Why This Beatles Song Is Almost Impossible to Write

[00:02] to write interesting compelling lyrics not just at the level of meaning but also at the level of [Music] Rhythm good day songwriters welcome back if you're new to the channel my name is

[00:17] key and I run this Channel with my friend Benny and we are two professional songwriters as well as music educators and our goal with this channel is to help other songwriters write their best songs it's a super common misconception

[00:30] that writing pop songss is somehow easier than writing in other genres honestly sometimes people who are songwriters will often hear the repetition of Melodies and hooks inside pop songs and assume that because

[00:47] something is repeating that it must be easier to write so it's not difficult to Simply repeat a Melody if I go la la la and la la la I've repeated the melody and la la la I've repeated the melody what is way way way more difficult to

[01:01] achieve is writing interesting meaningful compelling lyrics that comply to the strict and rigid parameters set up by those repeating Melodies it's

[01:13] actually way easier just to take any lyric that you've written when you're not concerned with the repetition of melodic motifs think about it this way it requires a lot more skill to execute a cart will in a perfectly straight line

[01:29] than it does to do a cartwheel if you have the entire floor available to you in exactly the same way it actually requires a lot more skill to write great lyrics that fit within the confined space of a Melody that repeats exactly

[01:44] one of the Geniuses of The Beatles as some of the first Interstellar level pop songwriters and artists of our modern era was their ability to write super era was their ability to write super interesting lyrics within the Precision

[01:59] of melodies that repeated exactly in this video I'm going to start by demonstrating why this is such a difficult task to achieve and why I see it come up again and again when I'm working with songwriters helping them

[02:12] rework and revise their songs to get them as good as they can be we're going to do this by looking at one Beatle song in particular but this song is archetypal of their catalog and this song has such an iconic Melody but is

[02:26] also an example of their lyric writing at its best going to take you through a seven-step process to help you achieve the same the goal here is to help you work on songs that have really interesting Melodies

[02:40] that also have melodic structure and integrity through the repetition of those melodic ideas and melodic motifs but also be able to write great lyrics that fit perfectly with those Melodies so fair warning this is a video that is

[02:56] very specifically made for songwriters if you're not a songwriter you're just a Beatles fan and interested in how they write their songs come along on the journey with us but we are going to get pretty Technical and kind of in the mud

[03:08] and dirt of songwriting in the second half of the video the beetle song that we are going to play through and listen to is the song Eleanor Rigby as I'm playing through the first verse of this song What I want you to do is listen to

[03:23] The Melody and really notice that the melodic line repeats itself melodic line repeats itself exactly precisely there is not a single note that is different about the second line than in the first line it is

[03:40] line than in the first line it is precise exact in the church where a wedding has

[03:54] in the church where a wedding has been lives in a dream Waits at the window wearing the face that she keeps in a job by the in a job by the door who is it

[04:10] Jacob Kia but if you don't know it's pretty tragic I'm not going to lie go and listen to it now and even if you are already familiar with it listen again and have a special listen to what happens in verse two because what you're

[04:25] happens in verse two because what you're going to hear is the same Melody repeats going to hear is the same Melody repeats again and again with the same level of precision and repetition and in order to do that what we need to practice as

[04:38] songwriters is thinking about lyrics not just as meaning but actually as units of Rhythm let's break this down in a little more detail so Melody is not just notes

[04:51] Melody is notes to Rhythm and when we listen to the rhythm of a Melody we can hear that some notes are more accented than others another way to say that is that some notes are strong and other notes are

[05:16] [Music] weak but here is the thing the same is weak but here is the thing the same is true of lyrics lyrics are not just words true of lyrics lyrics are not just words lyrics are a sequence of syllables that

[05:28] also has a pattern of strong and weak accents inside the line if I speak the words inside the lyric of Elanor Rigby you can hear that in the natural

[05:41] expression of this line there is a rhythmic pattern let's take a listen Elena Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been so I didn't sing the lyric right I was just speaking it naturally as if reading it

[05:54] from a page which I quite literally was and what you can hear is that that rhythmic pattern inside the lyric is inherent to the lyrics themselves is inherent to the choice of words and the order in which those words were composed

[06:08] and of course what we can now see is that that lyrics rhythm is exactly the that that lyrics rhythm is exactly the same sequence of strong and weak beats as the melody itself if we as songwriters want to achieve the same we

[06:23] need to practice writing lyrics not just at the level of meaning but also practice writing lyrics at the the level of Rhythm so let's do just that so I'm going to take you through a seven-step process that's going to help practice

[06:38] mastering the rhythm of the language and what I've done is I've created a free pdf workbook that you can download for free right now by clicking the link that is below in the show notes so this is a seven-step process but what we're

[06:53] so I'm going to throw you in the deep end here give you one of the final excises in this process and just see how you go and then what we'll do is kind of break it down in a little bit more of a granular way to build back up to this

[07:08] challenge write a replacement lyric for the first line of Eleanor Rigby your job of course is to try to make that lyric perfectly fit the melody which means the

[07:20] rhythm of the lyrics themselves has to have the same series of strong and weak accents as the melody once you've written that line please post it in the comments and the first five people to post their replacement lyric I will read

[07:36] feedback and tell you whether you nailed it or if there are some words or syllables that still need to shift around a little bit to really get it perfectly flowing with that Melody let me show you an example of how not to do

[07:50] this exercise but it's also a way that people get it wrong all the time and really reflects something that happens in songwriting that I see in our song feedback sessions in our songwriter Community a lot of the time it's not as

[08:03] Extreme as the example I'm going to give you but it's definitely there I'm giving you the extreme example so you can really hear very clearly how this is not quite the right approach to this exercise the not right way to do this is

[08:15] to Simply think at the level of syllables so to count the syllables in syllables so to count the syllables in the first part of the melody Elenor rby and go right yeah there's five syllables so if I just write a line that has five

[08:27] I were thinking like that I could write a line like children are in bed right so I've got five syllables elen or rigb five syllables surely that'll work right

[08:40] five syllables surely that'll work right let's hear it children are in bed children are in bed hopefully you can hear that when I sing that line to this hear that when I sing that line to this melody the melody is forcing me to

[08:55] Accent syllables in that line that are not naturally accented in natural speech I would never say children are in bed I would say children are in bed right the

[09:07] Accents in that line are on chill and bed not on the word in so we have a mismatch between the lyric and the melody let's try the second half of this

[09:19] melody in the same way so that you can really hear how when the pattern of strong and weak Accents in the lyric does not match the melody just how kind of awkward and stilting it sounds and it also starts to affect a listener's

[09:34] also starts to affect a listener's ability to even understand what's being said children are in bed eating bacon and eggs while they're watching the

[09:52] TV eating bacon and EGS while they're watching the TV it's hard to even understand what's being said when the mismatch is so dramatic but even little mismatch is so dramatic but even little mismatches can really snag on the ear

[10:06] and the Beals did not tolerate mismatches like that their combination mismatches like that their combination of lyrics and Melodies was perfect and I really want to show you how to break down this exercise to get your lyric

[10:19] Melody matches as good as they can be so now that you've heard an example that doesn't quite work let's hear a reworked example that does work

[10:35] and making them breakfast in [Music] [Music] bed so if you haven't already try it now write those replacement lyrics and post them in the comments below so this may

[10:49] was a challenge don't worry cuz what we'll do now is we'll go back and we'll work through steps 1 through five and we'll magnify in on the natural rhythmic quality of language and we're going to practice

[11:04] hearing them and importantly we're going to practice writing in rhythm in this first step we're going to take a few simple two syllable words and practice hearing different rhythms that exist even in two syllable words so for

[11:19] example when you hear the word quiet it's first important to hear that there are two syllables in that word quiet we're trying to tune into to which of those syllables is strong and which of those syllables is weak because in the

[11:33] English language there is always a stronger syllable and a weaker syllable as soon as we have words that have more than one syllable so when the word quiet than one syllable so when the word quiet is the word quiet or is it quiet well

[11:48] it's very clear that it's quiet and that the accent is on the first syllable so in the workbook that you must download right now to really get the most out of this there is a full list of two syllable words and your job is to

[12:03] identify where the strong accented syllable is step two do the same for syllable is step two do the same for multi- syllable words now that we've syllable words we're going to start practicing hearing rhythm in longer more

[12:19] complex words and the reason is that as soon as we have three four or five syllables the strong syllable could actually be anywhere in that word and

[12:31] the thing we want to tune into is where is the strongest syllable in the word let's take an example informant informant hopefully you can hear that the strongest syllable in that word is in the middle it's on the

[12:47] word is in the middle it's on the syllable form informant again I could test that out by going is it informant informant informant definitely that one let's take a word

[13:01] definitely that one let's take a word with four syllables like information now which of those syllables has the strongest stress in it is it information strongest stress in it is it information information information or information

[13:16] variations you can hear the strong stress on the May information you can also hear that the first syllable also has a bit of stress on it but it's not

[13:28] quite as much as that third syllable why is this important as a songwriter let's bring it back to the melody connection for just a moment let's imagine that I have a Melody at the beginning of a line that sounds something like this 1 2 3

[13:56] 4 so I've got this little melodic Motif that has four notes in it and it's the second note in that little four note figure that is really falling on the strongest beat of the bar let's see what happens if I try and put this

[14:10] word information that has four syllables on this little Melody that has four on this little Melody that has four notes all right 1 2 3 information information it doesn't sound like I'm

[14:24] saying the word information rhythm in language is actually there to convey meaning and to convey emotion and if we start mismatching the Accents in our Melody and our lyrics we can actually start to mess with both of those things

[14:39] difficult to understand and more importantly difficult to feel at an emotional level so go ahead and practice with the rest of the list in step two step three analyze the stressed words and syllables in the following lines

[14:55] we'll use a very simple notation system to help us analyze I these very simple lines we're going to use a diagonal slash to indicate where we hear accented syllables and just a little hyphen to indicate the weak stressed syllables so

[15:09] let's take an example line like this I wish I'd thrown you out you can hear in that line even as you speak it that there is an accent on the following there is an accent on the following words wish thrown out that is simply the

[15:25] natural rhythm of that line I'm not choosing that I'm not deciding that I'm simply reflecting what is already there in the language let's take one more example I took the road by the farm to the West when we slow it down like that

[15:40] we can really hear where the strong accents are in that line we can hear accents are in that line we can hear them on the words took Road farm and West one thing to notice now that we are working at the level of an actual line

[15:55] of lyric is that this particular line is constructed of just single syllable words and we didn't look at single syllable words in the first couple of steps because whether a single syllable word is stressed or not entirely depends

[16:10] on its function within a line which is not the case with multi- syllabic words those words have rhythm inside them but with single syllable words it totally depends what they're doing inside a sentence and also what's happening on

[16:24] example of a line from further down the list that has a combination of single syllable and multi- syllable words we waited and I thought that you noticed we waited and I thought that you noticed I think it's important for us to

[16:40] come back again to the idea of why we're doing this and what the relevance of this is in relationship to Melody one way that this is relevant is if I write lyrics before I write Melodies understanding where those strong

[16:56] stresses are is actually going to help me write a Melody that also accents the important words but of course the reverse is also true if I have written a Melody it's important for me to understand how to hear and then write

[17:12] rhythm in language to match the rhythmic pattern of that Melody so with a line of lyric like we waited and I thought that you noticed I'm going to be making sure

[17:24] that the stress pattern of My Melody itself also matches exactly that same pattern the next couple of exercises is where we start to translate this into writing lyrics at the level of Rhythm step four write a phrase to match the

[17:41] following rhythms let's start with a really short example like g g g g g g strong weak strong so we're really looking for a word or a phrase that has

[17:55] looking for a word or a phrase that has that Rhythm B ba B bar for example take the cake take the cake it doesn't have to make sense it doesn't have to be beautiful or meaningful yet what we're just practicing is tuning in to the

[18:10] rhythm of language and constructing sentences or short phrases that really fit within the parameters of that rhythmic phrase so step four is our

[18:22] first little step in practicing writing lyrics not just at the level of meaning but really focused on writing lyrics on the page at the level of Rhythm we're

[18:34] really starting to write lyrics that we can control and blend and flow into our Melodies step five find the rhythm of the given line then write a matching

[18:46] line all right so step five is where things get really fun and start to really become real world songwriting in this exercise I'm going to give you the

[18:58] line of lyric the first thing you're going to do is tune into the rhythm of that line and do that quick analysis of where the strong accents are and then of course where the weak accents are so let's take an example like the phrase

[19:13] changing the subject changing the subject a quick analysis shows us that the strong accents are on the syllable change and sub so the rhythm of that change and sub so the rhythm of that line is Baka gaka baka gaka my job now

[19:29] line is Baka gaka baka gaka my job now is to write another phrase that matches that Rhythm perfectly wheeling and dealing feeling the chaos finding a bargain all of these are totally different phrases and they're not

[19:43] necessarily related in meaning to the original phrase changing the subject but the whole exercise here is just practicing tuning into the Rhythm and

[19:55] finding short phrases that fit that rhythmic pattern in the PDF workbook you'll see that I have given you a bunch of different lines and the thing to do of different lines and the thing to do is to say the lines out loud tune into

[20:09] to where the strong accented syllables are then create that little notation system right so like notate the rhythm of the phrase and then really try and come up with at least three or four different phrases that match the Rhythm

[20:24] exactly hopefully you can really intuitively feel how helpful this skill is because if I have a line like changing the subject let's imagine that I have set that to a melody and the melody is something like

[20:39] melody is something like this changing the subject three four so I've got this little melodic phrase and let's say that either I immediately want to repeat it or that further down the verse section when I'm repeating a whole

[20:53] melodic figure I have to come back to that little figure and I need to match it with lyrics so I could match it with willing and dealing changing the subject willing and dealing changing the subject feeling the chaos finding a bon any of

[21:07] these phrases because it's rhythmically matched can also be melodically matched matched can also be melodically matched which brings us all the way back to step six which is what we actually started with so we started with this idea of

[21:22] with so we started with this idea of taking a whole small section of lyric and then trying to match the whole section so we were trying to match the first kind of line or verse of Elanor Rigby hopefully you can see now that

[21:35] we're back at step six and dealing with Elanor RI that it's really just a slightly elongated version of the previous steps so we can break the lyric of Elanor RI down into three little lines we've got Elanor Rigby that's one

[21:50] little unit picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been and then finally the last little part of this melody lives in a dream if you simply approach this line by line all you need to do is

[22:05] match the first line with another short phrase of the same Rhythm and then you can move on to the second longer line and then finally the third Short Line and each of those lines kind of comes together to build what is essentially

[22:19] together to build what is essentially the primary Melody of Elanor Rigby step seven in this seven-step process is where all this one wonderful work comes where all this one wonderful work comes to life in your own songwriting and what

[22:33] I'm going to ask you to do is download the workbook to get the instructions for step seven cuz it's really where you get to apply all of this learning and apply almost exactly what we just did in Step six to your own song and your own

[22:47] songwriting right now I hope this was a helpful breakdown for you on how to actually take lyrics and Melody and bring them together in a way where you don't have to compromise the quality or Integrity of either it is a difficult

[23:02] task but it is not impossible at all it turns out it just requires a little bit of practice and a basic understanding that lyrics are not just meaning lyrics

[23:14] are meaning plus Rhythm and when we're together with Melody we just need to take a little bit of a conscious approach to the rhythmic quality of those lyrics Happy songwriting guys and

[23:28] those lyrics Happy songwriting guys and I'll see you soon bye