Behind the Note: Lyrics

| Apr 12, 2017

Are yous the kind of person who mainly remembers the lyrics of a song, or do you remember the melody more readily? Or both equally? This article will exist of special interest to the "lyrics-oriented" among y'all, but it's of import for anyone writing down music with words, whether it'due south bluegrass, opera, choral music, or Indonesian pop. If those lyrics accept been written along with the tune (not e'er the example — some songbooks assume you know the tunes and include merely the lyrics), then someone somewhere had to grapple with the question: "how exercise I write this so the vocalizer will know exactly how to line up the lyrics with the notes… even if they accept never heard the song before?" Of course singers oftentimes know the vocal already, so the canvas music serves partly as a memory help. But a central purpose of music annotation is to serve as a complete blueprint for re-creating music from scratch, entirely from the score. If you lot are the composer or arranger, assuming that the reader has never heard the music before is the best way to ensure your score is as clear and elegantly written every bit it can exist.

Writing lyrics tin can be tricky because it'due south non e'er obvious how they should line upwards with the notes. If you get information technology wrong, you may confuse the vocalist and get some unexpected results. This commodity reviews the basics of lyrics annotation, then delves into deeper mysteries such equally beaming and syllabification.

Basics

There are a few conventions of lyric-writing, passed down to the states through the centuries, that Noteflight handles for you… if yous are using Noteflight correctly. Be sure to read this section in our User Guide.

1. Lyrics go beneath the staff, except in unusual circumstances.
ii. Each syllable lines up vertically under the note or group of notes on which that syllable is sung.
three. Dashes (hyphen key) separate syllables within the aforementioned word.
4. Spaces (space bar) separate unlike words.
5. An underscore line (underscore, or shift-hyphen) continues to the last annotation of a melisma (many notes on one syllable) – as in a single-syllable word or the final syllable in a word.

For these elements to look right in your score, you need to use our special kind of text designed for Lyrics: select a annotation, click the little "la-" icon on the Object Editing Palette, and start typing your lyrics, using spaces and hyphens between syllables and words at the correct moments. The most often-missed of these is the continuation-underscore lines at the ends of words.

Here is a sample showing the same melody written iii times: the outset version has several mistakes; the center one is pretty good only still leaves out some important elements — this one is typical of how many scores on Noteflight look — and the third version has some farther corrections, for a admirable result.

Can you place all the errors in Versions 1 and two?

Errors in Version 1:
– "-mazing" is ii syllables with no dash between them, and that's a problem. A single note tin't accept more than one syllable except in special cases. And in this case, doing this leaves two notes without any lyrics at all!
– "li-ke": unmarried-syllable words, and individual syllables, should not break up into separate vowels and consonants. Endeavour singing the word "li-ke" and you'll see why: if you lot accept information technology very literally, it is telling yous to sing just a closed consonant "-ke" on that note: nearly impossible, though information technology sounds a bit comical to effort!

Time out for an Eternal Truth of Vocal Writing! You can sing on a vowel, but it's much harder to sing on most consonants, except open, voiced ones like mmmm, ngggg, or nnnnn.

Version two looks pretty good, but examine it carefully to see why it still needed the corrections seen in Version 3:
– Slurs and extension/underscore lines were missing in Version ii on "-ing", "a", and "like". These are always needed on multi-note syllables (some music editors omit the slurs, but no i knows why they engage in this mysterious beliefs; you should always include the slurs).
– For words ending in "-ing", the "-ing" should go by itself. It's just usually easier to read.
– Oh, and in that location was a trivial typo in Version 2: the missing nuance in "amazing." Those petty dashes are very easy to miss – peculiarly when they are missing!

And that'due south just the start. There is more you will demand to go on in mind — things that Noteflight tin can't right for y'all — to make your scores wait right, clear, and beautiful.

Dynamics

In a vocal part, dynamics become to a higher place the staff. This is for the uncomplicated reason that if they are below the staff (as is correct in instrumental parts) they compete for visual attention with the lyrics, and can too easily crash into the lyrics (music notation is like traffic safety: endeavor to avoid objects crashing into each other). This includes all expression-related items: dynamic markings such every bit p , ff , etc; expression markings such as espressivo, cresc., and dim., and "hairpin" markings showing crescendos and diminuendos.

Noteflight places dynamics below the staff by default (since information technology is the default the rest of the time), so you will demand to move the first one manually up — the all-time way is by using the upward-arrow key. Only after that a newly-created expression text item (which includes dynamics) volition automatically appear in the same location equally the previous ane, so you won't need to movement each ane. If y'all do need to move a lot of dynamics at once, use the Filter tool in the Edit menu to select them, then the up pointer.

A frequent question we go is: how to create a second, third, and fourth line of lyrics for additional verses? This is in our User Guide but is worth reviewing here: just double-click the first syllable of your lyrics to get the blinking cursor, striking the return/enter key, and continue typing to enter your next verse.

Melisma is Not a Malady

When more than i note occurs on 1 syllable it'due south chosen a melisma. If that syllable is in the middle of a word, keeping hitting the hyphen key to add dashes until you become to the next syllable (there tin can exist any number of dashes); if information technology's at the end of a word, use an extension line (underscore). Make sure to put a slur over all the notes in your melisma.

If i syllable tin can have more one note, can one notation take more than one syllable? Near e'er, no. But there are some exceptions. As our User Guide points out, some languages such as Italian accept elisions betwixt words. To add two syllables or words on one note, utilise the plus sign (+) for the space between the words (when y'all exit the blinking cursor, the + will disappear).

To Beam, or Not to Beam?

In older printed editions of vocal scores, you will often encounter beams joining notes that autumn nether i syllable, while separate syllables accept separately flagged notes and no beams. Singers will tell you: that old style is really hard to read, and it'south not longer done this way. Instead, use regular beaming to show the beat divisions (check out our earlier article on that topic), and slurs to bear witness melismas:

Syllabification

Probably the trickiest topic in writing lyrics is how to divide the words into syllables. This article merely discusses syllabification in English language; tackling other languages is simply too long a topic to fit hither.

Peculiarly Welsh.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

But even English has many a puzzler to keep the lyricist busy. For example, you have probably establish yourself wondering on more than one occasion, "is information technology sup-er-ca-li-fra-gil-is-tic-ex-pi-a-li-do-cious? or su-per-cal-i-frag-i-list-ic-exp-i-al-i-doctor-ious?' Mary Poppins wants to know.

This is where lyric notation is more than of an fine art than a scientific discipline — that is, there is some room for disagreement amid experts. However, in that location are some agreed-upon norms that you should follow.

The simplest rule of thumb is that lyric syllabification follows the syllabification in the dictionary. Co-ordinate to Oxford Dictionaries online, it'due south:
su·per·ca·li·fra·gil·is·tic·ex·pi·a·li·do·cious

Meanwhile, at to the lowest degree one version of the musical score has it:
su-per-cal-i-frag-il-is-tic-ex-pi-al-i-exercise-cious

Why those small differences? "-cal-i-" or "-ca-li-"? "-fra-gil-" or "-frag-il-"? And how to choose? These are among the many things that keep Mary Poppins up at dark. The choice involves where to identify the consonants, and the guiding principle should be: what's easiest for the singer to read? But that isn't always obvious. What are the pros and cons in a given case?

A commonly-seen and (on the face of information technology) logical option is to put each consonant on the note on which the vocalist volition actually exist sounding that consonant: and then in the Mary Poppins vocal "-ca-" would go on 1 note, and "-50i-" on the adjacent note; similarly, "-fra-" then "-thousandil-". But this approach doesn't always give the most readable result, considering consonants earlier and after a vowel make up one's mind which version of that vowel we use.

Allow's illustrate this with a dissimilar case. What if yous were a singer sight-reading this slice you lot've never seen or heard earlier, and there is a page plough in the heart of a word, like this:

That mu- presents you with a fateful pick! Your career could hang in the balance! If the word is "music," you should sing "myoo" but if it's "mutton" you should sing "muh". The composer has not given you plenty information!

Luckily, vegetarians can rest easy, because here it is rewritten with the consonant where it belongs:

If that syllable were "mut-" yous still don't know the whole discussion yet, but at least you know which vowel to apply. Words with double consonants between syllables are squeamish because y'all can put each consonant on ane of the syllables: mut-ton.

All that said, this is not an exact science: "mus-" wouldn't have entirely clarified things: it could have been "mustard" — which incidentally goes great with mutton (vegetarians, you are non entirely safe). Just it's better than "mu-".

For a give-and-take with two syllables that each have their own separate starting/catastrophe consonants, similar "shoulder," the discussion should be carve up with each syllable intact: shoul-der.

Si-nging? No.

Equally noted earlier, for words ending in "-ing" the main part of the word stays unified and "-ing" goes by itself. For example: sing-ing not si-nging (that 1 might be obvious); glid-ing not gli-ding. This is besides an exception to cases where ii different consonants might otherwise hands split up up two syllables: it should exist stand-ing not stan-ding.

Climb Ev-er-y Mountain?
How nearly words with lots of letters squished into one syllable, and words that can be sung with dissimilar numbers of syllables depending on how you practice information technology? An instance of both quandaries at once is every. Is it three syllables: ev-er-y, or two? There is no simple dominion here: it comes down to the composer'due south/arranger'south choice. If y'all desire the vocaliser to use two syllables, then should yous write it ever-y, or ev-ery? Collective wisdom suggests ev-ery, merely opinions may vary. Or as some older editions might have it: ev'-ry.

How well-nigh "gathering"? Information technology should probably be gather-ing, even though the outset syllable seems to have ii syllables, a singer will likely sing it in 2 syllables as "gath-ring". But don't write it that way. Or maybe it should be an exception to the "ing" rule: "gath-ering." You make up one's mind!

Over again, syllabification is an fine art, not a science. But exist sensitive to the issues that can arise, look at a lot of scores (especially professionally published ones), and keep in heed these few basic principles. Nasty syllabification problems may be among the things that continue Mary Poppins awake at night, but at least we can agree on how many syllables supercalifragilisticexpialidocious has.