[MUSIC] Many years ago, I was sitting in the Berklee Library and I was reading the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. And I was reading it for pleasure. I know, I know the phrase, get a life, springs to mind. But there I was, and I was reading the section on phonetic relationships, phonetic groupings. And I thought, this is going to be really exciting. And it started talking about consonant groupings. I said, okay, okay. I said, here's a group of consonants, all of them use the air column in the same way. All of them use the air column by interrupting it and then exploding with it. And those are called plosives because they explode. There were six of them. There's the, [SOUND] do that? [SOUND] Note that the place that you're exploding your two lips together stop the air, [SOUND] and then, [SOUND] explode, okay? Now let's try the t sound. [SOUND] Now note, [COUGH] that you're putting the tip of your tongue on your hard palette stopping the air there and then exploding. [SOUND] so, [SOUND]. And finally, let's take a look at the k sound, [SOUND] where you raise the middle of your tongue to your soft palate, [SOUND] interrupt the air there and then explode with it. So that moving backwards in the mouth we have, [SOUND] all of which are phonetically related, in that they interrupt the air column and then explode with it. If you do the p sound, [SOUND] note that you are not using your vocal chords. [SOUND] You are not engaging your vocal chords. [SOUND] If you engage your vocal chords while doing the p sound, [SOUND] it becomes a b. [SOUND] so that p and b, [SOUND] let's call them partners. That is to say they have in common that they both interrupt the air column with your two lips. They have as a differentiation that the p in unvoiced, you don't use your voice, and that the b is voiced, you do engage your vocal chords. So, [SOUND] do the t sound, [SOUND] now engage your vocal chords. [SOUND] It becomes a d. And so there's t's partner, d. Now, let the k sound, [SOUND] engage your vocal chords. [SOUND] It becomes a g. So there are your six plosives, the three unvoiced p, t, k and the three voiced b, d, g, and they form a family. I thought wow, that's pretty interesting, never thought of that. And then, little voice in the back of my head said, I wonder if anyone's ever applied this to rhyming. And so I looked around, looked around, looked around, looked around, nobody had. And so I thought, okay, why don't I do that. So here, we are playing around with the second condition for perfect rhyme, that the consonant sounds after the vowel have exactly the same sound. And I'm changing the second condition for perfect rhyme to the consonant sounds after the vowel are phonetically related. And that creates then, family rhyme. So when we're working simply in these six plosives, what would happen if let's say, starting with, [MUSIC] So there I've got mud that I want to rhyme and let's say that I go into my perfect rhymes, and find out blood, stud. And I don't really have as many possibilities there, I can't really say what I want to say in this I guess fairly stable, let's say, sequence. So I'm going to go different places. So using this whole notion of phonetically related consonants again, here we have the d as the ending consonant. And let's then take a look at d's partner, t, and go to our rhyming dictionary. And find in our rhyming dictionary, words that use the short u vowel, [SOUND] but end in t. So in a rhyming dictionary, we'll get things like cut, glut, hut, shut, rut, so, [MUSIC] Really? [MUSIC] Sound a lot alike. That is to say here using the partner we have something like a perfect rhyme substitute. Let's go back into this this little rectangle, it's two companions, b which is voiced like d is, and g which is voiced like d is. [MUSIC] So that we have now in looking at t, and now b, and now g, as ending consonants, we have now increased our rhyming options by a factor of three. So we have three times as many opportunities to say something that we mean, that is interesting, and still create what amounts to a perfect rhyme. We can also work with t's to companions. So, [MUSIC] And still retain that close resemblance between all of those sounds. Based on the manipulation of the second condition for perfect rhyme, which is now reading that the consonants following the vowel, belong to the same phonetic family. So having thought about this and said wow, okay, that really seems to make sense, and looking to see if anybody else had worked down that alleyway, I thought okay, I'm going to do that. And so you'll find in chapter four of writing better lyrics this whole schematic of family rhyme. I then continued reading into another group of consonants which instead of interrupting the air column. Actually impede the air column, and create by impeding the air column, friction, friction. And those are, because they create friction by impeding, making it difficult for the air to get out but not stopping it. Those are called fricatives, because they create friction. And for the fricatives, there are ten of them. As you can see on the chart, they're also broken into companions, that is in the same rectangle, those that are voiced in the same way. Both the voiced fricatives and the unvoiced fricatives. So that when you start with a word that ends in a fricative, you can then start working in the companion box. And then into the partners box, and see what you can figure out. So let's take, anybody looking for love? Looking for love? [SOUND] So, go to your rhyming dictionary under perfect rhymes, you will find above, dove, glove, and by the way you won't find of, O-F. That has a slightly different vowel sound. But how many times has love been rhymed with of? Lots of times. But that's just an application of this close proximity of ryhme. So that you have very limited number of possibilities in trying to rhyme love. How many songs have looked heavenward when talking about love, the sky above, the stars above, all of these of ove, above, above. Why do stars seem so romantic? Why does the Moon seem so well? Maybe they are, you know what, they're also up there, and so they, you can use the word above. Now, it seems to me that, what if the sound that we had come up with when we were in our hominid stage, and just developing sounds where we're pointing at things. What if instead of coming up with the word love, what if we had said that concept, that thing, that feeling in the heart, what if we had said gurt? I gurt you, I gurt you. At which point when those sounds now connect with that feeling, I bet you there would be lots of farming metaphors. Dirt, girt, and of course obviously since all love leads to pain, hurt would work really well too, just kidding. So that because the perfect rhyme possibilities with love are so limited, let's see if we can expand it a little bit. Certainly, [MUSIC] That all of those are going to create some degree of connection that even though it's not a perfect rhyme, you're going to get fairly consistent stability. Now, note that love and crush, Doesn't sound when you say it like so much of a rhyme, or like a perfect rhyme substitute. But note also that singer's sing vowels. That vowels are our tone generators, so that when I sing, [MUSIC] The vowels are the kings. The vowels are the royalty. The consonants are simply second class citizens. So, [MUSIC] And so when the vowels in songs as they always are, are your first class citizens, your royalty, and the consonants second-class citizens, [MUSIC] Feels pretty close. So it's because of the nature of songs that its a vowel exaggerated medium, that we can make really interesting connections between words which if spoken. Don't quite create that full resolution, or at least a strong resolution. But in song, we can do that. Thirdly, according to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, there are the nasals, those three sounds that come out your nose. So [SOUND] the m sound. [SOUND] the n sound. [SOUND] the ng sound. Those three are in the same family. Note that all three of them are voiced. They have in common that they all drive the air column up your nose. And so the sound comes out to your nose. Your sound for the m, [SOUND] closes your lips, and uses the mouth and the sinus cavities as a resonating chamber. The n sound, [SOUND] raises the tip of your tongue to your hard palate and takes part of your mouth out of the resonating chamber. And that's why m and n sound different from each other. You have part of your mouth, about half of your mouth resonating along with your sinus cavities. And then the ng sound, [SOUND] completely closes your, it takes your mouth out of the mix and sends all of the sound up through your nasal cavities. So that those three, [MUSIC] Are pretty close. And so those are the three categories of consonants, the plosives, the fricatives and the nasals, which you can engage in creating perfect rhyme substitutes, family rhyme. And in doing that, we'll be able to create something like closure, so that what family rhyme does is, first of all, it gives you in the plosives five times the number of options you have as simple perfect rhyme. In the fricatives, since usually all of the fricatives don't engage, it will generally give you seven or eight times as many opportunities to say what you mean and still have a stable rhyme, a result ryhme. And then the nasal, of course you get in by factor of two or three, the number of opportunities to say what you mean and still rhyme.
