Pat Pattison Interview (Part 2/6) | Learning the Art of Phrasing from John Lennon's "Imagine"
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- Pat Pattison is a professor at the Berklee College of Music, where he has taught lyric writing, songwriting, and poetry for 47 years.
In this series, Pat takes us through the elements of lyric writing - and demonstrates how making decisions about the structure and placement of lyrics can amplify the meaning and emotions we are trying to convey. Motion creates emotion.
In this video, Pat answers the question: does it matter if a songwriter knew what they were doing? What can we learn from what John Lennon did in "Imagine"?
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Pat is also the author of 'Writing Better Lyrics', the world's best-selling book on the craft of lyric writing. You can find that here: amzn.to/3aACkRn
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That was as clear an answer to the question of: will learning writing techniques inhibit a writer's creativity, as I've ever heard. I had never realized that about "Imagine", a great example to illustrate the explanation. Thanks for posting this!
It's a question that arises a lot. And honestly, I relate to it. My own creative spark was pretty low the whole time I was in full-on study mode at music college. But on the other side of it, it has meant that I have a decades long career as a songwriter and musician. I know how to finish every song; I know what options I can draw on to solve the creative challenges that arise...and none of that makes it feel less creative at this point!
Lennon knew what he was doing, he learned techniques called "rhetorical devices" that were often taught in English/grammar/literature back in school then. An upcoming book called "SongMatrix" by Wayne Chase will reveal tons of those devices and techniques that not only Lennon learned, but other great writers like Paul Simon knew. They were aware of what they were doing, they just didn't have names at the time. This upcoming book will finally have names and categories for these techniques which Pat doesn't have in any of his books yet and I think he'll be excited to read about when it's released!
Thanks for this. I'm certainly aware of the catalogue of rhetorical devices. Alas, none of them talk about the placement of phrases in a musical context. :)
@@patpattison6641 cheers! One day I hope to see a giant collective of writing wisdom all pooled together, but not as sinister as a galactic empire ;)
I implicitly use the relaxed Imagine rhythmic feel when I forget to time-correct my DAW….
great job, everyone!
Oh! ... it's on patreon. Clever! (surprised having jumped from part 1 to part 2, expecting it was supposed to be at least 50 minutes each...
I love this series
The Beatles sound was dubbed "backbeat" from the very start (it is even the name of a movie about their early years). So yes, he definitely knew about that trick.
"Backbeat" is the term used to indicate the groove's emphasis on the 2nd and 4th beats in the bar. It's the key to rock and roll. It is, however, completely unrelated to where a phrase begins in the bar. Front-heavy/back-heavy is about phrase placement. Backbeat is about musical groove.
I wish I could remember who said this about John Lennon, someone that worked close with him said that Imagine are Yoko's words, interesting, I recite the lyrics in my head using her voice and I can see these words being her words, maybe is a collaboration of the two. Any how, my husband is obsess with Pat Pattison's book.
She probably opendd his mind to the subject
Very cool interview. In the end, it doesn’t matter if you create using explicit knowledge or not, as long as you reach your end goal. I do think it’s helpful to figure out which method works for you, personally, and lean into that. I’m all about using theory and explicit knowledge of how melody and harmony work together; many great songs have been written with that knowledge and many have been written without. Anyway, thanks for the video!
Thank you the video! I have a question regarding lyric setting in particular to John Lennon's "Imagine". Pat said that singing the word "imagine" after the downbeat of beat 1 (a strong beat) made the line feel more floaty and less authoratitive (which I agree). However, isn't the line, "Imagine there's no heaven," not set to good lyric setting. For example, on beat 3, Lennon sings the word, "there's" which is not an important word. Lennon sings the word, "heaven" on the "and" and "a" of beat 4 in the bar where the unstressed syllable of heaven ("en") is the closest note to beat 1 of the next bar (a strong beat). So isn't this bad lyric setting? Or is it okay to break the rules of lyric setting? I love the song but after analzing, it doesn't follow the rules of lyric setting (at least to me). What are your thoughts? I love your channel as well as the ideas of Pat. Thanks!
Did Lennon have a technical musical understanding, No. Trial and error, experience, feeling, trying something new, endless pure creativity, lending from other bands. This is why George Martin was so important to them in the early days and the rest was learnt as a great musical adventure along the way. Ringo's drum technique was backbeat so Lennon was very familiar with, backbeat. If you watch the 'Imagine' film John knew what he wanted more to the point, he expected other musicians to know what he wanted which was fine for the Beatles but problematic for people not used to his process. Use technical musical knowledge to enhance your process but try not to be too formulaic, as the gentleman suggested make me 'feel something'.
'everyone loves imagine'--nonsense..elvis costello said imagine is rubbish.
People who sit around and talk about writing songs..... don't write songs.
Not entirely true, in this case, my friend. You're welcome to explore any of the available links to mine and Benny's music.
They may write fewer songs but more good ones, as they spend time understanding the mechanisms for excellence. We all know people who claim to have written a hundred songs...which is mostly the same song over and over.