Pattison - Pat Pattisons Songwriting: Essential Guide to Rhyming: a Step-by-step Guide to Better Rhyming for Poets and Lyricists

Im delighted to get a second look at this material. Since it was first published in 1991, Ive picked up a few things. Ive had to, if only to keep ahead of my amazing students at Berklee College of Music. They and the students in my online courses and in my seminars across the globe always push me to dig deeper, to see more, to keep paying attention. So theres a lot of new information in this edition, plus some pretty nifty refinements of the original concepts I introduced in the first edition.

Theres nothing like having to articulate something clearly for others to make you see it more clearly yourself. Thank you Debbie Cavalier and Carin Nuernberg at Berklee Online for the opportunities youve given me. Writing and filming five online courses really forced me to clarify and organize my ideas in ways I hadnt done before. Thanks also for inviting me to write and film the songwriting MOOC for Coursera.org. Coursera has allowed me to reach, so far, more than 100,000 songwriters all across the globe, with still no end in sight. Amazing.

Berklee Press gave me my first opportunity to put the word author beside my name. In retrospect, my two Berklee Press books opened a lot of doors that might never have opened for me otherwise. Now, once again, I have the chance to take a clearer look at both this book and soon, my book on form and structure. Thank you Jonathan Feist for your wonderful editing, for your belief, and your enthusiasm.

Thanks to our Berklee songwriting faculty for providing such a stunning experience for our students, and for creating an atmosphere that encourages creativity and learning, not only in the classrooms, but peer-to-peer. The opportunity to share and examine ideas is essential to growth. It certainly has been for me. Thanks Jack, Jimmy, Scarlet, Mark, Susan, Jon, Dan, Michael, John, and now Bonnie Hayes, for all you continue to bring to the table. Together, we are creating quite a legacy through our students, as the careers of alumni like John Mayer, Gillian Welch, Tom Hambridge, Greg Becker, Liz Longley, Amy Heidemann, and so many others clearly demonstrate.

And thanks to all the industry professionals across the globe who have been so generous to both my students and to me. Especially to Warner Music Nashville for continuing to host and support our annual Nashville trip, providing our students the opportunity to hear from Nashvilles best and brightest for twenty-seven years now. Hearing each year from the likes of Eddie Bayers, Mike Reid, Janis Ian, Gary Burr, Gary Nicholson, Kathy Mattea, Kyle Lehning, Beth Nielsen-Chapman, Josh Leo, Marcus Hummon, Don Was, Elliot Scheiner, and so many more not only inspires and energizes our students, but continues to provide me with a remarkable window into what is possible creatively. Their insights so often find their way into my classroom and into my writings. And certainly into this book. Deepest thanks to Stephen Webber and Mark Wessel, my co-captains on the Nashville trips, for making it such a rich experience for so many generations of students. And to Clare McLeod, for keeping us all in balance.

Finally, my deepest gratitude to Berklee College of Music, where Ive made my lifes work for forty years, now. Ive loved every minute.

Pat Pattison
October, 2013