Rhyme Is Good, Free Verse Is Bad... Right?

Everywhere you look today in the music industry, you see plenty of songs that follow one of many very simple and basic rhyming or verse/chorus patterns. Sometimes any of these songs will stick out better than the rest. And it has nothing to do with the pattern it was written in but rather the way the words were written and used together. However, most of the time artists who are simply looking to hit it big stick to "I Find you -- You're so blue -- Can't we be -- By the sea," and other preverbial crap like that.

I've found over the last year that my writing style has changed drastically. I started off with some of the basic verse/chorus schemes that you'll see. But as I realized the songs I was writing stunk, I started changing. The reason nothing I was doing seemed right was because it wasn't as real and powerful as it can be. Outlines to which you base your song off of are what can hold back the best lines in music. I began writing free-verse ever since then. Free verse writing only has a name, no outline. It is exactly what the name says as well. The verses are put freely into the song wherever the author so chooses. Bridges are used but they're not typical bridges because they don't always "bridge" you into the chorus or the pre-chorus. What they serve instead as a way to change the flow of the song in a way where everything still sounds correct and makes sense. I've benefited greatly from free-verse writing over the past few months.

Instead of writing lyrical music, you write musical poetry in free-verse. At least that's how it's seemed in my expirience. You can say alot of complex, intriguing things when there's no limit on how long your verse lines can be. The other thing that I've found to be quite good about free-verse is that ever line, doesn't have the same amount syllables or words. Syllables go from few to many in the same verse. This can cause problems sometimes, but if the music you've composed to go with it fits, it can be some of the very best, original stuff you'll ever hear. One of the problems I have with the basic writing styles of today is you are very often able to figure out what's coming next. You can sometimes know the words of a song as you listen to it without ever having heard the song before.

I've also found that alot of people have shown much dislike towards free-verse writing. They'll say that it's because it doesn't make sense or it's not formed enough. But that's the beauty of FR writing. I think there are times when people take a dislike for that kind of writing because they can't picture the words being sung, or the music being played when they look at the words on paper. This is something I've heard a few times. It's all a preference thing I suppose, but wouldn't you like people to hear you play your song for the first time and just listen to it? Rather than have them be able to figure out the last line of every verse and chorus in your song.

To end it off, the basic point of this article is hopefully open up some people to this style of writing and to see how many people feel the same way about this "unorthodox" style of writing. And you know what?? I didn't mention a single artist in this entire piece... how about that?

NB: Thanks for abcmusic studio

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