Pat Pattisons Songwriting Essential Guide to Rhyming | Step-by-Step Lyric Writing Book for Poets and Songwriters | Improve Rhyme Techniques and Wordplay | Berklee Press Second Edition

Brilliant resource. It's systematized and methodological like a theory book, but it's written in very plain and easy language with a barrage of helpful examples. Please note--plain and easy language doesn't mean you can skim it and understand it. You have to think about what he is saying and do the examples yourself to really learn from this. He doesn't just give examples of using rhymes effectively, but he also provides examples of the process of researching and crafting rhymes, and making decisions about lyric writing. He has a great blog, too. Google it.

I enjoyed working through this book. Lots of great information presented in a way that is easy to understand. I also worked through Pat's book on Song Form, Writing Better Lyrics, and Songwriting Without Boundaries. All together, his work makes for a comprehensive look into better writing technique. Buy. These. Books.

Why would you need a 123 page book on how to rhyme? We all know June - spoon - moon - tune and love - above - dove, don't we? This book requires study and practice. No one is going to skim through this book and immediately become a better songwriter. But the effort is worth it. Pattison goes way beyond the perfect rhyme, so often used by the old school lyricists who wrote for Broadway musicals. He shows how to find and use the perfect, family, additive, subtractive, consonance and assonance rhymes of a given word. Once you develop the habit of systematically finding all of the possible perfect and less-than-perfect rhymes, you will be a better lyric writer. But it requires study and practice. Spend a month or two with this book and do the exercises. The process gets easier the more you do it.

This is a very technical book, that will give you a deeper understanding of rhymes, some times the technical stuff gets a little dry but it's worth pushing through that to be able to use the tools it offers some one that is trying to get better at anything. I highly recommend this book. I'm only a third the way through this book, and taking my time to absorb, not a fast read.

Excellent book on rhyming for songwriters. Love the way it breakdown and gives examples to explain concepts. Highly recommend.

I have been a songwriter for more than 12 years and this is an excellent book! It was challenging and I learned a ton, even after all of this time. It's more of a workbook than a read along book, so I learned so much more. The thing to do is to buy this book and then use it while doing his free coursera class, because this book covers the same stuff, but it MUCH GREATER DETAIL. It offers plenty of practice. The one downside I'd say is that there is no way to check your work, so with some of the material I did it, but I'm not 100% sure that I did it correctly. Either way, I still learned a got a lot from it.

This books is good It help you to learn about rhyme schemes and to know about rhyming types, some exercises to develop your rhyming creativity.

I like the ideas expressed in the book and the fact that it makes you think of different aspects while writing lyrics.

I am still reading this book but it is so far impressive in its presentation and the thinking behind what it tells you. I am pleased I purchased it as it has already improved my perception of writing lyrics. Alex M

I love the work of Mr. Pat Pattison! His books never disappoint me, because they help me to see my works from a new angle. I definitely recommend this book :)

Bought it for my son the songwriter and he loves it!

Pat's ideas and presentations in this book were very revealing for me. I write poetry with full rhymes; he shows how many other kinds of rhyming approaches make practical sense, as tools to achieve a sense of, leading the reader/listener on, or to a place of closure or completion, in a poem or song. He also explains how phrase lengths and rhyme types are used, so that lyrics can be matched to music. Or, perhaps putting words to music, if that has been created first or simultaneously. Lots of useful tools and ideas presented clearly with many examples to demonstrate his points. Very useful book.

I'm a published songwriter and there's stuff in the first few pages that I'd never even considered! He really lays his approach out in a clear fashion that I'm finding very helpful.