Monday, November 17, 2008

Lyrics in song, lyric in verse

Song and poem use many of the same levers to open up the reader's senses.

"Much of what makes great lyrics great is the choice of words," says Kevin Seal, hosting the "Word Choice in Lyrics" episode of website Pandora.com's "Pandora Video Series: Music 101" series.

This mp3 podcast conversation includes standard poetic devices, and wanders beautifully through (for example) the timeless effect of Anglo-Saxon words, such as ghost, contrasted with words whose roots might be more rationally understood from Greek or Latin (e.g. apparition).

Listen here: http://blog.pandora.com/archives/show/2007/11/word_choice_in.html.

Pandora's Music 101 series has many other podcasts that will beautifully instruct you, and evoke things and structures poetic. Try, for example, the one on music intervals.