Well in constructing the worksheet the first thing I want to do is get a series

of ideas that seem to be very, very closely related to this whole concept of

the wind as a hobo, the wind as a traveler.

and not only do I want to come up with a series of concepts, maybe four, five, six

concepts that I can take to my rhyming dictionary.

Not only do I want to have a series of concepts, but I think it's also really

useful if you pay attention as you're picking your key words.

Pay attention to the vowel sounds that they include.

Because that's going to be the the string into our rhyming dictionaries.

So that for the word to be in the keyword list.

It should have a different vowel sound than any of the other words in the key

word list. Otherwise, we're being redundant and

trying to, you know, go through the rhyming dictionary using the same vowel

sounds, but maybe with slightly different consonant sounds.

Remember that we're here dealing with the concept of hobo wind, that is a little

bit less stable. And so, less stable rhyme types will be

in play. So we'll start out right away with only

keywords that have different vowel sounds.

Now, obviously, the place to start for me at any rate here since I already have my

central idea of hobo wind. Is to deal with the long o sound of hobo

and also with the short i sound of wind. So that since wind is already in the

rhyming position, that is it's the last word of the title we'll start with wind.

And then probably move to hobo from there.

And what other ideas might be relevant? Well, the Hobo Wind cuts a path through

the world Follows the path.

And so it seems to me that, you know after having looked up.

You know travel path tra , having looked up traveler and so on.

In the thesaurus it seems like path might be a good place to,a good place to work.

Path being, you know, a one syllable word that could easily end up in rhyming

position. So there's the short a sound, so now we

have the [SOUND] we have the [SOUND] we have the [SOUND] of path.

and then, another, another word, the, the the, the rush of wind.

and I like the word rush, because rush also is, is, is, is both a noun, so that

as a noun I enjoy the rush for example. and also, it's, as a verb, to rush into

something. Now normally, if you're using it as a

verb, it can occur in the middle of a line, probably not so often in rhyming

position. But when it does, it will therefore, if

we find words to go with it. It can therefore form a kind of knitting

of vowels sounds inside the lines. I don't want to call them internal rhymes

so much as creating a sonic fabric. So I kind of like the word rush and and

so there it is in our list of keywords. the word roar, roar.

There's a roar of the wind. Seems like a nice place to go, so I added

that. Note that the vowel sound in roar is the

long o sound of hobo roar. But yet, when we have r or l, but

particularly r, it raises the middle of the tongue to the soft palette

[SOUND].

And at that point, changes the way the vowel sound works.

So that roar and hobo really aren't that closely related.

And then finally, the wind is a wanderer. A wanderer,

and so we'll pick that up, too. And so, there are our key words, and we

will start using those key words as keys, sonic keys, those vowel sounds.

And we'll start exploring in the rhyming dictionary where we can go, relative to

those vowel sounds. Alright, let's start with wind.

Going to the rhyming dictionary for wind, almost everything in the rhyme column for

wind is something in past tense, grinned, sinned.

and so the first thing I want to do then is say okay well, I don't know if I want

to you know, this is very present thing that I'm talking about.

I'm hearing, oh you wind, and I'm wondering where you've been.

Okay well maybe there's a past tense there.

But in the rhyming dictionary under wind, I didn't really find anything that

stimulated me, that took me someplace that I found interesting with what I had

to offer for this concept. and so I just decided no, let's not deal

with any of those words. They, you could write them down, but why?

Because you, you're going to find a lot of words in the rhyme searches.

They say, oh yeah, I'm definitely going to use this.

And then, of course, you'll probably not use it, but you only want the ones that

say, yeah, use me because here's what I can do for you.

So, where do we then proceed from wind, wind?

Well, one of the things that we can do is take the d of wind, and look on the

family rhyme table. At the partner of wind, th, th, th,

sound. Now, we have the unvoiced plosives

[SOUND] int, int. And so perhaps hint, hint might be an

interesting idea because the wind hints. Maybe where, where, where, it's gone,

come from, where it's going to go. And so hint seems to be something that I

might want to, you know I want to give the wind a hint, that I want to go with

it. And so perhaps hint and so I write down

hint here in my rhyme column. Its probably the most perfectly related

in terms of perfect rhyme, strong family rhyme because it contains the nasal and,

and then simply tags with a plosive. And so that wind, hind really sounds like

a perfect rhyme. that may be enough by the way not to

bring it into play in this fairly unstable thing, but I like the idea of

the hint that the wind gives. So the next step might be simply to drop

the d sound and use the subtractive rhyme.

Going from wind to something like spin or sin.

Sin is interesting, because the hobo is certainly a sinner.

Then perhaps this place that I'm stuck in is a place where either I feel like it's

a sin for me to stay this stuck, or perhaps I want to go out and commit some.

so that the whole notion of this kind of dark side that the hobo may represent,

that this wondering and traveling may represent is sort of laughing for

experience. So sin might be an interesting concept.

And so I'll invite sin into the column and save it for later.

The wind is howling outside, brushing up against my house, as it were.

Brushing up against, the next word, the skin of my house.

I want to feel it on my skin. Working with sin, and so now we're still

developing this idea, and this is simply the subtractive rhyme.

And note because the plosive is not a great deal of sound, that dropping it

still leaves us a very, very connected rhyme of a relatively stable rhyme.

Now, even in unstable sequences, there are places where you might want a really

resonating rhyme, particularly if you are separating the rhymes at some distance

from each other. So working here with with, with the

subtractive rhymes seems to make some sense.

Another place we could go, now is using in.

That is to say dropping the plosive, we now can go into the family rhymes for n.

And the closest to one of course is the m.

So we might do something like dim. Looking in the rhyming dictionary and we

might even get dimmed. but the future's looking dim, the past is

growing dim. So winned and dimmed might work.

And now, we're getting just a little less stable.

Then I found something. Hymn.

Hymns, singing hymns. And it sounds to me, especially in the

context where I might use the word sin, that the singing of hymns, that the wind

is out there singing hymns of traveling. You know that's one of those that made me

go, yeah I really like that idea. I really like the notion of the wind

singing which hymns brings me. The whole notion of the wind being a

singer. And that maybe I want to sing along.

And so, moving into the family rhymes with.

Hymn really opens things up. I never would have gotten that idea of

this sort of choir, this sort of religious aspect, had I not been in my

rhyming dictionary. And by the way, just FYI, have knowledge

of, the family rhyme table. So that even though the family rhyme

table seems like a very technical thing, the results that you can find when you

are using your rhyming dictionary as a brainstorming tool, can be mind blowing

and for me this whole ocean of singing, this all ocean of the wind singing.

And me singing along now feels like it can create a spine throughout the song,

that high wind I hear you out there in I wonder I I wonder quite experience have,

have been. In the song that you carry with you and

can I sing along. And so that seems to be something that

might be very, very interesting trail to follow in the song.

And going through again continuing through the im sound we get, we get

things like whim. that or swim.

now swim might be interesting. Swimming through the trees.

But, at some point, we don't want to mix the metaphors.

That is, if the wind is a singer it doesn't necessarily have to be singing

while it's paddling through the water. or swimming through the trees, but on

that I'll, I'll just in case I want to get out of this hymn saying, I'll write

down swim because of course the wind does swim across the oceans and so on.

And so that's there too. Still in my family rhyme table in the

nasals, note the ng sound. now, the ng sound.

Do it a couple of times, [SOUND] , as in sing, ng, ng,ng,ng .

that the middle of your tongue is up against your soft palate.

And what that does with the short i sound, eh .

a, a do that a, a, a what that does with the sure i sound is it raises the middle

of your tongue to your soft palette and turns it into almost a long e.

So that if I look up i in g as in the word sing, sing.

Sing you don't get a [SOUND] you get sing it's almost ENG sing.

and so there's a transformation of the vowel sound there but nonetheless since

we're in a context where sing seems to be now with him a a very relevant concept.

Well not well, even though it's fairly unstable.

Which is what our song is about. We'll now write down sing.

And we might write down spring. And if we want to go then, even a little

further away, to assonance rhymes. Or, better yet, another way to put this

is to keep the [SOUND] sound and then change the nasal [SOUND] to a fricative

we might get something like drift, drift, wind, drift.

Note that the I sound is is preserved. But yet, at the same time, we're getting

a fairly unstable sound. And then, the least stable, of course,

the consonants rhyme, note that nd, nd, is kind of a mouthful.

There's a lot of sound in the n and the d together.

So let's just put down some consonance rhymes.

let's put down bend because the wind will certainly bend the trees.

and of course we don't want to use a cliche like around the bend, but

certainly bend might be there, and of course the wind is my friend, the wind is

my friend. So theres the column, for wind.

I have there the opportunity, not only if I choose to, to rhyme the word wind.

But I also have the possibility of planting those short i, n or m sounds

inside the versus inside the sections of the song, in order to create a sonic

fabric. And that of course is before I have

written a single line, in the song, and already the ideas are jumping.

And that's the cure for writer's block. When you do this, there is none of that I

can't think of anything. It's oh my God, there are so many

possibilities, which can I, which can, where, what should And then you're off

and running.

Developing the Worksheet, Part 1

Songwriting: Writing the Lyrics

Meet the Instructors