Rhyming - perfect and otherwise

[nat whilk II]

 

This thread is pretty technical - if you don't like getting too technical about lyrics, probably nothing for you here.

 

It's often commented on that English is poor in rhymes. Rich in word choices, yes, wonderfully so, but poor in rhymes. Compared to the inflected languages that add all sorts of stock suffixes to words that make rhyming super easy, not so much just poor, but practically destitute.

 

So I think there is good reason to expand the stock of available rhymes to include near-rhymes and other "almost" rhymes. Not as a license to sloppiness, but just to give everyone more tools to work with, more colors for the palette.

 

I'm reading the chapter titled "Modern Poetry", the section titled "Verse Technique" in The Oxford English Literary History Vol. 10, The Modern Movement 1910-1940. Some quotes and other cites from this chapter:

 

pg 77 - "Most poets worked, most of the time, with rhymed line-endings, although a few of them redefined what rhyme could involve. ...the..important emancipation of modern verse technique from earlier constraints lies not in free verse but in the adoption by several leading poets of half-rhyme (terminal consonance without assonance: love/have) and pararhyme ('rich' consonance without assonance: love/leave) as possible substitutes for full rhyme (terminal consonance with assonance: love/dove)."

 

[this innovation] "represents a significant compromise between recognized sound patterns and the impulse to reach beyond exhausted pairings (eyes/sighs, world/hurled, and the rest)."

 

The author goes into detail with specific poets such as Yeats, whose 1910 collection has rhymes such as mouth/truth, blood/proud, and charm/form. Yeats increased his use of these sorts of rhymes in later collections.

 

Other poets are mentioned and cited as working in expanded rhyme technique - W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, C. Day Lewis, and more.

 

"Auden even gives himself license to rhyme on 'open' unstressed final syllables, as in the pairs beauty/early and quinsy/virginity. The most dedicated practitioner both of half-rhyme and pararhyme, however, was Dylan Thomas, all but one of whose fifty-nine poems in his first three collections use these devices. Like Auden, Thomas stretches rhyme to accommodate pairings of unstressed syllables, as in "My hero bares his nerves' (1934), which half-rhymes shoulder with ruler, paper with hunger, and Venus with promise. In other poems, open stressed syllables may half-rhyme, as sea with sky; in others, such as 'I dreamed my genesis' (1934), final unstressed syllables are discounted so that disyllabic words may rhyme with monosyllables: driving with nerve, metal with night, journey with man."

 

 

So - if these poets from the first half of the 20th century could pull off these "modern" techniques, I'm thinking I can shake off that old feeling that any rhymes but perfect "full" rhyme are cheats.

 

Let's argue violently about this - spark up the old forum a bit

 

nat whilk ii

 

[Lee Knight]

I'm going to need coffee for this. And an early morning... Looks good. See you tamale.

[oldgitplayer]

I'm in on this - I look upon rhyming in songwriting as a tool for effect rather than a rule that should be adhered to.

So there's a place for perfect rhymes, near rhymes and no-rhymes depending on what the writer is wanting to emphasise or not emphasise.

 

'Across the Universe' is a good example of a great song with no rhymes.

 

Also, genre can dictate. If capturing a 30's or 40's mood in song, then perfect rhymes feel appropriate.

In a contemporary song, if not used well, perfect rhymes may render a song to feel like a child's ditty.

 

So I'm one for acknowledging the conventions, but selecting writing method to suit content, rather than shoe-horning what you want say into a set rhyme scheme.

[Lee Knight]

What he said

[LCK]

I'm a fan of perfect rhymes, slant rhymes, and songwriters with the "nerve" to write without any rhymes at all.

 

BTW: These are great rhymes: "shoulder with ruler, paper with hunger, and Venus with promise." They're all perfect rhymes in my book because the ending vowel and consonant sounds are exactly the same.

[mbfrancis]

This has come up before on a thread I think. I have 2 rules for myself:

 

1) Perfect rhymes > imperfect rhymes, all things being equal. They sing better, the flow better. The are ideal - they fulfill the purpose of a rhyme best. The trick is "all things being equal"...often the half rhyme (or assonance or near rhyme or whatever) is much better for the song and narrative, is a more effective line, or even just less clunky. So there's some taste and judgement involved.

 

2) Ideally a song should have >50% perfect rhymes. Any less for me and I feel like I'm being lazy, or some of the the lines needs to be re-written. When a song is all or almost all half rhymes it's jarring to me, like the writer doesn't really know what he's doing...I actually get upset. This too is subjective, as sometimes a stream of lyrics can cover up a multitude of sins (listen to any hip hop track).

 

But that's just me.

[LCK]

When a song is all or almost all half rhymes it's jarring to me, like the writer doesn't really know what he's doing...I actually get upset. This too is subjective, as sometimes a stream of lyrics can cover up a multitude of sins (listen to any hip hop track).

 

But that's just me.

 

No, it's not just you...

[oldgitplayer]

I have a hunch that a part of our approach to the use of types of rhymes is a reflection of our personality.

 

I like to think that there is no dogma to be followed - only a successful or unsuccessful end result.

[nat whilk II]

There's a bit of a similarity between rhymes and cadences I'm thinking. Cadences end a section of music, and different types of cadences bring varying degrees of finality to the preceding section. The V-I cadence is typically the most assertive, final endpoint. The IV-I (the amen cadence) is softer. The V-vi cadence slides home like a quarterback going to ground to avoid any big hit at all.

 

I'm thinking of analogies between cadences and their uses and the various types of rhyme.

 

I've heard songs where a full rhyme is used for the hook or other endpoint phrase, and partial rhymes used a lot more in the body of verses and so on. That could heighten the emphasis made by the full rhyme.

 

Partial rhymes could also be used to create a feeling of vagueness or confusion or dissonance or discomfort, with resolution or clarity or relief coming in strong at some point with a full rhyme.

 

Working partial rhymes into internal rhymes sounds to me like a very interesting idea - maybe bring a lot of intensity and an additional feeling of drive and stress that sets up an endpoint full rhyme with more "slam". A lot like using alliteration, also, which I pretty much live on lyrics-wise.

 

One odd type of rhyme that you do see in poetry and sometimes in lyrics is the sight-rhyme, where the two words look like a rhyme but don't sound out in rhyme. These still tend to strike me as a bit bogus, but there is a tradition of doing this. James Taylor has one in The Frozen Man:

 

 

I thought it'd be nice to visit my grave

to see what kind of tombstone I might have

 

What I don't want to do is expand the types of rhymes I use simply to help me finish something, as in I can't think of a good full rhyme so I stick a random partial rhyme in there and call it a day. Not that I haven't done that and won't do it again, but it strikes me as a bit bogus.

 

My goal is, of course, to have it all - make some ultimately sophisticated, intricate, multi-layered, astonishing thing that still on first listen sounds spontaneous and natural. Why not? (discounting lack of ability)

 

nat whilk ii

 

[oldgitplayer]

You are right in all you say ^^^

We even use 2 types of cadence in songwriting : The one you gave described in music e.g.. resolving with the V to I but there is also also the cadence used in poetry, where there is modulation in the pacing of the language.

 

From Wiki:

[h=2]Cadence in poetry[edit][/h] In poetry cadence describes the rhythmic pacing of language to a resolution and was a new idea in 1915 used to describe the subtle rise and fall in the natural flow and pause of ordinary speech where the strong and weak beats of speech fall into a natural order restoring the audible quality to poetry as a spoken art. Cadence verse is non-syllabic resembling music rather than older metrical poetry with a rhythmic curve containing one or more stressed accents and roughly corresponding to the necessity of breathing, the cadence being more rapid and marked than in prose.

 

 

 

[nat whilk II]

You are right in all you say ^^^

We even use 2 types of cadence in songwriting : The one you gave described in music e.g.. resolving with the V to I but there is also also the cadence used in poetry, where there is modulation in the pacing of the language.

 

From Wiki:

[h=2]Cadence in poetry[edit][/h] In poetry cadence describes the rhythmic pacing of language to a resolution and was a new idea in 1915 used to describe the subtle rise and fall in the natural flow and pause of ordinary speech where the strong and weak beats of speech fall into a natural order restoring the audible quality to poetry as a spoken art. Cadence verse is non-syllabic resembling music rather than older metrical poetry with a rhythmic curve containing one or more stressed accents and roughly corresponding to the necessity of breathing, the cadence being more rapid and marked than in prose.

 

 

 

Great find there -

 

I'm thinking Dylan was certainly all over that especially in his early days.

 

If you can give lyrics the feel of real speech, and still serve the musical structure, you've done something in my book.

 

nat whilk ii

[Lee Knight]

If you can give lyrics the feel of real speech, and still serve the musical structure, you've done something in my book. nat whilk ii

You said it all right there. You know what can be hard? Saying something. But when you've got it, that idea is clear in your mind... To me, it is paramount not to screw it up. Sometimes an out right non-rhyme fits that bill. Sometimes a clever cadence of perfect rhymes does it. They all have different uses and bring different emotions to the table. I always find it fascinating to write out a lyric then go ahead and try to sing it later. Immediately the red pen comes out. Trash the stuff that isn't true and keep the stuff that is. Whatever form that takes.

[mbfrancis]

You said it all right there. You know what can be hard? Saying something. But when you've got it, that idea is clear in your mind... To me, it is paramount not to screw it up. Sometimes an out right non-rhyme fits that bill. Sometimes a clever cadence of perfect rhymes does it. They all have different uses and bring different emotions to the table. I always find it fascinating to write out a lyric then go ahead and try to sing it later. Immediately the red pen comes out. Trash the stuff that isn't true and keep the stuff that is. Whatever form that takes.

 

Broadly I'd agree, but sometimes what's "true" doesn't sing well, and then who will want to hear it? A lyric can be "true" and "saying something" and suck as a song. That's the tension - if it were easy, everyone would do it.

 

[oldgitplayer]

The other thing about perfect rhymes is that so many of them have been done to death.

It leaves the songwriter exploring other avenues of expression that include near rhymes and no rhymes.

It also opens up possibilities of making greater use of unrhyming turns-of-phrase that are not in everyday use, and pacing the language in interesting ways.

 

All-in-all, I think there's a danger of buying into perfect rhyme as a dogma to be obeyed at any cost, when the reality is that there are still unconventional approaches to be explored.

[mbfrancis]

The other thing about perfect rhymes is that so many of them have been done to death.

It leaves the songwriter exploring other avenues of expression that include near rhymes and no rhymes.

It also opens up possibilities of making greater use of unrhyming turns-of-phrase that are not in everyday use, and pacing the language in interesting ways.

 

All-in-all, I think there's a danger of buying into perfect rhyme as a dogma to be obeyed at any cost, when the reality is that there are still unconventional approaches to be explored.

 

All true. In fact, I may have to revise my position, not that perfect isn't a North Star, but the 50% rule. People are definitely getting more creative. Here is one of my favorite lyrics of the last ten years,

. Few perfect rhymes, and a lot of creative ones (e.g., second stanza):

 

"Lua"

 

I know that it is freezing but I think we have to walk

I keep waving at the taxis; they keep turning their lights off

But Julie knows a party at some actor's west side loft

Supplies are endless in the evening; by the morning they'll be gone.

 

When everything is lonely I can be my own best friend

I get a coffee and the paper; have my own conversations

With the sidewalk and the pigeons and my window reflection

The mask I polish in the evening, by the morning looks like {censored}.

 

And I know you have a heavy heart; I can feel it when we kiss

So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out trying to lift it

But me I'm not a gamble you can count on me to split

The love I sell you in the evening, by the morning won't exist.

 

You're looking skinny like a model with your eyes all painted black

You just keep going to the bathroom always say you'll be right back

Well it takes one to know one, kid, I think you've got it bad

But what's so easy in the evening, by the morning is such a drag.

 

I've got a flask inside my pocket we can share it on the train

If you promise to stay conscious I will try and do the same

We might die from medication, but we sure killed all the pain

But what was normal in the evening, by the morning seems insane.

 

And I'm not sure what the trouble was that started all of this

The reasons all have run away but the feeling never did

It's not something I would recommend, but it is one way to live

Cause what is simple in the moonlight, by the morning never is

What's so simple in the moonlight, now is so complicated

What's so simple in the moonlight, so simple in the moonlight

 

 

 

 

[Lee Knight]

Broadly I'd agree, but sometimes what's "true" doesn't sing well, and then who will want to hear it? A lyric can be "true" and "saying something" and suck as a song. That's the tension - if it were easy, everyone would do it.

I think you're misinterpreting my point. I'm not suggesting there is only one way to write the truth. What I'm saying is there is a challenge and a responsibility for the writer to shade their words to highlight the truth as best they can. Do we really believe perfect rhyme is the only tool? Read Strunk and White and you'll be convinced that using an active voice is the only sensible thing to do. Then read Steinbeck and see how he sprinkles in the passive voice for effect. This is very much the same as using non-rhymes or near rhymes along with strict rhyme. It's not 0's or 1's, black or white. Season to taste understanding the flavor of what it is you're sprinkling in there.

[mbfrancis]

I think we're in violent agreement. And I'd say your example of active voice as a nice analog to perfect rhymes - ideal, in general better, but not do be done slavishly..