Week three of songwriting class is all about rhymes and how to use them to create stability or instability in a song. This week’s concepts were more consciously familiar to me than last week’s, though there were a few variations on rhyme types that I hadn’t thought about before. They’re interesting and potentially useful concepts. But I find myself increasingly wondering how often these are successfully used in a conscious way, and how much they are really order that we read into a song after it’s been written. The broader context is that rhymes (as with other things like line length) create expectations, so how you work with those expectations influences the feeling in the song. The first part of rhyme is the rhyme scheme – which lines rhyme with each other (or don’t) and what kind of a feeling those patterns create. The most interesting thing here that I hadn’t previously thought about was that the idea of a couplet (two matched/rhymed lines) is extremely stable, but so much so that if you assemble a verse or chorus from couplets (a/a/b/b) there’s a stopping point at the end of each couplet that creates a break between the two ideas. For that reason, an a/b/a/b rhyme scheme creates more motion, because once you get to the end of the first two lines you don’t feel done yet. Also, playing with what your ear expects can call attention to parts that upend those expectations. So a version when the first three lines don’t rhyme leads you to expect that the fourth will rhyme with the second; if it doesn’t (if it, say, rhymes with the third) it will surprise you and catch your attention. The rhyme scheme that creates the most instability (one I’m not sure I’ve ever used) is a/b/b/a. Will have to look into that one – possibly for the assignment this week. We then moved onto types of rhymes, which move in a spectrum from most stable to least stable: perfect, family, additive, subtractive, assonance, and consonance. The idea of rhyme type builds on the fact that in singing, vowels are emphasized, so vowels are more important in what we hear and expect in rhyme than consonants are. Perfect rhymes are what we think of when we think of rhymes (and what the rhyming dictionary would give you). Family rhymes aren’t perfect, but they’re close – there’s a complicated formula of how consonants are formed that I won’t go into here, but make some of them (mud/rut, love/rough) sound more alike than others. This classification is not something I consciously knew about (and in fact Pat Pattison gives himself credit for bringing those concept to songwriting), but I suspect I understood it intuitively and made use of it when looking for possible close rhymes (when a perfect one wasn’t available). Next comes additive and subtractive rhymes, in which PART of the syllable rhymes but the second part adds more (cry/bribe) or takes some away (as in the title of this post: rhymes/time). Adding sound is more stable than subtracting sound, because you have a perfect rhyme with an additive rhyme and then some extra, whereas you don’t with a subtractive rhyme. I also hadn’t thought about this idea consciously, although I definitely was aware of its effect – I’ve particularly used it for adding extra syllables at the end of a rhyme. Finally, there’s assonance (vowel sounds are alike) and consonance (ending consonant is alike). I wouldn’t have thought of these as rhymes, so much as ways to create appealing sound connections – and Pat agrees that they’re not really rhymes, but rather connections. I tend to use these tools (often unconsciously, but when they turn up I note them and make a point of keeping them – and sometimes I’ll go looking for assonance or consonance), but much more for internal line sounds. I don’t yet know if we’re going to get into that in the course. What I wonder, though, is how much great songwriters think to themselves “OK, I want this to be reasonably stable but not all the way, so I think I’ll use an additive, or family, rhyme here instead of a perfect one.” (I find it more likely that people will intentionally play around with, or chose, a rhyme scheme for how it makes the lyrics move or feel than rhyme type.) If Pat is right – and I’m sure he is – about the sorts of feelings that these different types of rhymes create, then it should surely be an option to consciously deploy them: choose, for instance, to make your rhyme less perfect to make it feel less stable. But this level of conscious choice doesn’t square with my experience of songwriting. Sure, it gives me a clearer idea of which less-perfect rhymes might be more or less useful when I can’t find the perfect rhyme I want to say what I need to say. But most of my songwriting is neither that slow nor that deliberate. I was recently listening to an amateur songwriter who I know has taken these kinds of songwriting courses. And I found myself listening to this person’s lyrics and noting that they felt like they were written as a songwriting exercise, in which rhyme scheme and type and line length and number were used, as if in an assignment. It’s my contention that when you notice those things when you’re listening to a song it’s not a successful song. I’ve come to the same place I reached at the end of my last blog post. I think these tools are central to songwriting. But I think they primarily work when you’ve internalized them (though listening deeply to many great songs), rather than when you consciously deploy them. Sure, having some tools to use when you’re stuck for a rhyme or wonder how to create more motion in your verse can be extremely useful, and I’m glad to have names to put to these concepts. But for the most part I think we use them to describe, rather than create, successful songs.