The benefits of prosody for music educators and students: Unpacking prosody and songwriting strategies in the classroom

Abstract

Literary and linguistic prosody principles can provide music educators and students with constructive, time honoured, deeply creative songwriting strategies. This article is an opportunity to share a direct and unique classroom experience of teaching prosody within songwriting. Through discussing a personal songwriting and teaching practice grounded in prosody, this article will present recommendations for a specific pedagogy underpinned by prosody for use in the songwriting classroom. Within this article the principles of literary and linguistic prosody will be outlined and discussed alongside songwriting strategies such as writing from a title, matching stressed syllables to stressed beats, metre, song structure and rhyme. The principle of prosody will also be expanded to involve the idea of unity and will be explained in relation to songwriting areas including rhythm, harmony, melody and performance.