How to create Prosody – the Golden Ratio of Songwriting

True beauty as designed by God himself can be formulated to some extend with the golden ratio. https://www.britannica.com/science/golden-ratio . These proportions can be seen in the human body and in nature, the closer to the golden ratio, the more beautiful your perception. The ratio is used widely within design professions as a method to strike beautiful balance and visual harmony.

Could the DNA of a song possess a similar kind of formulable ingredient? Well, maybe not so obvious as a 100m tall skyscraper or even a modern dwelling by Frand Lloyd Wright. If a song consists of audible meaning conceived from emotion there must be some accountability for the sum of its parts. Guess what, the answer lays in a term called prosody. I like to refer to it as the golden ratio of songwriting. The thing is words have a musicality to them even if they are spoken. So, if a songwriter can amplify the meaning of a purposefully selected word by melodically manipulating the pitching and pulsing in perfect harmony and form the result will be prosody. Clive Ridgway said it well. “Prosody is achieved when every element of a song supports every other element in a meaningful way” https://cdnv3.loot.co.za/product/head-heart–hands/hmww-7465-g950

Combining the lyric, melody and form of a song to effortlessly support each other to amplify the meaning and deliver the emotional narrative will result in a transformative piece of art. We teach our students the detailed methods to do just that. By mastering prosody, you will create a song with DNA worthy of a gold standard. You will listen to your favourite song from an unfamiliar yet bespoke angle. Have you ever achieved or recognised prosody in a song? Please tell me about it.