PUTTING TOGETHER MUSIC AND WORDS
Finally, we are at the final part of the “How” question of making music! Here we are talking about agreement, which involves putting together the words and the tune. It seems as if that would be easy, but there are three main points that we need to be aware of when combining the tune with its words.
1. Agreement of Meter
Remember back to the section on “meter” in part one of the “How” posts; maybe it would be good for you to just pull it up and read it again quickly. Of course, when we put our words to music, we must fit the number of words in with the number of notes in the tune’s melody. But there is something else about meter that I did not tell you before.
There are different kinds of meter, basically represented by these two: “Iambic” and “Trochaic”. Iambic meter means that the stress is on the even-numbered syllables, while Trochaic means that the stress in on the odd syllables. I will use examples to help you understand clearly. Think of the song “What Child is This?” Think of where the stress lies when you speak it:
“what CHILD is THIS, who, LAID to REST on MAR-y’s LAP is SLEEP-ing?”
That is an Iambic meter, because the natural stress is on the even-numbered syllables. Take our previous song, “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy”, which has the same number of syllables as “What Child”.
“THERE’S a WIDE-ness IN God’s MERC-y, LIKE the WIDE-ness OF the SEA”.
The stress is on the odd-numbered syllables, so it is a Trochaic meter. Even though they have the same meter numbers, 87.87. (ignoring the refrain, or chorus, on “What Child”), the stress is different. If you tried to sing “There’s a Wideness” to the tune of “What Child”, you would end up putting the stresses in very awkward places! Try it:
“there’s A wide-NESS in GOD’S merc-Y….” You can’t even stand to finish, can you?
So, when you are matching words to a tune, make sure that the tune supports the natural placement of stresses; otherwise, you will be telling people to sing stresses on words that should not be stressed, and to not stress the words that should be.
2. Agreement of Rhythm
Similar to the agreement of meter, this is an important aspect of our matching game here. Remember that rhythm has to do with the duration of notes. When we put words inside of those notes, we need to make sure that we balance them well and don’t put too much or too little word for the duration of the note.
More examples will help me to demonstrate this point: Think of the tune for “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” again. We’re going to focus on the duration of the notes for the words “What a”. If we were to draw the words proportionately to the sounds we sing, it might look like this:
Whaaaat a friend we have in Jeeee-suuus….
You feel the rhythm there, which was well-chosen for the duration of the words themselves. What if we dropped in the words to “Amazing Grace”?
Aaaaaaa- maz-ing grace how sweet theeee sooound….
The length of the first note and last two notes indicates that those words are important and that the emphasis is on those syllables, whereas in our “Amazing Grace” version, that is certainly a poor choice of rhythm for the words. Let’s make sure our syllables and emphases and rhythms agree with one another and make for a natural-sounding song.
3. Agreement of Mood
I have mentioned this point before, but it deserves to be repeated with a little more emphasis. If you need a reminder of what mood has to do with, go back to part one of the “How” question posts and find the section on mood. There is a certain mood that is produced by choosing specific words, and when we match a tune to those words, we need to be careful that they complement each other. If you know the deep, mature words to “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus”, can you imagine singing them to the giddy tune of “Brethren, We Have Met to Worship”? They agree in meter and in rhythm, but they most certainly do not agree in mood! For such deep words (haha), a slow, swelling tune that sounds like ocean waves is very appropriate.
Well, that was certainly a shorter one that the previous two, but there was so much to talk about in each section! However, there is more out there than what I wrote in these posts on writing music; so look around for great authors who express what they have learned about making music. Everyone brings a little something else to the discussion, and I’m not going to pretend that I can equip you for this noble (yet fun!) task on my own. Even so, I hope that you realize that, while there are a lot of parts to it, much of it comes naturally or is not that difficult… especially once you start doing it!
Perhaps you are thinking that you’d like to write music now, but you’re not sure what medium to use in writing it down. In the next post, I’d like to share with you “where” I write music, so stay tuned! (Get it? We’re talking about music, and I said….. Oh, never mind.)
Soli Deo Gloria!
-Abby
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