https://guitarnoise.forum/guitar-noise-songwriting-club/great-wall/ Guitar Noise Discussion Board en-US Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:10:00 +0000 wpForo 60 https://guitarnoise.forum/guitar-noise-songwriting-club/great-wall/#post-191120 Fri, 28 Jul 2006 03:53:06 +0000
Just to provide an alternate viewpoint to Purple and Tiger Jam though - personally I hate too strict an adherance to rhyme. If there has to be a rhyme, ABAB or xBxB (where x is no rhyme) is a lot softer. I'm not keen either on too close a rhyme, it always sounds contrived to me. 'Say' and 'day', 'late' and 'hate' for example are too close for me, but 'say' and 'late' are much better - you still have the 'ay' sound and no extra syllables after it, but the sound is changed by making one 'ay' and one 'ayt'.

Just my 2 cents :) Yes. that say/late is "internal rhyme"? or "imperfect rhyme"? English composition was too long ago. Whatever it is I like it. I used bottle/water recently... it serves some of the same function of rhyme by creating a rhythm within the word sounds, but it is more subtle.

Another variation on ChordsAndScales' xBxB is to write write phrases in pairs where the rhyme occurs in the middle of the phrase (at a set point according to the meter) but the ends of the lines do not rhyme, so you have:

ya-da ya-da RHYME ya-da ya-da ya-da ya-da
do-be do-be RHYME do-be do-be do-be do]]> Guitar Noise Songwriting Club Tiger Jam https://guitarnoise.forum/guitar-noise-songwriting-club/great-wall/#post-191120 https://guitarnoise.forum/guitar-noise-songwriting-club/great-wall/#post-191119 Fri, 28 Jul 2006 03:50:31 +0000
Just to provide an alternate viewpoint to Purple and Tiger Jam though - personally I hate too strict an adherance to rhyme. If there has to be a rhyme, ABAB or xBxB (where x is no rhyme) is a lot softer. I'm not keen either on too close a rhyme, it always sounds contrived to me. 'Say' and 'day', 'late' and 'hate' for example are too close for me, but 'say' and 'late' are much better - you still have the 'ay' sound and no extra syllables after it, but the sound is changed by making one 'ay' and one 'ayt'.

Just my 2 cents :) I guess I already said my 2 cents so here is my third. If is your song, so do with it as you please. You can certainly stick to an XBXB rhyme scheme. The first verse is ABAB and the ay is rhyming with the ay and ate with the ate, no imperfect rhyming here. I just feel it might sound awkward if all verses don't have the same rhyme scheme unless as Tiger Jam said, you make one verse into a chorus or bridge. Thinking about it, the first verse would make a really good chorus - if you want one. Again, I shifted the song to AABB rhyming and rearranged the lines to 1324 because to me the concepts in lines 1 and 3 felt like they flowed together well as did the ones in 2 and 4. Since 2 and 4 rhymed that lead to AABB.

Happy Writing,
Purple]]> Guitar Noise Songwriting Club purple https://guitarnoise.forum/guitar-noise-songwriting-club/great-wall/#post-191119 https://guitarnoise.forum/guitar-noise-songwriting-club/great-wall/#post-191004 Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:25:22 +0000
Just to provide an alternate viewpoint to Purple and Tiger Jam though - personally I hate too strict an adherance to rhyme. If there has to be a rhyme, ABAB or xBxB (where x is no rhyme) is a lot softer. I'm not keen either on too close a rhyme, it always sounds contrived to me. 'Say' and 'day', 'late' and 'hate' for example are too close for me, but 'say' and 'late' are much better - you still have the 'ay' sound and no extra syllables after it, but the sound is changed by making one 'ay' and one 'ayt'.

Just my 2 cents :)]]> Guitar Noise Songwriting Club Misanthrope https://guitarnoise.forum/guitar-noise-songwriting-club/great-wall/#post-191004 https://guitarnoise.forum/guitar-noise-songwriting-club/great-wall/#post-191001 Thu, 27 Jul 2006 10:47:13 +0000
Also, on the rhyme scheme: An alternate way to deal with the inconsistent rhyme scheme is to make the first verse into a chorus. Of course that may mean coming up with a different chord progression for that, so it could be more work than re-wording, but it's a different option to consider.

Purple mentioned the last couplet in the last verse not rhyming. This is easily fixed by dropping the "s" on "dissenters." Making it singular "dissenter" does not change the meaning, and rhymes with "enter"]]> Guitar Noise Songwriting Club Tiger Jam https://guitarnoise.forum/guitar-noise-songwriting-club/great-wall/#post-191001 https://guitarnoise.forum/guitar-noise-songwriting-club/great-wall/#post-190997 Thu, 27 Jul 2006 09:35:58 +0000
We've got to protect our border they say
We've got to do something before it's too late
The poor are coming every day
But we must fear the terrorist, because of their hate

I think the first verse makes a little more sense, has more flow like this:

The poor are coming every day
We've got to do something before it's too late
We need to protect our border they say
To keep out the terrorist because of their hate

The last line was just a poor suggestion to just show how the verse might be rearranged. I took out the double "we've got" beucase if works to repeat the phrase if the phrase is being said in lines 1 and 2 or 3 and 4. Repeating the phrase in lines 2 and 3 sounds a little silly. However that sort of destroys the fact that you start off the first two lines of each stanza the same way. Hmm... I just decided to rework all of your verses into AA BB form including the one I just did, here we go -. to me, it seems that each verse has a clear idea but most of the time line 1 goes better with line 3 and 2 goes better with 4. This is going to merely be a rough suggestion to help the ideas flow better and to help with the rhyming. I am going to try and keep it in your words as best I can.

We need to protect our border they say
The poor are coming every day
We've got to do something before it's too late
To keep out the ones with a terrorist's hate

We need to send troops with rations and guns
To watch the land worn out by the sun
We need to send them while we still can
To keep out every woman, child, and man

We should build a wall a thousand miles long
It'll ease your mind and keep us strong
If we all do our part to protect this land
Then we'll stay safe from the terrorists' plan

Think of our hurt, our hungry and our poor
People we already don't do enough for
So how will we convert the dissenters?
Build a great wall that no one can enter

Your final verse doesn't rhyme and maybe that's what you want. The last stanza also reads as if you are saying the wall will keep in the dissenters and our poor. My version is a bit weak. I think no matter how you approach it, it might be best if you separate the two ideas, the poor and the dissenters, into their own verses. The poor getting a stanza like the rest. Then the dissenters could get a stanza of the three questions with the final line of the song being the resolution that is basically a summation to the entire song. Hope this helped.

Happy writing,
Purple]]> Guitar Noise Songwriting Club purple https://guitarnoise.forum/guitar-noise-songwriting-club/great-wall/#post-190997 https://guitarnoise.forum/guitar-noise-songwriting-club/great-wall/#post-18805 Thu, 29 Jun 2006 13:30:20 +0000
--------------------------------------

We've got to protect our border they say
We've got to do something before it's too late
The poor are coming every day
But we must fear the terrorist, because of their hate

We need to send troops with rations and guns
We need to send them while we still can
They'll watch every inch of endless desert
They'll keep out every woman, child and man

We should build a wall a thousand miles long
We should all do our part to help protect this land
It'll ease your mind, it'll keep out the unwanted
And it'll keep you safe from the terrorist's plan

But what of our poor, our hungry and our hurt?
And what of the dissenters, what'll we do with them?
What'll we do to keep them in line?
We'll build a great wall, and that'll keep ‘em in.]]> Guitar Noise Songwriting Club mhlandry https://guitarnoise.forum/guitar-noise-songwriting-club/great-wall/#post-18805