Week 3 Creating Stability and Instability Using Rhyme

This week we were asked to create stability and instability, primarily using rhyme and subject matter.  We had to write a stable verse to an unstable chorus. 

The Assignment

I got a gem on the way here ... still needs work.  I have a rough demo of the song at

http://snd.sc/ZmgBdj

The bolded section represents the assignment.

She Lives In Present Tenses

Verse 1
The hour is late and the dinner done
Cappuccino dusted with cinnamon
Romance spun from gypsy violins
And she wonders if he’ll ask her home with him

Verse 2 (stable)
She likes the singing silver sound
Of the spoon when he stirs his coffee round
He drinks dark roast with honey and cream
And she’s almost sure this is a dream


Chorus 1 (unstable)
He has candle-lit eyes of experience
But his eyes, they don’t say forever
But when they're together
Somehow he senses she lives
She lives in present tenses

Verse 3
Midnight walk along a river
All consumed by kisses and quivers
She feels so wonderful
When he tells her
He tells her she’s beautiful

Chorus 2
He has moon-lit eyes of experience
But his eyes, they don’t say forever
But when they're together
Somehow he senses she lives
She lives in present tenses

Comments on rhyming

I love rhyme.  I'm so happy when I'm rhyming - within a line, end of line and most especially across lines. For me, rhyme cannot sound forced. It has to roll by easy or I scrap it. This could be why my discography is so small, given the years I've been doing this!

About 20 years ago, I did 2 advanced songwriting weekend workshops through SAC - one with Gary Fjellgaard and one with Roy Forbes.  Roy was at both workshops, so he got to know my writing fairly well.  He made a comment which I took as neither a criticism nor a compliment but merely an observation.  She said he would recognize one of my songs on the radio no matter who covered it, because of how I rhymed.  He said I had a unique penchant to extend a rhyme, and to use consonants at the beginning of the word to create a rhyme feel. It was wonderful to have someone notice what I was doing!

In this assignment,  in the 1st verse, I'm playing with the short "u" sound ... a bit in  hour .. then done, uccino, amon, spun, wonders ...  Then I got into the "h" sound in the last line .. he'll, her, home, him.

An earlier draft of the above chorus went

It's the restlessness that she likes best
In eyes that don’t say forever

I still really like that extended "es" rhyme but "restlessness"  just doesn't sing well and I ran out of time to come up with something better than what I have.

In the 2nd verse, I got into illiteration with the"s" sound  throughout ... the hard "c" in coffee/cream ... the "d" in drinks/dark  ...and of course my favourite,  the  rhyme across lines with roast/almost.  I think of that as my signature rhyme and I try to do it at least once in every song.


Ok, I know I'm a bit twisted.   I'm 51 yrs old and I really have no more I feel I need to say to the world. In my younger years I wrote songs from my own emotional response to what was happening in my life.  Now, I just like to play with the sounds of words, melodies and chords, and I will make up any story to fit with the feel of the sounds I want.

Rhyming is my most favourite thing to do.  Anyone else feel like me?