Stress in music

Question

I am currently reading up on songwriting and am confused by the idea of stress in music. I understand it will be necessary to match the lyrics word stress with the music beat stress but dont know how to identify stress in music almost always. Is there any tutorial or document on the web that clearly explains how to do this by ear?

Answer 1

There are several different kinds of stress in music.

Meter (lyrical) is the stress added by accents (real or implied) in the lyric. It's important to remember that meter, as it was used in writing, actually gave rhythmic form to both poetry and prose. In the case of music, the lyric may not always be delivered in a way which stresses its own meter. In one extreme case, consider the long stretched vowel at the end of the line: I can't wait to see you gooooo and notice that stretching this vowel kind of pulls it out of a normal meter. In another case, consider any hip hop lyric and you will see that these lyrics rest more firmly on meter than many others.

Harmonic stress is the relative or perceived importance of a chord based on its position in a sequence and which beat it falls upon. In a sequence of four chords, assuming the each fall on the first beat of their own measure, the stress pattern is "STRONG WEAK strong weak" where the capitals represent a beat stronger than its lower-case neighbor. This means beats 1 & 3 are the strongest and beats 2&4 are the weakest. This does not refer to loudness of a chord or any technique used to make those beats sound stronger. It just means that they are considered metrically strong based on their position in the sequence.

Beat stress is not discussed alot, but I think this is what you are referring to in matching lyrical rhythm to beat stress. In a measure of common time (with four beats) the stress of the main beats will be the same as above in the harmonic stress pattern. In addition, any subdivided beats (for instance, eighth notes) will be even weaker. For instance, consider: 1+2+3+4+. The 1 and 3 are the strong beats and the 2 and 4 are the weaker beats. But the subdivided beats represented by the + are even weaker. The concept of stress in both music and in lyric has to do with meter. In a sequence of notes of equal length, some parts of the sequence are perceived as having a stronger emphasis.

The effect of this is that you can give undue emphasis to parts of your lyric based on its metric position in the music. However, nobody really sits down and plans on what beat every syllable will land. What you do is come up with an idea, and then try to figure out which syllables sound a little stronger. Yes, they are given strength by either landing on a strong beat or being placed on a long note. But you'll need to develop the ability to recognize this by ear. If you're having trouble you may want to spend some time working on your ear training skills or even studying meter as used in poetry. But actually I suspect you may be overthinking it a little bit and you won't have much trouble. For instance, consider this lyric (with no music to make it simpler):

Don't know why I'm such a bad guy

Based on the words and their order and their meter, which do you think would be given emphasis here? Without music, it's probably why and guy that are being emphasized. But changing the rhythm of the melody can really change this alot. You could stretch out the words "know" and "I'm" (or cause them to fall on stronger beats) which would give them extra emphasis. And that emphasis might change the meaning of your song considerably. At the very least it's safe to say it's awkward to have a junk word which adds no value but has a strong emphasis in the melody. It weakens the song by diluting the importance of the more meaningful words in the lyric.

I think what trips alot of people up here is they're looking for a correct answer. In a math problem we can ask someone and they'll say, yes, that is the correct result. But in writing your own lyrics, you're the authority.

Answer 2

I'm not sure if you've found your way with lyrical/poetic meter yet, but if you haven't, I suggest practicing syllabic verse poetry, and then after you've gotten the hang of that, accentual syllabic verse poetry. Writing syllabic verse poetry will train you to gain the ability to write lines of lyrics that have exactly the desired amount of syllables. The beginning may be a bit tedious, but the reward of being able to write lines that have fixed syllables and have them sound like natural/authentic speech is worth the work.

Then, once you've learned that, you can move on to accentual syllabic verse poetry, and that will have you focus on lyrical/poetic meter. If you don't understand lyrical/poetic meter that well yet, you can train your ear by identifying the pattern that the syllables you know for sure are stressed or unstressed have in pronunciation. A great way to learn is to read accentual verse poetry while understanding what type it is. If there's a pattern, you can just follow the pattern to see which syllables are stressed and which ones are unstressed.

Once you can write with your desired syllable patterns and lyrical/poetic meter while it sounds natural, you should move on to songs again and follow the beats that are in the music then write lines with syllables of your choice that match the beats in the backing tracks.

I hope you find this information useful if you haven't gotten the hang of lyrical/poetic meter yet.

Answer 3

I am currently reading up on songwriting and am confused by the idea of stress in music.

Did you read this? If not: here is the answer!

https://www.secretsofsongwriting.com/tag/stress/

*If you’re hoping to make lyrics a more important feature of your songs, you need to read “Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting Process.” Right now, it’s free with your purchase of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 10-eBook Bundle.”

I understand it will be necessary to match the lyrics word stress with the music beat stress but dont know how to identify stress in music almost always.

This are the essentials:

1. Place stressed syllables on strong beats, and/or
2. Make a stressed syllable longer, and/or
3. Place stressed syllables higher in pitch.

Spend a good deal of time saying your lyric out loud, paying careful attention to stresses and pulses, and noting the syllables that you tend to spend a longer time on.

Make note of where natural pauses happen in your lyric. In “Country Roads”, you feel a natural pause happening frequently: “Country roads [pause] take me home [pause] etc…” Do what you can to preserve those pauses when you set the lyric to music.

Favour an oral form of speech over a written form. Choose your words to make their greatest emotional impact, particularly in the chorus.

Is there any tutorial or document on the web that clearly explains how to do this by ear?

Yes, there is:

https://www.secretsofsongwriting.com/2018/10/19/making-a-more-effective-song-lyric-stresses-pauses-and-natural-flow/

My personal advices:

Work with coulors (long notes are already white, short notes are black)

use red and green for high and low,

use bold and italic letters,

underline accented words and melodic motifs.

Look at great songwriters,

analyse in this way (using colours) their lyrics and melodies:

Hey Jude, mark the long words, the accents, note the tension that is built up by additional instruments and back ground voices.

Let it be. Compare the words corresponding of MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME in the other verses.

Question and responding are also an important element: Notice the melody form of the refrain, repeating the line of the verses.