A crucial part of English-language songwriting, and something that is all too often missing from these types of introductory articles, is the importance of "sca

A crucial part of English-language songwriting, and something that is all too often missing from these types of introductory articles, is the importance of "scansion" [0], or "flow." Essentially, it's the concept that the stressed beats in a melody should correspond with the stressed syllables in lyrics. Sounds simple, but it's all too common in the writing process to fixate on a well-written line that matches the number of syllables but not the stress pattern - there's nothing like placing stress incorrectly on a preposition to make a song feel "forced." http://www.simonhawkins.com/?p=340 http://www.simonhawkins.com/?p=340 In many ways, this is a big part of what makes songwriting a true engineering process - every line becomes a problem with well-known constraints, where you can apply creative solutions from either side of the problem... but you have to meet the constraints. (Of course, you can break it intentionally for effect - for instance, Eminem in "Lose Yourself" mis-stressing "that easy" to fit into a rhythm scheme alongside "gravity" - but this is done consciously.) A key component is to make sure that the mental bandwidth required for this engineering doesn't interfere with creativity; getting that balance right is essential. It's why I generally wish people thought of songwriting software more as IDEs, with contextual information about potential bugs surfaced through third-party UI plugins. (Sadly, most professional notation software is closed to any meaningful modification.)