Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance

[WEBCYAN]

Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance.

Before I 'discovered' these techniques my lyrics lacked any cohesivness. They were too freefloating that it had no specific point of interest.

When you listen to really good vocalists youll notice heavy use of all 3 of these techniques.

It helps alot.

 

[philboyd studge]

Good point, geez it's been a long time since those creative writing classes. Lets see, assonance is the repitition of a vowel within a passage or line, consonance the repitition of consonants and alliteration I forgot. Wait, I think it's the repitition of the rhyme. I dunno.

Point is though you can't just rhyme line two with line one and walk away, you need to set it up or it'll be junk. Often it's good to write backwards; knowing the last words and working from there, that way the mechanics of alliteration, assonance and consonance are much easier to formulate.

 

[chazba]

Alliteration is the repetition of begining sounds to achieve a sense of rythm. One of my personal faves, from Paul Simon:
"on a freshly fallen , silent shroud of snow"
From "I Am A Rock" Not only a nice rhythm, but beautiful imagery.............
writeon....chazba

 

[chazba]

Consonance/Assonance

Had to look it up.........Machlis sez that consonance is relaxation or fulfillment, occuring when we move from "active harmonies ", like from Dominant 7th chords ,to Major chords. Dominant7 chords can be thought of as dissonance, probably because they often contain a flat 5 somewhere in the chord structure. Like in G7 the interval from B to F, resolving to Cmaj, thereby achieving "consonance"
I couldn't find a reference to "Assonance" but probably means the absence of consonance. Maybe it means when I sound like an ass...like in this post.....hmmmm
writeon...chazba