This poem is meant to be the words to a catchy tune, but its meter is a wreck. Trochaic Tetrameter? Sloppy trochaic tetrameter? And then the name 'Shemshime' doesn't fit the rest of the poem's meter but it comprises entire lines... This thing is brutal. A 6/5/6 stanza would be a much better choice.
It seems to me that if you're going to hinge an entire plot on a catchy song with lyrics, it should be constructed to fit a variety of well-known tunes that are in fact, catchy. The mouthfeel of this is cumbersome, too. "Never heeds plea nor command" How do you get your mouth around that? "Heeding no master's command" would be better (I shouldn't have to rewrite the poem myself) I hope I'm missing something
Can someone point out a song whose meter would fit this... thing? The closest I can think of is Kalevala meter, but that is a spoken meter, not really 'sung' per se... and certainly not 'catchy'
Can someone point me to something to make this poem thing work?
At least I'm not the only one who struggled with this. It should have been easy to fix. Pick a tune and craft the words to fit the tune. It could have been "Twinkle Twinkle" or "Away in a Manger" or any number of things. You'd think Twinkle Twinkle would work with its four syllables but the actual beats in the poem brutalize it. Maybe the traditional rhyme scheme of 'Lizzy Borden' would work thematically, too, give it some referential oomph, but that doesn't work either.
I hate being so harsh on this, but it's the centerpiece of this excellent adventure and it's got to be the least lyrical least musical piece of poetry ever, and it's supposed to be a catchy earworm. As a spoken rhyme it's not terrible, maybe a few rough edges, but not bad. But to sing this? Ugh. It's a nightmare. I'd want it to be catchy enough for my players to catch themselves humming it between games. As it is... ouch.
so common, so typical. Nearly every so-called rhyme i’ve seen in a mod is as clumsy, and almost no one seems to notice or care. tv commercials, too. one fast food burger joint’s jingles are so bad, and sung by such a tone-deaf person, it’s hard to imagine such poor compositions having so much production and advertising budget $ spent on them. As someone else suggests, tell players it goes along with something they know, happy birthday, or whatever, even though it doesn’t
This poem is meant to be the words to a catchy tune, but its meter is a wreck. Trochaic Tetrameter? Sloppy trochaic tetrameter? And then the name 'Shemshime' doesn't fit the rest of the poem's meter but it comprises entire lines... This thing is brutal. A 6/5/6 stanza would be a much better choice.
It seems to me that if you're going to hinge an entire plot on a catchy song with lyrics, it should be constructed to fit a variety of well-known tunes that are in fact, catchy. The mouthfeel of this is cumbersome, too. "Never heeds plea nor command" How do you get your mouth around that? "Heeding no master's command" would be better (I shouldn't have to rewrite the poem myself) I hope I'm missing something
Can someone point out a song whose meter would fit this... thing? The closest I can think of is Kalevala meter, but that is a spoken meter, not really 'sung' per se... and certainly not 'catchy'
Can someone point me to something to make this poem thing work?
It seems to be causing a few headaches, but this chap on reddit thinks he found a tune for it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CandlekeepMysteries/comments/maim1i/i_thnk_i_got_it/
At least I'm not the only one who struggled with this. It should have been easy to fix. Pick a tune and craft the words to fit the tune. It could have been "Twinkle Twinkle" or "Away in a Manger" or any number of things. You'd think Twinkle Twinkle would work with its four syllables but the actual beats in the poem brutalize it. Maybe the traditional rhyme scheme of 'Lizzy Borden' would work thematically, too, give it some referential oomph, but that doesn't work either.
I hate being so harsh on this, but it's the centerpiece of this excellent adventure and it's got to be the least lyrical least musical piece of poetry ever, and it's supposed to be a catchy earworm. As a spoken rhyme it's not terrible, maybe a few rough edges, but not bad. But to sing this? Ugh. It's a nightmare. I'd want it to be catchy enough for my players to catch themselves humming it between games. As it is... ouch.
so common, so typical. Nearly every so-called rhyme i’ve seen in a mod is as clumsy, and almost no one seems to notice or care. tv commercials, too. one fast food burger joint’s jingles are so bad, and sung by such a tone-deaf person, it’s hard to imagine such poor compositions having so much production and advertising budget $ spent on them. As someone else suggests, tell players it goes along with something they know, happy birthday, or whatever, even though it doesn’t
someone spent way too much time and effort trying to set those awful lines to music, even making two versions, broken (https://youtu.be/GPJ7as-mEs8?si=OA1NYHibbe4Sd7gr) and fixed (https://youtu.be/QJfEES1f3Ts?si=GgCB-nnmBLObeF3L), and it sounds nice, but it’s not a catchy tune