One of our primary jobs as songwriters is to communicate all of the emotion that the song contains as effectively as possible. Consequently one of the things that is important is for you to preserve the natural shape of the language. That is when you have some thing like humming through the walls, humming through the walls. The natural shape there, humming ba-da-da, strong, weak, weak, strong, strong, weak, weak, strong, stressed, unstressed, stressed. Humming through the walls, humming through the walls, to preserve that shape. Because if I were to say to you, humming through the walls, humming through the walls, at that point it doesn't have that same impact. It loses its meaning. If I say humming through the walls, it's as though, through is saying wait, I'm important too. And it's not. So when we are taking that natural shape, ba-ta-ti-ta-ta. We're going to have to try to preserve that when we place this line in musical rhythm. So let's talk about taking a lyric line with its shape and placing it into a melodic rhythm. Placing it into a musical context. I don't want to talk here yet about melody. I don't want to talk about harmony, I just want to talk about rhythm, about musical rhythm, or melodic rhythm. If we just listen[MUSIC]. Simple drum loop in 4, 4 time[MUSIC]. 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4, 4, 2, 3, 4. [MUSIC] . That drum loop in 4/4 time. We just went through 4 bars of 4/4 time. Each bar of 4/4 time has, I guess you'd say a definition. A bar of 4/4 time, four one-fourth notes per bar, four quarter notes per bar. And those four quarter notes have a relationship to each other. Those four quarter notes are strong on the downbeat, weak on the second beat, strong, but not as strong as the downbeat on the third beat and weak on the fourth beat. That's the definition, that's basically a description of how we listen. Here's something, balance it off. Here's something, balance it off. So strong, balance, weak, strong, balance, strong, weak, strong, weak. When we start placing stressed syllables into, say, a bar of 4/4 time, we don't worry at all about musical pitch. That is, if we have, humming through the walls. Humming through the walls, where language, language-wise, hum, hum, walls are higher in pitch in, -ming through the, -ming through the, lower in pitch. When we translate that into a musical context, we are not trans-ah, translating melody or pitch of our language into pitch musically. Rather when something is pitched in speech, like hum and walls, what that means is that as we place them here in the case of, of four, four four time, as we place them, hum and walls will go in stressed positions in the bar. And -ming through the, -ming through the will go in unstressed positions in the bar. If you think of the stressed positions in your bars as spotlights [SOUND] that you turn on when you place a syllable in that position. Then, what happens with hum and walls, when we turn on through, is that now we have more light on through. And because there is now more light, it is fair to say with those three spotlights shining down On hum, through and walls, that each of those is getting roughly a third of our attention. If I take through out of that strong position. Humming through the walls. If I take it out of that strongest beat in the bar and turn off that spot light then it's fair to say that hum and walls are getting more attention. That they're getting more light, that you know if each one was roughly the same, that hum and walls are now gaining 17% of our attention by turning the spotlight to, off of through, which didn't really belong in the spotlight in the first place. So, that, think of the stressed positions in your bar, as spotlights. And just ask yourself, as the director of the play, who you want to be in the spotlights? So, let's consider the line, I wish you'd take me traveling, I wish you'd take me traveling. I wish you'd take me traveling. I wish, okay, pronoun, verb, I wish. You'd, pronoun, take, take not a very strong verb but a verb. I wish you'd take me traveling, traveling, traveling. Note that in traveling, the first syllable of course is stressed, trav. Then the el, of course, weak. Now what do you do with the ling? I wish you'd take me traveling. Yeah, no. Not so much. I wish you'd take me traveling. That it's almost as though you're omitting in the three syllable word traveling, it's almost as though you're omitting the second syllable and saying trav'ling. I wish you'd take me traveling. Traveling. And so that the ling of traveling is weak, and so setting that in 4/4 time. I wish you'd take me traveling. I wish you'd take me traveling. [MUSIC] 1, 2, 3, I wish you'd take me traveling. 1, 2, 3, 4, I wish you'd take me traveling. Now, in 3, in, in 4/4 time, that seems to work out pretty well. Because remember that here wish was on the down beat of the bar, the strongest beat in the bar, and trave is in the third beat of the bar. See, you get these 2 very bright lights in the down beats. And then the take which was kind of a weaker verb, is in the second beat of the bar, and the third beat of the bar is not as strong as either of the two downbeats. So the wish you'd take me traveling, the take now being in a lesser but still strong position, creates, I think, a right balance of, of the relationship between wish and trav, and the weaker verb, take. [MUSIC] One, two, three. I wish you'd take me traveling. I wish you'd take me traveling. Wish you take me travelling. If we wanted to diminish, take even a little bit more, let's see what happens if we skip the second beat of the bar and stick take slightly behind that second beat. 1, 2, 3, 4, I wish you'd take me travelling. One, two, three, I wish you'd take me traveling. One, two, three, I wish you'd take me traveling. Two, three, I'd wish you'd take me traveling. That's not bad, that's not bad, so it really depends on how much juice you want take to have, how it feels. For me I really prefer the take being slightly off of that second beat, because it gives again more light to wish and trav. But it's still a fairly regular line. So this is a whole area of setting, off finding the appropriate placement of the syllabic or lyric rhythm, and the melodic rhythm, the rhythm set by the, musical context by the time signature. Let's try it with a simple loop. [MUSIC]. 4/4 time. Here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4. 2, 2, 3, 4. 3, 2, 3, 4. 4, 2, 3, I wish you'd take me traveling. [MUSIC] It's not so bad. One, two, three. I wish you'd take me traveling. And we take take off of that third beat. Put a little behind there. Then we get two, three, wait till it comes around. Here we go. I wish you'd take me traveling, and that diminishes take a little bit. Two, three, I wish you'd take me traveling. So there's that. How about humming through the walls. Humming through the walls as opposed to humming through the walls. Humming through the walls. Humming through the walls. Humming through the walls. So that, being aware of what function your word has, through, at, in, on, with, all of those words, those prepositions, really are there to help out. They are the velvet cloth, remember, that the gems of your meaning are set on. And when you start taking pieces of that velvet cloth and saying, oh look at this too, then it's simply velvet cloth, and why are you looking at it? So that if something is unstressed as you speak it, then let it remain in the dark. Let it remain outside of the spotlight that is created by the stressed syllables in your bars. This is a whole area of setting, which is a huge area, and one that I would like for you to get very, very, very good at.
