Pay attention to the way that sentences are spoken. There are countless possibilities for how to phrase something. Listen to these variations of "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child."
SOMEtimes I feel like a motherless child.
SomeTIMES I feel like a motherless child.
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
Sometimes I FEEL like a motherless child.
Sometimes I feel like a MOTHERless child.
Sometimes I feel like a motherless CHILD.
There may be more than one word in a sentence that seems to deserve extra weight:
SomeTIMES I FEEL like a MOTHERLESS child.
Try it yourself. Pick out some of the lyrics for a song you are writing and try speaking them in different ways. You might want to underline syllables that you think are the ones you stress when speaking them, and then look for ways to bring those out with the melody and harmony. If you set up a melodic pattern you might try rewriting your lyrics in other verses so that the words in corresponding positions. If you use the same pattern of emphasis on "And then I remember what she was like" in the corresponding place in another verse you'd have "And THEN I REmember WHAT she was like" which seems unnatural. You might want to rewrite the line like "I KNOW that SHE wouldn't LEAVE me alone."
Try rewriting your lyrics so that the stresses fall in the same place in each verse. That way the melodies that you put them to can reinforce, rather than fight against, the natural flow of the lyrics.
Words can be stressed in a number of ways—singing them on higher notes, holding them longer, putting them on strong beats, putting them at the end of a line or before a rest, and making them louder.
Try tapping your foot or hand while you are sounding out your lyrics. Try emphasizing the important words by stressing them in one or more ways.
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