Task 17: Scales and Arpeggios

Any of you who learn a musical instrument will know the importance of SCALES and ARPEGGIOS. For those of you with no idea what I am talking about here, these are the routine, arduous, methodical exercises any musician needs to practice in order to improve their technical ability with their instrument. They can be fiddly, difficult, even annoying - but only through mastering them can a musician learn to play the most exciting, complicated, and challenging pieces of music.

For Task 17, we are returning to scansion and meter - or, in other words, rhythm, feet, iambs, that sort of thing...

I know lots of you found this difficult last time, but it is also true that almost none of you mastered this completely, and I promised at the time that we would return to it in due course. So this task is the poetic equivalent of a musician's scales and arpeggios.

I am going to set you 6 exercises, and you may make as many attempts at each exercise as you like. You may choose your own topic or theme, but please stick to the same topic/theme for ALL your exercises (so choose it carefully). For example, in my attempts below, I have chosen the topic CHILDHOOD for all my exercises. But remember that it is your technical skill that is being examined here.

To help you, I strongly suggest you go back to some of the earlier tasks, especially:

• Task 2
• Task 3
• Task 4
• Task 5
• Task 7
• Task 8
• and Task 10.

Remember, also, that there are a couple of podcasts to accompany the early tasks.

Also, as before, I highly recommend this website, if you are getting really stuck. And you might also like to read this excellent article on the iambic pentameter from The Guardian's website.

And remember, sometimes a word can be said in more than one way - and this might help you if you get stuck. However, there are some ways that a word can NEVER be said, so when you have finished each exercise, try reading it out loud with the stresses where the EXERCISE says they should be, and make sure it doesn't sound silly!

Once you have refamiliarised yourself with the different feet and terminology, here are your SIX exercises for Task 17.

Exercise 1: Iambic Pentameters
An iambic pentameter has five feet, each consisting of a dee-DUM pair of syllables. In other words: dee-DUM dee-DUM dee-DUM dee-DUM dee-DUM. For this exercise (and indeed for exercises 1-4) you are being asked for individual lines. You may make several attempts - and therefore write several lines - but they need not be linked, as it is a ONE line exercise.

Exercise 2: Trochaic Tetrameters
A trochee is, in a way, the opposite of an iamb - in that the stressed syllable comes first: DUM-dee. And remember that a tetrameter has FOUR feet (and therefore, here, four trochees).

Exercise 3: Dactylic Trimeters
A dactyl consists of 3 syllables, with the first stressed and the next two unstressed: DUM-dee-dee; and a trimeter has THREE feet (here three dactyls).

Exercise 4: Anapestic Dimeters
An anapest is the opposite, really, of a dactyl: still three syllables, but this time the two unstressed syllables come BEFORE the stressed syllable - dee-dee-DUM. A dimeter is, obviously, a line with TWO feet.

Exercise 5: Quatrain; abab; iambic pentameters
A quatrain is a stanza (or poem) with FOUR lines. This quatrain should have an abab rhyme scheme; or, in other words, Lines 1 and 3 must rhyme, as must lines 2 and 4. All four lines must be iambic pentameters (see Exercise 1 above).

Exercise 6: Quatrain; abab; anapestic tetrameter/anapestic trimeter/anapestic tetrameter/anapestic trimeter.
Like exercise 5, but this quatrain must be written using anapests, as follows: Lines 1 and 3 = tetrameters (i.e. FOUR anapests), and Lines 2 and 4 = trimeters (i.e. THREE anapests). See Exercise 4 above for what an anapest is.

For my own attempts, please see the separate post. Notice how I have entitled it; labled it; and laid it out. Please do the same for yours, to make moderation easier for all concerned.

The deadline for this task is midnight on Saturday 5th January 2008. How generous is that? Giving you until next year to complete it! :)