Songwriting: Essential Guide to Rhyming

This is a wonderfully readable book. It isn't padded out with digressions or irrelevances, rather it is a proper workshop manual that tells (and shows) you exactly how to go about becoming a far more creative and less cliched lyricist by truly understanding; how rhyming works, what a singer will find hard to sing when on the borders of their range, consonant combinations that singers will find hard to make clear, words that on paper do not appear to rhyme but are in fact almost perfect rhymes when sung, why some combinations of words sound like nonsense in songs, the mechanics of and using alternative sounds that can be used in place of those hard to rhyme with, how imperfect rhymes and consonants etc affect the emotion and impetus of a phrase, and much more besides...

The author takes you through creating a song worksheet and the reasons why doing this frees the mind to be more inspired. Having tried it for myself I can vouch for it as a brilliant source of ideas. I'll never go back to the "now what rhymes with xxxxx" method of lyric writing... it would be akin to hammering nails in with my fist after I'd learnt to use a hammer!

Pat Pattison also goes to a great deal of trouble to explain how to use and get the best out of "The Complete Rhyming Dictionary by Clement Wood" and works through some difficult rhyming challenges using it.

It is essential that you have a rhyming dictionary to hand (I'd certainly recommend the above which I also have a copy of) as nearly all of the exercises require the use of a dictionary, often to find previously unthought-of alternative rhymes as well as to find inspiration. The author makes the point that using a rhyming dictionary is just using a tool that is appropriate for the job, and by the end of the book I found myself using it to extraordinary effect.

If you've got a phonetic rhyming dictionary already and need to know how to use it properly then this book will also be invaluable to you.

In a nutshell this book is brilliant, a real gem. You'll get the best out of this book (and yourself) by doing the exercises!

I was absolutely amazed at the number of possible ryhmes I was missing. Studying Pat's techniques not only helps you write better lyrics they also help you broaden your songwriter's vocabulary. Once you read this book, you will notice an immediate change in your approach to lyric writing.