If you’re familiar with the work of Pat Pattisonon lyric writing, or with my friend Steve Leslie’s instruction “There’s a ti…………ger behind you” on prosody, then the title above is intriguing, not stupefying.

If you’re not familiar, prosody refers to the rhythmic inflection, or the stress of certain words within your melody. Ideally, your stresses, or emphasis should follow the natural emphasis you make when speaking.

In Steve Leslie’s example above, you would naturally emphasize the “Ti” of “Tiger”, not the “ger” of “Tiger”.

That seems fair enough, until you start writing those blasted songs!

Strangely enough, there countless examples of songs making it onto radio with weird unnatural accents! Once you’ve heard one, it’ll drive you crazy!

So where do we find some great examples of prosody to challenge and inspire us? You gotta go the classics, one of my favorites (pun intended) shown below, by the masters of Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Do you have others? Let me know, and I’ll post them here! Enjoy!

(p.s. find a link to Pat Pattison’s definitive work on lyric writing below!)