Those would be ordinary reasons to use the language of real and unreal or fake – how we’ve learned to use these words. In our ordinary language real and unreal are used to contrast one event or experience with another. When you take them out of that context to a place where there is no contrast – in “everything we experience is an illusion,” for example, there is no possible contrast to unreal – the use of the word evaporates and you are left wondering what the unseen, real world could be made of. We still feel the drive of the word to evoke a contrast, but we’ve taken it out of a context where one is available. The language has gone on a holiday.

Of course, it took me years of study (3 years as a U of M undergraduate, 4 years of graduate study and Indiana University, including a Master’s in Literary Criticism from the Kenyon School of Letters) to follow the trail and find, a la Wittgenstein, the source of the mystery.

But the journey, in Eliot’s words,

I spent six years teaching Philosophy, both at Indiana University as a Teaching Associate and The University of Notre Dame as faculty, during which time my interest began to shift to music, then to the crack between music and poetry – songwriting. I’ve been teaching lyric writing and poetry for the last 4 decades at Berklee College of Music, during which time the mantra “How is that word used in Ordinary Language?” has leaked into my teaching of songwriting and poetry, morphing into the shiny new, but fundamentally related, mantra: “Preserve the natural shape of the language.”

“Is that tree real?” loses its meaning when real is wrenched out of its natural habitat in Ordinary Language. The same thing happens when we allow either musical rhythms or poetic rhythms to overpower the natural shape of words and phrases. We lose meaning. We lose emotion.

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

If you said, “Most defeated lovers, sooner or later, dream of making a comeback,” then “comeback” would be stressed like “bridegroom.”

A perfect match.

Words with two or more syllables have an accent mark over one of the syllables, indicates the word’s main STRESS. In English, all words of two or more syllables have a primary stress, creating sonic shape (or a “little melody”) to help your ear recognize the group as a unit. Stressed syllables are

So how about one-syllable words, the staple of English and especially of lyrics? Don’t bother looking in the dictionary; it doesn’t mark one-syllable words.

One-syllable words are stressed when they have an important job to do, like delivering a message. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs all get sweaty because they work hard, like these:

Like these:

I asked you to throw the ball to me, not at me.
I asked you to throw the ball to me, not to her.
I asked you to throw the ball, not him.

Look at this verse is from Sting. Read it a few times first, then try to mark its accented syllables.

All the other unstressed words are standing around directing traffic. The rhythms are pretty regular, moving from two lines of triples to two lines of duples:

“When” probably isn’t stressed. In context, “I” could be stressed if someone else was coming home. “Got” could be stressed if the lights came on (maybe a surprise party) soon afterwards. But most likely, we are looking at da da da Dum da Dum da Dum: When I got home the house was dark.

It is quite clear what the first three words are not. They are not the most important words in the phrase — typical for words in gray areas. Even if some words aren’t so clear, you know which ones work the hardest. No problem setting this phrase to music — just save the stressed beats for the stressed words. Work the gray ones out with a little trial and error.

In a bar of 4/4 time, the first (downbeat) and third quarter-notes are stressed. The second and fourth aren’t. This is the same pattern of strong-to-weak established by half-notes.

These words seem to work:

4/4-time is architectonic: it preserves the same pattern (strong-to-weak) through all of its subdivisions, no matter how small — eights, sixteenths, thirty-seconds, etc. This is important for setting words into measures with rests and mixed note values.

Scan this for strong beats:

The triplets in the first four bars are easy, lining up

Bars six and seven are the most interesting.

(Dum)/ da Dum da Dum da Dum. The anticipation of beat three is clearly stressed. The anticipation of beat four is, again, less strong. The dotted eighth ending bar six seems unstressed, even though it is tied to a downbeat. In the context of the phrase, it pales with all the strength around it. It is too far away from the downbeat. Similarly, the final cadence is subdued, ending as an anticipation of beat two, though its length gives the note a little extra punch. What words would fit this music? Try these:

Lyricists spend a lot of time trying to match patterns — word patterns to note patterns, or words to words, like writing a second verse to match a first. What if you had to write another section to match this one by Sting? Look at it closely. Not only should you line up your stressed and unstressed syllables exactly the same, you also should put your most important words in the same places. Look at this try.

How about this one?

Another try:

Now it’s your turn to write a perfect match to Sting’s music. Take your time, and write a better one than I did.

Happy matchmaking!

Verse Three:

Look at the first two lines of verse one, the beginning of our trip:

The first line of verse one is a complete idea:

The second line is also a complete idea,

But look at the last two lines of verse one:

In these lines the melody and lyrics are at odds. They want you to get off at different exits. While the melody still defines a 2-idea group, the lyric ideas are arranged either as

Here comes verse two:

OK, so what can we do about it?

The goal, of course, is that the lyric and melody work together – that they create compatible roadmaps, supporting each other and making the combination stronger than either the lyric or melody alone.

In general, there are two strategies for solving these mis-matches:

But there’s also a little trick for you to file away for future travelling, a third technique: try repeating something from the first line at the beginning of the next line:

Let’s add it to our two strategies:

Of course, you could match the lyric’s roadmap to the melody by finding different rhymes and lines. Maybe something like:

This might be a perfect place to try the third strategy – repeating that:

The lyrical roadmap is,

Creating compatible roadmaps melodically and lyrically is essential to getting maximum meaning and impact from your song. Ignoring mis-matched roadmaps creates a fourth option:

If you try to follow both maps, you’ll end up not knowing where you are. Your listener, in the presence of conflicting sets of directions, will be thinking about something other than what you’re saying, and may never get to taste Aunt Edna’s special recipe for cranberry stuffing.

Your choice.

Listen to the song here.

Here’s the lyric:

Next, “did” is puffing up its chest on the downbeat of bar 2, “get” is anticipating beat 3, and “too,” the intensifier (thus stressed) is shoved into the dark corner of beat 4. The result is the unnatural:

See?

And that’s only the first line. Not a promising start. Line 2:

Right. In “What’s really on the inside?” “what’s” is stressed, as it should be in its identity as an interrogative pronoun, introducing a question.

But in “Oh, did I almost see what’s really on the inside?” “what’s” is a relative pronoun and is, like all relative pronouns, unstressed. Now look at the musical phrasing:

First, “What’s” is stressed in its position in the 3rd beat of the bar, coming down on the side of a question introduced by the interrogative pronoun.

Second, the rest between the phrases,

The song has stumbled and broken its leg out of the starting gate. But now, the real fun begins:

Wrong.

It’s hard to believe. “All” is on a 3rd beat. Fine so far, but “the” on a downbeat? And the weak syllable of “dirty” on beat 3? The coup de gras: the weak syllable of “laundry” on a downbeat! Sheer insanity:

Enter Ed and Edna:

All this before we even get to the most laughable part of the song. The idea is, by this time, DOA (dead on arrival). Still, let’s have a last kick at the totally inert carcass of this song:

Finally, another terrible setting of unCONdiTIONalLY, after the non-declaration of love.

The second line is even stronger:

Wonderful prosody is created by these syncopations. They enhance and support the meaning while, at the same time, creating a spotlight by surprising us—not doing the expected. That’s the gig for these poets. They do it very well.

Note that the syncopation is achieved by creating variations in the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Stressed and unstressed syllables are the fundamental building blocks both for establishing the pattern and creating variations.

The variation is NOT achieved by keeping the same rhythmic pattern and mis-stressing syllables.

The technique of pattern and variation is simple and straightforward. You don’t have to distort the natural shape of the language, because all you have to do is arrange the natural stresses (the ordinary language) so that THEY create the variations, while keeping our attention focused on meaning. Distorting the shape pulls our focus away from meaning rather than supporting it and enhancing it.

In my view, the same principles apply directly to the matching stressed notes with stressed syllables and unstressed notes with unstressed syllables. Don’t mismatch them, rather, use the musical patterns of weak and strong (matched perfectly with syllables) to create expectations, then use the musical variations (matched perfectly with syllables) to enhance and support the meaning. All the while preserving the natural shape of the language, thereby keeping attention focused on meaning.

Mantra: Preserve the natural shape of the language.

I have no doubt that Wittgenstein, not only a philosopher, but a consummate musician, would agree.