How do we tell someone how to sing a lyric?
People usually use a musical sheet to tell how a song should be sung, but when you read a lyric you have no idea how a song should be sung without having the musical sheet in front of you, so is there a notation system that exists that allows you to know how a song should be sung? The pacing is very hard to determine unless you hear the song or look at the musical sheet, but there must be a way for people without musical training to determine how a song should be sung.
Here's an example:
[Verse 1]
Breath, should I take a deep?
Faith, should I take a leap?
Taste, what a bittersweet
All my, all my life
I rewrote the above into this:
[Verse 1]
Breathhhhhhh, should I take a deeeeeeeep?
Faiiiiiiiiiith, should I take a leaaaaaaap?
Tasteeeeeee, what a bittersweeeeeeeet
All my, all my lifeeeeeeee
This is something I just came up with, but as you can see it's not perfect, because still even now it's hard to know exactly how it should be sung. It gives you more of an idea, but it's still hard to know what the exact pacing should be.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/43244. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
Lyrics are not lyrics until they are set to music. At which point, they are sung to the music. They appear on the sheet music. Like so:
(source)
Alternatively, the lyrics can be placed not over sheet music, but over guitar chords, like so:
(source)
Basically, you superimpose some form of music notation over the lyrics. If there's no music, they're not lyrics.
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