Free songwriting tools
Syllable counter for lyrics
Paste a verse or a whole lyric. You'll see the syllable count for every line, and every word, as you type, so you can make lines fit the melody.
Stuck on a rhyme?
The rhyming dictionary lists perfect and near rhymes grouped by syllable count, so the rhyme fits the line.
Questions
- How are syllables counted?
- Each word is looked up in the Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary, which lists how many vowel sounds it has in US English. Numbers are spelled out the way they would be sung, so 1999 counts as nineteen ninety-nine.
- What does the ~ mark mean?
- The word is not in the dictionary (slang, a name or a new word), so its syllables are estimated from its spelling. Check those by saying the line out loud.
- Why count syllables in lyrics?
- Lines that sit on the same part of a melody usually need a similar number of syllables. Comparing counts line by line shows where a verse will feel crowded or thin before you sing it.
Pronunciations from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (Carnegie Mellon University). Word frequency from wordfreq (CC BY-SA 4.0), word lists from SCOWL, offensive-word filtering from LDNOOBW (CC BY 4.0).