The Mistake All Beginner Songwriters Make (and how to avoid it!)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 เม.ย. 2023
- There is ONE very important way that pro songwriters know how to write lyrics that beginners get wrong. I reveal what it is, show examples from chart-whopping Taylor Swift and Harry Styles songs, and show 2 free resources that will help you write great lyrics.
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ABOUT KEPPIE
Hi I'm Keppie! I'm a professional songwriter, and songwriting teacher. I've been teaching song and lyric writing for over 10 years now for some of the best contemporary music colleges in the world- Berklee Online, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music's Open Academy, as well as for the Australian College of the Arts. At other times, I've taught for the Australian Institute of Music, as well as the LA School of Songwriting.
My goal is to help people write better songs! My experience in the classroom, with thousands of students at this point (many going on to find careers and success in music), is that your songwriting, like all things, can get better with meaningful, deliberate practice. My intention is to share the skills, knowledge, information, and ideas that I've gathered with anyone who wants to improve their songwriting.
Keppie's music is here:
www.keppiecouttsmusic.com/music - เพลง
These days I simply do it the other way round. I write whatever I have on my mind without thinking about neither the song, rhymes, meters nor structures. I write sentences, lines, phrases, words, paragraphs, quotes and sometimes I even paste parts or articles or interviews or anything related to the topic/theme I'm exploring. After I've written everything that I have on my mind I start looking for phrases from what I wrote that might be the title or the chorus and see what internal rhythm they have that can give to the song. And then move on from there - a kind of jigsaw puzzle with whatever I have - sometimes I add more + end up not using half the things I wrote (but still useful to sort ideas and not forget stuff). I have pages of these info dumps that seem like good ideas but haven't managed to turn into songs yet 😂 I leave them for when I'm not feeling inspired to come up with something completely new.
Anyway well done for this video and channel - always very resourceful and helpful.
@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!!!
Direct rhyme is not wrong. It just limits yourself in the long run. There are so many other possibilities. Song lyrics do not have to rhyme at all.
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.
Since you asked for examples - "Baba O'Riley" by The Who rhymes "fields" with "meals", and "living" with "forgiven" (with a perfect rhyme in there as well - "fight" and "right"):
"Out here in the fields
I fight for my meals
I get my back into my living
I don't need to fight
To prove I'm right
I don't need to be forgiven"
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
Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though it's here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday
Here I stand
Head in hand
Turn my face to the wall
If she's gone
I can't go on
Feeling two foot small
Lennon and McCartney would like to have a word
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 :)
A lyric from the show "Something Rotten" popped into my head. It always makes me laugh:
"Ohhhhh, every time I hear a perfect rhyme I get all tingly,
Because I knoooowww, that to write a perfect rhyme is not an easy... thingly..." 😂
Brilliant ❤
Looooove Something Rotten!
Lol
Heart of Glass has the exact example you mention.
"Once had love, and it was divine,
Soon turned out, I was losin' my mind."
Oh, it makes great sense to rhyme the vowel. Especially since we are emphasizing vowels when we sing, not so much the consonants. And yet it hadn't fully occurred to me until you talked about it. Thank you!
One of my favorite couplets is ~
"I read some Byron, shelly, and keats
Recited it all for a hip hop beat
I'm having trouble saying what i mean
With dead poets and drum machines "
I love it.
Hi folks! I am, quite frankly, loving the controversy that this little video has sparked! The passion!
There have been a few comments here referencing Sondheim and The Beatles etc, so a little more context might help quell concerns that I am relegating the great writers of the canon to beginner status...Perfect rhyming was absolutely the bread and butter of popular songwriting as it emerged in the Tin Pan Alley era, and up until the late 50s, or even early 60s. Essentially, the cultural revolution of the 60s and 70s diversified not only style but expression and taste, and we bare that legacy today. Songs that rely on perfect rhyme, TODAY (as in, in our contemporary era), will sound like a call-back to an older era. It's not about good or bad, really - it's all about effect. If that is the effect you want - go for it. But a quick scan of Billboard charts in almost all genres where lyrics matter from the past 20 years will reveal a different trend. I have found, in my 13 years of teaching at universities, that beginner songwriters tend to default more strongly to that way of writing, possibly (and I suspect) because when we are explicitly taught rhyming during language acquisition (ie early childhood and literacy development years), we are taught perfect rhyming. But our EARS (and subconscious perception) can easily perceive much more subtle and complex rhyme, no problem. Developing as a lyric writer is about tapping into that knowledge, making the implicit explicit. The intended audience of this video is beginner songwriters starting out TODAY, wanting to build a career as a contemporary artist or songwriter, not a critique of songs of the past. Thanks for your all comments, thoughts, and insights. Happy writing!
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.
This is great advice and thanks so much for it. I think though that near-rhymes and even non-rhymes are just what is currently in fashion, and conversely perfect rhymes are out of fashion and sometimes seen as clichéd (especially the obvious/overused ones). If we go back a few decades anything other than perfect rhymes was largely frowned upon and seen as lazy or inept songwriting.
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.
Beautifully explained! I've always had trouble writing lyrics, but now I feel a sudden surge of confidence, let's hope it actually lasts! Thank you!
So simple, yet I never thought about rhyming the stressed vowel and not the last syllable. Super helpful, thank you!
game changer, thank you. I spend more time creating poetry but this really resonates especially the ideas about focusing on the last strongly stressed syllable
The content of this channel is fantastic. Super inspiring!
This is my favourite youtube channel now. Such useful stuff!
Extremely helpful , I find myself looking over all my lyrics!! Thank you so much.
I've only just found you and only watched a few of your vids (this and the Beatles) but it feels like you're revealing awesome secrets that should've been obvious (especially since I thought I knew what a secondary dominant was) but somehow went right over my head. Thank you for making this outstanding information so clear.
Love this unpack, thankyou!
Love your work, I will definitely try these ideas out. Thank you.
Brilliant advice again. Thanks Keppie
Happy to have stumbled upon your channel, Keppie Coutts! Thank you for sharing your work! Kind regards, Daniel
Thank you very much for this lovely kind hearted video. This video has been really helpful for me as a beginner and has changed my way of thinking and improved my song writing alot that to at the comfort of my home. Not many songwriters will share this tip. Made my day 💯❤️
Sondheim would have vehemently disagreed with this. 🤔He was a very strong believer in the importance of "perfect" rhymes and says he never used rhymes that weren't so. Of course, he was a genius and a purist and wrote for musical theater, not popular music. In any case, thanks for this great video. I'd like to recommend a book I use for finding rhymes, "Surprising Rhymes" by Brian Oliver. It's inexpensive and very easy to use. It also focuses on slant rhymes and not so much on perfect rhymes
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.
Excellent advice, just superb! It makes for a more natural, conversational tone and relieves some of the stilted, rather rigid formatting & formulaic nature of far too many compositions. Well done! 😊
Great video and teaching style. Loved it! Thank you.😊
Awesome! Thanks for sharing this! So glad I found your videos, it's going to take my songwriting to the next level!
Hey Keppie, great video, I've been dabbling in songwriting for quite some time, and doing some of your suggestions unconsciously but you explained some techniques that can make the whole process much smoother. Thank you.
Brilliant channel. I've just stumbled across it and I'm very impressed.
This is very freeing, just provides so many options to unleash creativity... Thank you!
I wrote my first song(ish) over the past days. Never learned music, so had a few attempts at grasping just enough to work from key and come up with a very simple chord progression.
Glad I finally tried this, as I now have a base to work from. And needless to say, working this way suddenly opens all kinds of musical doors and gives you a basic understanding of what is out there, even if you don't really know the concepts, you can see them in the distance.
So anyone who, like me, has zero musical background and finds themself going in circles... Go for it, and you will be thanking yourself for it. Learn about chord progressions, and take it from there. It's an easier way to learn than totally ground-up IMO, as it will bring you in contact with both the basics of what is a song, as well as the basics of what is a scale, etc. Really helped me make sense of the theory.
Grt video!! I love this and it is so true so many writers these days go the lazy route rhyming every word well done!! I make this pt also
Thank you so much for this! This was a big help 👍🏾☺️
This was gold, thank you so much!
Thanks for this video! It’s a mistake I didn’t realise I was often making until now. Looking forward to putting it into practice!
Thanks for this content! Good notes to be with an eye open when writing lyrics!
Vowels are good, since you tend to hold the sound when you sing. I always start with the story I'm trying to tell and many of the words find me. Thank you for all you do to help writers.
Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh I believe in Yesterday
Really appreciate your insight. Fascinating!
Golden teaching!!!🙌🙌 Thanks!
Holy cow this is mind blowing. Thank you sooo much. Keep making great videos please 🙏 😊
What a great tip, I've never heard that before. Thank you!
Thank you for this video! I've felt like I been messing up quite a bit on my song writing. This will play more out a lot more, creating my songs a lot more better.
Amazing advise. Looking forward to getting involved with this. Ive got the Patt Pattison book aswell, but not the best at understanding when it comes to reading. Youve explained this very well. Cheers
Superb!!! I have only watched a few of your videos but you are very impressive. I will be watching quite a few more
Amazingly informative video! Thanks so much!
Cowboy chord Dan here. Three chords, and the truth. With feeling, please! Thank you ❣️
Love it!
Thank you, Keppie for this insight. It’s a great insight that has massively opened up my rhyme vocabulary. See you soon for the next song critique.
wait? there's a song critique option?
I haven't seen your channel before but the other day I wrote a fresh lyric sheet and I realized the reason it felt better than usual was for all the reasons you talked about here
Thanks for sharing the useful tips, Keppie! Just now subscribed to your channel and am checking out your cool music.
Excellent lesson - thank you!
I expected songwriting and you teach us rhyming.
Thank you Thank you Thank you. Exactly what I've been searching for for the last 50 years or so. I've always has issues writing lyrics, while the music comes easily. Without checking, I suspect the only songs I've written that I'm really happy with have, unknown to me, followed these principles. One thing I always like is rhymes in the middle of a line rather than the all too common' last word'.
Yes!
I too like to write songs
This was a real light-bulb moment for me. It's absolutely absurd that I didn't already know this, but I'm going to forgive myself for that and get back to writing. Thanks Keppie!
This video, and this channel, are just gold. This vid in particular was a game changer. I was a such rooky rhymer before this. But I'm tossing those old ways to the fire in the furnace. : ) Thank you for all the great content on this channel!
Very insightful. Thank you!
Hmm. I would love to know what Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin or any of the Great American Songbook writers... or Broadway writers for that matter... would say about this "amateur mistake." The reality is perfect rhymes make a songwriter work HARDER at the craft of expressing an original sentiment than slant rhymes. And that's a GOOD thing. Imperfect rhymes are much easier and lead to lazy writing. For example, modern country music... all written by "pro writers" using the technique she is advocating above. Imperfect rhymes are absolutely NOT the "bread and butter of great lyric writing." In contrast, look at lyrics by Lorenz Hart or Oscar Hammerstein II, and then compare them to lyrics by Harry Styles. Then ask yourself which set of lyrics are better crafted. Renowned lyricists are who you should learn from, and then apply those principles to your own songs. That's what you should strive for.
Please see pinned comment at the top, Todd!
Thank-you!! That's illuminating. Strong syllable, and slant vs perfect; something I've felt before, but didn't think to address in writing. These are structural things I didn't know, though have read and heard so much by example, now I'll pay attention. I feel the weaker rhymes a fine, but if I don't pay attention to the stronger ones then the while line/section will not be doing what I want it to.
So clear, and helpful!
Rhyme dictionaries are fun, but rhyming well is hard (the trap of letting it force the idea-movement is not fun): I'll do better and use it as a rhythmic musical device. Your video on rhyme scheme is great, too!!
Thank you. Excellent advice 😊
This is so informative, really useful!
I hiiiighly recommend Rhymewave as well. I prefer it over Rhymezone as I feel like it often gives more out of the box options and you can even insert some phrases, for instance "get out". Just an example, but yeah, I always used Rhymezone, but after a while it feels like you keep seeing the same words (duh! :P) and for some reason that felt different for me when using Rhymewave.
But yeah, great video. That vowel-rhyme point you made is so important. I was already doing that, but you laid the process bare, so now I finally have the tools to explain people (outside of the music industry) who say it's only rhyming when the written word shares the most amount of letters with the word you wanna rhyme with, that that's not true.
Purple/circle I really love your channel. Thank you so much for what you do. I’ve been writing for years and years and this is a game changing video.
Dirty purple work shirt
I just discovered your channel...phenomenal content!!! 🎉🎉🎉 Thank you for such great content!!! I subscribed!!! Cheers from Florida!!!🙂🙃😁
Thank you so much for this!
Your incredible for real!!! Subscribed!! Watched the 1st video & thought homie you should teach, then on this video discover you a professor, makes sense..
beautiful explanation as always
I beginning to love this channel. Thank you ❤️
Thank YOU.
T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’ includes a type of rhyme where syllable stresses rather than vowel sounds are repeated and a lot of song writers have used this as well, like Kele Okereke (Bloc Party) and Tori Amos.
GREAT advice - thanks!
You have just opened fifty doors in my mind ! Thank you for being so kind 😘🎵🎶🎵🎶
I sold a small book long time ago with my poems but you just changed my rhyming world! Guess it’s a new era for me
just found your channel. nice pace and explaining, sub and binge watch :)
Thank you, you're great!
How come it seems to take a lifetime to find people like this to help us.Great help thank you
Thanks! Very usefull!
This is very useful, Thank you!
This video is very useful to me... I've always struggled at writing lyrics because I've always insisted on using perfect rhymes. I also have a tendency to fall into internal rhyming schemes. I don't really do it intentionally because it sounds clever (which, honestly, it does), I just often find myself writing one verse that has an internal rhyme, and then, of course, all the rest of the verses HAVE to have the same internal rhyming pattern. Coupling that with the necessity for all your rhymes to be perfect, you eventually run into a brick wall. There are times when I hear an imperfect (or "slant") rhyme, and I think it sounds strained, or lazy (and that's why avoid them), but other times, I barely notice it. Like rhyming "fields" with "meals" in Baba O'Riley (as another commenter mentioned).
Sounds like you're in the Pat Patterson school of Clement Wood's rhyming options.
I HELPED SO SO MUCHH
This video single handedly elevated my poetry to the next level. I now routinely use the methods I learnt from this video to come up with interesting rhymes, so thank you!
Yay for RhymeZone! I also like using the "advanced" feature to find near rhymes (and not so near ones) more quickly.
I've been utilizing this idea, without quite understanding the mechanics of it. Thanks! Another item I use along with a rhyming dictionary (and is just as useful to me) is a thesaurus. :)
The tip regarding how to use rhymes zone to find more options by searching for a few slant rhymes was very useful thank you.
Thank you for your information.
this is exactly the resources i needed! here's a proud set of slant rhymes in a song i wrote last year...expect, next, met, breathless
.
Great video. Great advice. I feel like you just helped me to level up my skills. Thank you.
You're so welcome.
You are teaching in the way I understand, you have my gratitude!
B rhymes was a weird app to me until I understand this video
My wife is a singer, I'm a prose writer and because her English isn't great I've beem tasked with writing song lyrics for her for a song she's composed. Your videos are such a help, thankyou!
Good one. Thanks!
So, there's this song that rhymes "Poison" and the words "choice and" and I feel like it's so creative
I stumbled upon this very informative article. I always thought songwriting comes straight from the heart without any technical expertise. One of my favourite songs hardly has any rhyme: "The way we were" . There are many others too. But I suppose it depends on what the motivation for songwriting is in each instance.
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.
This is amazing!
Love this. Using Rhymezone in that will be a gamechanger for me. Thank you!
Very well explained. George Armstrong, ASCAP, NMPA, HFA
Keppie ROCKS
Wow what an amazing video so invaluable to learn.
thank for the valuable information
I have always loved Jackson Browne’s near rhymes, especially in Doctor My Eyes where he rhymes world with unfurled: “ I have wandered through this world, and as each moment has unfurled, I’ve been waiting to awaken from this dream.” Also love how he snuck in the waiting/awaken near rhyme in the same thought.
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!!
This was interesting!
I have always sought perfect rhymes, and felt disappointed when I've had to "resort to" imperfect/ slant rhymes. I've only ever thought that perfect rhyming is undesirable or amateurish when it forces the writer to construct awkward or unlikely-sounding phrases for the sake of the rhyme.
I'm still not wholly convinced that slant rhyming is _better_ - but I certainly feel as though you've given me permission to use it freely, so thank you! 🙂
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.
Watching this I recalled something poet Robert Frost said: "Writing unrhymed poetry is like playing tennis with the net down." That sentiment is in a lot of the commentary here.
But poetry is not song lyrics. You recite and hear all the word sounds of a poetic line; but you sing the vowels in a lyric line. So you hear the not-quite-right in lines that end in "time" then "find". But when "time" and "find" are sung, the words "rhyme."
Put another way: you don't sing the way you talk. So using imperfect rhymes takes advantage of that reality.
Dam it Keppie - another banger - how do you do it?! I've known of Rhyme Zone before (from some of your other resources) but not got much out of it, because i didnt know how to use it. 🤯moment was using the STRESSED vowel as basis for the tool, and feeding it a few alternates of my own; THEN = again, amen, Born again, fountain pen.... it's unlocking so many doors particularly in the context of a song idea when you have a map of the narrative but are trying to remain open to the options. THANKS!!!