Question:
What I think is that the stresses are by far the most important things in
the lines and that the most important words that describe what your trying
to get across in the song. Often, we try and throw a bunch of adjectives and
other words not needed between stresses which makes it sound silly when
singing. You have to rush a word or two. When you have too many syllables in
a line, it's those blasted unstressed squeeze in words again.
I like to look at it like I'm a newspaper editor. Hack it thinking "nope,
don't need that, or that, say it more directly, delete that," and so on.
Basically, use as little unstressed words as needed to amplify and embellish
the stressed words is what I'm learning.
Answer:
the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.
meter: the number of feet in a line.
scansion: Describing the rhythms of poetry by dividing the lines into feet,
marking the locations of stressed and unstressed syllables, and counting the
syllables.
Thus, when we describe the rhythm of a poem, we "scan" the poem and mark the
stresses (/) and absences of stress (^) and count the number of feet.
Iambic and anapestic meters are called rising meters because their movement
rises from unstressed syllable to stressed; trochaic and dactylic meters are
called falling. In the twentieth century, the bouncing meters--anapestic and
dactylic--have been used more often for comic verse than for serious poetry.
Spondee and pyrrhic are called feet, even though they contain only one kind
of stressed syllable. They are never used as the sole meter of a poem; if
they were, it would be like the steady impact of nails being hammered into a
board--no pleasure to hear or dance to. But inserted now and then, they can
lend emphasis and variety to a meter, as Yeats well knew when he broke up
the predominantly iambic rhythm of "Who Goes With Fergus?" with the line,
An argument might be raised against scanning: isn't it too simple to expect
that all language can be divided into neat stressed and unstressed
syllables? Of course it is. There are infinite levels of stress, from the
loudest scream to the faintest whisper. But, the idea in scanning a poem is
not to reproduce the sound of a human voice. A tape recorder can do that. To
scan a poem is to make a diagram of the stresses and absence of stress we
find in it. Studying rhythms, "scanning," is not just a way of pointing to
syllables; it is also a matter of listening to a poem and making sense of
it. To scan a poem is one way to indicate how to read it aloud; in order to
see where stresses fall, you have to see the places where the poet wishes to
put emphasis. That is why when scanning a poem you may find yourself
suddenly understanding it.
I read through most of your post and I'm not sure..... are you talking
about a specific score? Your post read as though you were writing
generically about the downbeat and that you thought all songs should
have accents on the downbeat. Forgive me if I miss read.
