Motifs, Idioms and Pop Music

Song Writing Tips

How to use motifs, symmetry, melisma and other song writing elements to bring out the prosody of your song.

The song  attached: Castle In The Sky has many of the elements important to song writing, such as motif, melisma, idiom, symmetry, asymmetry, repetition and metaphor... many of which are personifications or giving human qualities to things

An example of a metaphor in Castle in the Sky is: "lounge in my private space." whereas the term private space is a metaphor for mind.  Personification "my courage is hooked on moving slow."
The song begins with a melisma on the word feelings.
The song usually have a variety of motifs which  are often repeated as themselves or sometimes tweaked, thus adding symmetry and contrast to the piece.

Songs also have rhymes schemes. The rhyme schemes depends on the writer and how he chooses to contrast the lines that comprise the verses.

The style of Castle In The Sky is pop. The song form is verse, verse, chorus bridge, chorus. This song form is one of the more common song forms. In addition, the song  has sixteen bars. Songs usually have the same number of bars in each verse chorus and bridge. So if this was an eight bar song it would have an eight bar verse, eight bar chorus, and an eight bar bridge. The tessitura or range of Castle In The Sky is an octave and a fifth.

The bridge of a song in general has to be different in style and melody from the verse and the chorus. The bridge often brings the theme of the song to its resolution.

See if you can spot more of these elements in this song, and if so you are welcome to note them as comments here.