Learning how to write magical song lyrics is a long process that not only takes practice but also life experience. Nevertheless, sometimes you stumble upon things that open your eyes, motivate and inspire and help you to take big step in your development. The following four videos made a lasting impression on me and helped me understand some crucial points on how to write a great song.

This four-part video session is filmed at a master class of the Berklee College of Music. The instructor is Pat Pattison a really really great teacher and songwriter. Check out his Website Pat Pattison. The girl singing is Allison Rapetti.

In the first part Pat describes how lyric rhythm and melodic rhythm should match in order to convey the lyrical idea the best. I quote Pat Pattison, “If you can’t say it like that, you can’t sing it like that”.

Here, Pat explains the most important words of a sentence should always be represented by stressed notes. Otherwise, if you emphasis unimportant filling words or prepositions like to, and, that or which they distract from the meaningful words.

The title already says it, try to preserve the natural shape of the language. I quote again, “You literally can not get inside the song if you saying something that is unnatural for you to say”

This one is really funny. Pat changes one single word and the flow of the entire phrase gets so much better. What he does is he matches three melodic ideas with three lyrical statements instead of three melodically with two lyrical statements.

If you like Pat Pattison’s approach, really want to bring your songwriting to the next level and learn how to write song lyrics I warmly recommend you his books “” and ““.