Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Rhyming with Sammy Cahn

I've just read four-time Academy Award winner Sammy Cahn's book, The Songwriter's Rhyming Dictionary.

That may sound odd, until you know that the first quarter of this book is an introduction - actually a tutorial - on song writing from one of the greats. Sammy Cahn (1913 - 1993) wrote some of the most famous songs ever performed in Broadway musicals, in films, and by greats like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Doris Day. Can you say "royalties?" The short rhyming dictionary that follows the intro is true to his style of simplicity in language.

I've never considered myself a huge fan of musicals or any of the crooners from that era - but they did have a following that meant something to their audiences - big audiences. When it came to songwriting, Cahn knew what he was doing.

This slim 1983 tome, which is now in its ninth printing, has pure songwriting gold in its fifty or so introductory pages. Using concrete examples, explanations, and most importantly, his personal experience, Cahn lifts the lid off of a number of tried and true techniques that will never become outdated. He also demonstrates how and when exceptions to songwriting rules can really make a song memorable, articulates when, how, and why to break a rhyming pattern, and when and how to use made-up words.

Most interesting to me was the section entitled "The words must marry the music." The heart of a great song is in the emotional experience - how a song makes the listener feel. A lyric that makes intellectual sense and is clear about its message or story, but doesn't make the heart sing, just doesn't cut it for Cahn.

Cahn was a convicted, committed, hard working song writer. Example after example demonstrates how hard he and his co-writing partners would work to find just the right word or phrase. It's all packed into the first fifty introductory pages, but Cahn is so clear in his illustrations, that the book is worth the price even without the rhyming dictionary.

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