Writing Better Lyrics: The Essential Guide to Powerful Songwriting

Pat Pattison teaches the tools of lyric writing as a springboard to get your ideas down and fleshed out into something emotionally impactful, these techniques can be transcended into the genre of music you're working in. You start out writing from your senses, utilising appropriate form, gramma, structure and rhythm suitable for your songs narrative, then stacking the emotional obstacles of your subject, down to the finishing touches of your lyrics. The emphasis is on practice within the 50 exercises - you learn the value of this through your efforts, not what you read :) I would strongly recommend this book if you are struggling to write from your own experiences, fleshing out ideas (getting the story going) or even if you're like me an accomplished musician but ok/crappy lyricist. I used this book to assist with writing lyrics for other audiences - for personal subjects I am not familiar with. I found myself being able to flesh out multiple versions of scenes I was not there to witness personally but have the lyrics impact me emotionally when I read them back days later. I compared what I created from this book to what I wrote before, and the difference is night and day! I also now look at other peoples works and find better ways they could have written theirs! Strongly suggest writing notes down for the milestone learning points - found these handy when I write my own lyrics. Took me about 3-4 months to complete it, ranging from 2-10 hours a week, you may be able to do it faster. I spent a-lot of time on some key exercises which allowed me to walk away with useable sections I couldn't come up with before starting this book. It feels like an epic journey when you finish it, first book I ever read without skipping the end! Thanks so much Pat Pattison

Lots of exercises to improve your writing and imagination

I have read and reread this book numerous times. In fact I feel that Pattisons way of teaching is so interesting that also tracked down more or less everything else that he has released on the internet, namely videos. I would like to give this five stars, because it deserves it in many ways. It is very well written and I admire how Pattison communicates some rather difficult concepts in a pedagogical and efficient manner. Because Pattison really goes deeper than most songwriting books; sure, he covers a lot of the conventional wisdom of song forms, show-don't-tell etc., but he also brings a lot of new things to the table. His take on rhyming and song structure for instance - a very interesting approach indeed, especially the way in which he incooperates these things in a general framework of STABILITY and INSTABILITY. These two terms are subjective/phenomenological emotions that we experience in response to certain stimuli, and, bluntly put, Pattison's approach is about creating a appropriate relationship between the feelings of stability and instability that is created in various elements of form and content. When I watch Pattisons videos it seems to me, that he has gravitated more towards focusing on stability and instability as a unifying concept. The idea is communicated in the book, but I don't feel it has the central place that it ought to have. I suspect that a third edition might be structured differently with more emphasis on that. That is one of my objections to the book. But it's in and by itself hardly enough to remove a star. I think it's more serious that music is so neglected in the book. It's understandable that a book lends itself more to talking about language, but in songwriting, musical considerations just have to be there. Jack Perricones "Melody in Songwriting" is quite good in that regard, as it fits with the stability/instability paradigm, but still: I feel there are many things specifically about the relationship between words and music that ought to be described. Also, I feel that there should be more about the challenges one encounters in the process of writing. There is a chapter with an example of a process, and it's quite good, but it neglects both the beginning and the ending phase. I give it four stars with kind of a bad conscience. Because it really is the most influential songwriting book I have read. And it's the one I always recommends others. My objections is really, that it isn't quite the "songwriting book to end them all" that it has the potential to be. Maybe that's setting the ambitions to high. It certainly is a very, very good book.

I read several books about songwriting already. And I am not used to write reviews. This time I take some minutes to say that Pat Pattison does a incredible job at showing how to write lyrics, and how to master the major tricks of the craft. He also gives a lot useful information on how to effectively implement the techniques; following the exercises can be very useful. Moreover, his book relies on real world examples, which makes the book very credible. Whether you start writing lyrics or you have some experience, I believe this book clarifies a lot of things, gives you a lot of information, and yet it is still easy to read. If you hesitate, you can watch videos of Pat Pattison on youtube, or take his songwriting course in coursera (which is also amazing!)

I am still working my way through the book but already have found myself inspired by the excercises. I tended to take the view that you either know how to write or you don't and I was a bit sceptical that a book could teach me anything - very arogant of me but that is how I felt. I read extracts before I purchased the book and got the feeling that this would be a good purchase and I was not wrong. Now "all" I have to do is write a hit song .

Got this book for my daughter, she was delighted, it seemingly is a songwriters bible, and hard to find in bookshops. So for any budding songwriters this book is a must.

Pat pattison is a great teacher. He can be seen on youtube teaching one of his classes. Will give you an insight into his style. The book itself is an interesting read and highlighted many things I had never even thought about before. It has many examples and goes over many different ideas to help you understand.. I recommend this book to anybody interested in writing bett........

My impression is that the ideas presented are too complex and difficult to actually apply. It was a book my son recommended but had no songs to show that it had been helpful to him. There will be better books on the subject.

This is an excellent book which not everyone will like. If you want a book that you can skim through with lots of lists that you can quickly digest, put into use and immediately improve your songwriting, then buy something else like Robin Frederick's book "Shortcuts to Hit Songwriting: 126 Proven Techniques for Writing Songs That Sell", which is a great book in its own right: (http://www.amazon.com/Shortcuts-Hit-Songwriting-Techniques-Writing/dp/0982004001 ) . This book requires work, dedicated concentration and more than anything else, practice. You can easily live with this book for 6 months or more. Pattison's approach is very analytical and it deals only with lyrics and how to communicate them in a way that best transmits the emotional effect which the songwriter has in mind. The book goes far beyond Pattison's Coursera Songwriting course and his Youtube video lectures. I have found that for me, his techniques work best in rewriting my songs. There is so much here, that it is difficult to implement it all in the real-time process of songwriting. But once I have written a song, I can go back and apply his techniques to improve my songs. Especially interesting is his technique to use the 5 rhyme-types (perfect, family, additive/subtractive, assonance, consonance) and a rhyming dictionary as a search engine to brainstorm ideas to write a song from a concept or a title. I have never heard anyone else use this method, but I find that not only does it work for me, it also opens my ear to more easily find rhymes other than the perfect rhyme. Some people will not have the patience to work through this book, and for them, it will be a waste of money to buy. But I really like the book and it has taught me a lot of useful information to improve my songwriting.

This is a must for any song writer. I don't care how pro or amateur you are. It will also impact all poets and prose writers. There's a whole section where words come to life as sounds, conveying not only emotion, but cool techniques for echoing structural dissonance, nostalgia, unity. The book helped me start looking at rhyme in a whole new way, like a pallette of emotional and structural colors.

Ich brauche das Buch um meine Liedtexte zu verbessern.

I have the Kindle edition of this book. And I'm grateful that vey few people know that such a book exists! As it said in its foreword, it's a hidden gem, hiding in plain sight!

Excellent book for those who want to be lyrics writers in English. The books is written in a pedagogic way, so everyone can follow. The book provide advice and techniques to polish your lyrics.