

  Mary Whitman starts to giggle

  Her science teacher scolds her

  Petrie glasses growing mold

  A skeleton hangs from a hook

  Johnny Duncan picks his nose

  While he doodles faces in his book

  The tang of sulfur, boiling beakers

  Test tubes in a row

  Pencils scribbling, untied sneakers

  Hair wrapped in a bow

  I love Andrea’s punch line, especially after the cruel, macabre picture she paints. The ants are a wonderful metaphor for the anger and pain inside the child. Susan, as usual, draws the reader in with strong sense-bound language. I was back in Mr. Conroy’s science class instantly.

  Both handle the tighter rhyme constraints with aplomb.

  Now, you try.

  DAY #10

  COMMON METER

  Keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor. As usual, set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use the whole time, whether you complete your final four-line section or not. Use common meter, again rhyming both your tetrameter and trimeter lines (abab).

  Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion

  10 minutes: Slot Machine