What is prosody?

For songwriting, why is prosody so important? And what is it, anyway? 

Here’s a story: Some time ago, I walked along the most beautiful part of this country, along the South Downs. It was spectacular - on the right: sea, miles away - on the left: English countryside at its best. On the way home, I walked close to the station at Amberley, where there was still an old signal box that housed a mechanical set of levers to make sure each train went on the right line. And it reminded me of something about our own beautiful craft: Prosody.

What is it?

I’ve always thought prosody is a lovely moment when we craft a song with a perfect combination of lyrics and music. And prosody is great, mostly because it enables us to paint a particular emotion with our song, which ultimately is what we try to achieve as songwriters. 

But, taking this more in-depth, there are more things we have at our availability when we write a song than thinking about just the words and music. Prosody has two parts: 

• Phonology

• Cognitive

Now, if you’re like me, this is probably too deep to spend too much time talking about anything with an ‘ology’ at the end of a word like that. But, for me as a songwriter, there are some things it can interest me in: my seven levers of prosody.

My seven levers

Looking at the two parts of prosody, there are seven different levers we can use as songwriters (and poets) like the signalman used to pull and push in his signal box: 

1. Chunking - this is whether the syllables are in the right place at the right time in the music. Here’s the rule for stresses (“DUM”) and unstressed (“da”) syllables in a 4/4 staff:

   • DUM goes on beat 1 or 3

   • da goes on beat 2 or 4. 

2. Emotion - what’s the emotion in the lyric - well, that’s where the melody needs to go (high or low)

3. Intonation - 3 T’s - tonality, tonicity, and tone. This is all about sub-syllable parts in threes - a beginning, a middle and an end - then match to the melody, the emotion, as the chucking in 1.

4. Loudness/stress - production should fix this, often kept to the chorus.

5. Pitch - higher notes are normally for higher emotion and vice versa. Maybe keep some for the chorus too.

6. Rhythm (and rhyme) - similar to 1 above for rhythm. Rhyme keeps with the established rhyme scheme, except if there’s no rhymes. Always choose emotion above a sucky rhyme. 

7. Tempo - unless we’re in classical or musical songs, it might be worth keeping to the beats per minute (BPM) constant. But there're no rules, just tools.

There are, in reality, more levers we can pull or push, we can talk about. But for me, these are the major ones.   

How can we use these to ensure prosody in our songs?

Am I saying, to be a GRAMMY winner, we have to get a Ph.D. in linguistics? No! In reality, it’s more about the craft than the science of how this works - it’s about the art and emotion matching between our lyrics and music together. 

For me, this is what I do:

1. Find the bumps - having drafted a song - both the lyric and the music - I listen to the complete song to see if there are any “bumps” in there, where the emotions don’t seem to fit together.

2. Decide which to fix - listen to the bump zone and decide what would be better to fix - the lyric or the music. For me, it’s a lot easier to fix the music because, for me, music is always there. 

3. Fix and review - having fixed it, I listen to it now again with the new lyric or music, asking does it still cause a bump in the song? Do the music and lyric now match perfectly? If not, I go back and have another go.

This is normally not a re-write - just minor things. Things that make all the difference to make it a more powerful song. And, to be honest, if it needs a re-write, that would be fine by me because it’s a lot cheaper to fix something in the writing room than in the studio where it’s demoing.

Questions

Here are a few questions for you: 

• Could there be a bump somewhere in one of your songs?

• If you found one and you’ve fixed it, what does it sound like without the bump now?

• Is it more powerful because of it ironed out?

This is all about having a song that is packed with emotion the way you intended. Ultimately, it could mean the difference between getting your song cut rather than left unheard. 

I hope this helps. And stay safe!

Simon Hawkins 

www.simonhawkins.com

How Big Is Your Onion?

Many years ago, when I finally left my corporate day job to become a full-time songwriter, I realized a truth about myself: 

The more I knew, the more I knew how much I didn’t know.

It was fun but, to be honest, a little scarier than I was expecting. 

It’s a little like when I first started driving. I remember as a child, I used to watch my father driving, and he made it look easy. Safe and secure. But when I started driving myself, it wasn’t quite as simple as I thought. 

Well, being a full-time songwriter was also way more difficult than I thought. So, just like I needed a course of driving lessons, I had to go back to school to write songs. Berklee College of Music.

The Onion

Sure, before I left my day job, there were many years I’d already enjoyed: the incredible journey of harmony, melody, bass, and rhythm. This was one of the most beautiful journeys ever. But for me, there was another journey I needed to embark on - lyrics. And becoming a full-time songwriter, I had to figure out how to write lyrics. This was the onion.

Here’s what happened:

• When I started on day 1 of my songwriting career, I thought I needed to learn the skills the size of an onion, one I thought I could hold in my hand. 

• Right now, as I look at the size of the world of songwriting, it’s the size of a giant onion I can’t even get my arms around. And I continue to learn more things every time I co-write with my wonderful co-writing friends. 

To give you a feel of what it looks like, in terms of the world of onions, day 1 of my journey with Song Maps looked like this. And it’s still growing now:

Even now, it’s humbling when I still realize how much I don’t know about my craft, but it’s lovely to still be on a journey. 

How can songwriting be like an onion?

Here’s what I’m thinking:

1. There are many layers to learn how to write songs. Just when you feel like you’ve found the top layer, there’s another, more significant layer out there. Each book I consume or course I finish, there is still yet another layer that I needed to understand.

2. Sometimes, when you get to the core of your writing, it can be a painful process to find out what you are writing about. Just like cutting up an onion.

3. For me, songwriting has given my life so much greater richness. Imagine how bland life would be without songs! Imagine how bland life would be like without onions!!

Question

Here are a few questions: Where are you on your journey? How big is your onion? Is it still a bigger onion than you thought?

Berklee Music Online courses are generally 12 weeks. Just sayin’.

Simon Hawkins 

www.simonhawkins.com

What is the Songwriter’s Secret Weapon?

When I was researching my last book, Song Maps - A New System to Write Your Best Lyrics, I discovered a fundamental truth. Now please note, I don’t try to make people cry. That’s not a nice thing to do. But I realized that sometimes there are things that move people to tears in a most profound way. That’s if people are generally open to that kind of thing.

This idea is very much linked to the whole point of the book I wrote, Song Maps, because they affect the flow of ideas. And, for those who are songwriters, this is the secret weapon for many genres of songs. For example, this is why Country songs are all about dogs dying, lovers leaving or running away with best friends. It’s the reason there are so many love songs at all. It's why the Gospel story is such a rich source of songs that deeply move people.

The Songwriter’s Secret Weapon

So, here it is: People are deeply moved by:

LOVE IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY

If you think back to all the songs that slew you, that turned you from a happy, carefree person to a blubbering, shaking wreck, it will probably be, on some level or another, because you have been confronted with love in the face of adversity.

Examples

Look at classic lyrics like the lyric to “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston/Dolly Parton or “Leaving On A Jet Plane” by John Denver.

The most potent example I discovered is a song written by songwriting icon, Phil Coulter, sung by Sinead O'Connor called “Scorn Not His Simplicity.” It's not a love song. It's not even a Country song. When I discovered it, I played it to some friends who'd come for a dinner party, and before Sinead had got to the second Verse, one of my friends was in tears (sorry, it wasn’t what I had in mind!).

When I finally got to talk to the songwriter, Phil, I congratulated him on writing such an incredible song, and even he (with his Irish modesty) admitted that he was very happy with the way it turned out. Without a doubt, it's a powerful song, and it demonstrates, almost flawlessly, the power of this principle to move people. I challenge you to listen to it and not be moved.

So, where we place ideas in our lyrics counts. If we place them in a way that shows love in the face of adversity, it counts big time. This is also why writing in 3D is so powerful. This is why we will only develop titles to their full potential if we organize ideas into their most powerful order (a writable idea) and then turn them into amazing lyrics that genuinely touch people when they hear the finished song. This is why we use Song Maps.

Question

Have you tried to use this in your writing? If not, maybe have a go. But be careful with your listeners!

S.

Dazzled

Sometimes, songwriting can be a little like driving.

Tonight I drove the short trip to pick up my daughter, Poppy, from her school bus. It was a beautiful evening, deep dark blue skies with a few waking up stars, and a thin sliver of moon. Then, all of a sudden, in front of me a car came hurtling around the corner with its main beam shining full up, ice white, piercing through the night. Yes, I was:

DAZZLED

Why am I writing about this? Well, sometimes it’s just like this when you are songwriting. Here’s why:

1. Trust – Sometimes, you need to trust that you’re driving to the right place. Like when you are dazzled from the main beam in front of you, there are moments when you’re not totally clear about where the road is going. Sometimes you can only see and it’s the same thing when you’re writing a song - the reason for dazzling can be from a number of main lights:

• The dazzle of your co-writers

• The dazzle of your co-writers craft, which you hope will LOVE your ideas

• The dazzle of your publisher, hoping they will LOVE the song you’ve just written

• The dazzle of the artist, you hope will LOVE your song demo.

If or when you’re dazzled, just keep writing.

2. Tools – Sometimes, all we can see is the dashboard to make sure you’re driving at the right speed. And the same way as songwriters we have our dashboard ourselves:

• Rhyme schemes

• Structures

• Title placement

• Unity emotion

• The lyrical Map

There are hundreds of similar tools, which all become part of our own songwriting dashboard when we are dazzled.

3. Waiting – Sometimes you need to wait until you see a signpost, something like a 30 mph speed sign or a 'welcome' to your own town. You just hope you’ll get there by simply waiting. And it’s the same thing with songwriting – sometimes you need to chase an idea until you’ve written all verses, the chorus, and the bridge before you KNOW that the song has been written.

Being dazzled by the million things that can worry you about your craft. Just trust. Do your best. And before you know it you will be home.

S.

What is Universalizing?

Here's a new word. Actually, it's a new word I made up my self –

"Universalizing"

This is a general lyric tool, inspired by the beautiful book "The Craft of Lyric Writing" by Sheila Davis. What I mean by "universalizing" is turning our experiences into things that somehow resonate with our listeners in a far more powerful way than if we tell them every detail.

One of my co-writers put it very well when he said:

"The songwriter's challenge is to turn the specifics of their lives into something everyone can hang their stuff on."

This might at first seem to be a bit of an idea crusher – having to make every idea 'big enough' to write a song about. But, while I do think ideas need to be substantial enough to write, I think that's looking at universalizing the wrong way round. I believe universalizing opens up a whole new world of potential song ideas because it's about harvesting elements of what may seem to us as sometimes negative, mundane detail to produce wonderful principles that can unlock, inspire, empower and ignite our listeners' lives through our lyrics.

Examples

Instead of writing a song about the fear of going to see the dentist to fix a long-standing toothache, write a song about how taking charge of our lives empowers us to live life to the full.

Perhaps, from our experience of deep frustration or even failure, write a song about how we will persevere. Or maybe, how we draw strength from our faith in dark times or how, with a bit of belief from a loved one, we become empowered to achieve more than we ever thought possible.

How to universalize

I suggest the following three-step method:

1. Recollection: Think of several recent struggles or challenges you have had, no matter how mundane they might feel to you. (Hey, be kind to yourself here – this isn't supposed to drive you to your therapist!).

2. Extraction: What life lessons can you derive from those experiences, replacing your specifics with generalities?

3. Mapping: Using an appropriate Song Map (Tension/Response, for example), turn one of these life lessons into a Writable Idea.

Question

What recent experience, struggle or meaningful moment could you universalize into a great song idea?

S.