A quick word with ... Pat Pattison

Pat Pattison will have tips for budding songwriters. Photo / Supplied

Pat Pattison, professor of songwriting at Boston's Berklee College of Music, is in New Zealand next week for a series of seminars. If there's a bum note or a dire lyric in a song then he's the man to pick it out and fix it. So what does this expert make of the lyrics to two of our most famous songs?

This one's called Nature by the Fourmyula. "I hear rustling whistling leaves turning breeze to speech/Call to me now - ease my mind/I'll turn something new/My mind's laid with dew/Nature - enter me."
Oh ... I like that. That's very nice. The whole notion of leaves speaking is a wonderful metaphor for starters, and one of the things that does is create a picture in the listener's mind and the listener becomes a participant in the song rather than an observer. That's great stuff.

This one is by Dave Dobbyn who you may know?
I know the name but not his music.

"Howdy angel! Where did you hide your wings?/Her love shines over my horizon, she's a slice of heaven/Warm moonlight over my horizon, she's a slice of heaven."
I think it's interesting. Did it start with "Hello angel"?

Howdy angel.
Oh. Howdy angel. Well, there's a little disconnect for me there because it starts out talking to the angel, saying "Howdy", and then spends the rest of the time talking about the angel. So the point of view there seems inconsistent. I like how it starts out with "Howdy angel" because it establishes a tone. But how about if all the "she"s changed to "you"s? Yeah, keeping the point of view consistent gives the listener a really good picture of the relationship: there I am talking to the angel. It's very confusing for the audience, and the singer emotionally, when the point of view changes like that and it becomes almost as if you're talking to two people.

So how do you come to be a professor of songwriting?
It was a circuitous journey for sure. I started out as a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, then went on the road with my band for several years [which he disbanded in 1985] and I ended up teaching English at Berklee. I decided to start teaching literary criticism but I knew nobody would take a course in literary criticism so I called it analysis of song lyrics. I applied the tools of literary criticism to Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan ... the course was loudly popular.

What will the seminars in New Zealand be focused on?
In Hamilton, a three-day thing, I'll be talking about concepts, giving examples and working with some of the participants songs as a way of locking in the concepts. In Auckland there will be a big seminar with the subject "motion creates emotion". It's about structure, musical phrasing, and showing how those elements support what you have to say in your lyrics and how to actually create more emotion if you use the tools properly.

So emotion in a song is about more than just feeling it and believing in it? There's a technical side to it too?
Absolutely. If you lay your lyric in the melody in a way that the stresses come out unnaturally, in a way that you wouldn't say it, then as a singer it's really hard for you to feel the emotion. That whole aspect of preserving the natural shape of the language is essential and if the singer can't do that then all they are doing is singing notes and not feeling the emotion of the song itself.

Pat Pattison speaks in Hamilton at Wintec on June 16, 17 and 18 (from 10am-4pm) and in Auckland at MAINZ, June 20 and 21 (from 10am-4pm).
For more information email: wayne.senior@xtra.co.nz