Use a ‘Timepiece’ to Mark Passing Time in Your Song

In a song, a timepiece is any device used by the songwriter to indicate the passage of time. You could just sing something obvious and direct like “Six months later…”, of course—but that feels a bit awkward in most songs, doesn’t it?

There are better, more natural ways to signal your listeners that time has passed in your lyric’s storyline.

Any object that changes states over time can be a timepiece. If verse one describes the song’s main character with dark hair, and the final verse describes her with gray hair, we know that years have passed. If verse one describes a man  lighting a tall candle, and it’s half-melted by verse two, then finally extinguished by verse three, we know that a few hours passed between verses.

Candles, Sundials, Growth and Demolition

Human beings don’t just measure time in minutes, hours, and months—a carpenter might measure time in the number of houses built. A gang member might measure his life’s journey by the number of rivals he’s killed. A soldier overseas counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until she gets to come home and see her children again.

As time passes, different flowers bloom; grass grows; animals migrate; the sun rises and sets; seasons change; old factories crumble; good neighborhoods go bad; bad neighborhoods get fixed up and repainted and become safe again… time makes everything malleable. Sometimes changes delight us and sometimes they sadden us—and sometimes it’s bittersweet. Thursday night I revisited my old elementary school to find that it had been torn down and rebuilt. The new school is beautiful, but my school is now a parking lot. It was one of those moments that reminded me: there’s no going back to that library where I read Shel Silverstein; no going back to the long, gaudy staircase with the orange handrail; no going back to the wooden playground—a castle in my mind–that kept shrinking and shrinking every year.

Keep a lookout for interesting timepieces to use in your songs. They’re useful for telling stories that change and evolve and pull your listeners along for the ride.

awesome timepiece photo by navicore