In previous Progressions posts, we’ve looked at the current hit, “A Different World”, written by Jennifer Hanson, Mark Nesler, and Tony Martin when talking about Chord Substitution and Cutting Measures.
At the end of one of those posts I mentioned “the power in the way it [“A Different World”] was written with the minor chord falling at the end of ‘smoke and drank’, and ‘lead based paint’.” And as I said then, “That’s nice prosody to begin the song”.
Prosody is the marriage of melody/chord with lyric and good prosody is when the music of a song accurately reflects the lyric. It's concerned with things such as the choice of chords, deciding what single note should accompany a certain word of the lyric, the rhythm of lines and certain words, etc.
In “A Different World”, the minor chords falling at the end of ‘smoke and drank’, and ‘lead based paint’ reflect the negative connotation of the words.
Let’s look at prosody in 2 lines of another well-known song, Alan Jackson’s “Here in the Real World”. I also look at this song when discussing melodic phrasing in my book, “Top 10 Songwriting Mistakes… and Correcting Them” (see sidebar for a FREE copy or visit http://www.Top10SongwritingMistakes.com).
If you can’t hear the melody in your head listen to it now and notice how the melody of the 3rd and 4th lines of the verse differ. The 3rd line’s melody contains the highest notes of the verse as we hear in the first verse that, “love is a sweet dream that always comes true”. Just as the tone of voice rises when there’s excitement when we talk, the melody accurately reflects what we’re hearing. And just as the tone of our voice naturally falls with disappointment, the 4th line’s melody steadily descends as we hear, “if life were like the movies I’d never be blue”.
The second verse continues the good prosody with the 3rd line's higher melody paired with, “and tonight on that silver screen it’ll end like it should”. And once again, the 4th line's lyric is a nice match to the downward sloping melody with, “two lovers will make it through like I hoped we would”.
Play songs you’ve written with attention to prosody and see if there’re places you can better match the emotion of your lyric with the melody and chord choice. For ideas on chord choices read the Progressions post, “Substitution in Songwriting”.
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