RHYTHM 03: Ultimate Rhythmic Freedom
1. Beats or no beats. You can decide if your music has a beat or is “free time”. Music without a beat can still have structure, even a rhythmic structure, but it won’t be based on regularly spaced beats or patterns. It might be more natural sounding or more “conversational” or perhaps more soulful and flowing. The listener will hear the flow of sound, melody and/or harmony; you may even hear “shapes” of longer and shorter notes, but you are not compelled to feel a pulse.
2. If there ARE beats, that forms your main grid. You can decide how the beats are grouped into measures, and whether that grouping changes or not.
3. You can divide the beats into a higher resolution of grid; and that division can change from moment to moment or from part to part.
4. You can choose a fixed tempo (rate of beats) or have the tempo change either abruptly or gradually.
5. With any of those structures in place, you can create a groove with percussion that is fun. Use the grids to quantize the events of your groove tracks to make them more precise, or leave them sloppy for a more human or looser feel.
6. When composing, you are either taking your existing ideas and working out the rhythmic structure that already is implied, or you can begin by building the structure first and develop ideas from there. Listening to the beat and the feel of the groove, you can pull in new ideas and let happy accidents happen.
7. Be adventurous. Don’t get stuck in 4 beat measures and beat-divisions of 4. Try to write in 3-beat measures at different tempos, Get to know 5, it’s like a 3 plus 2 (or a 2 plus a 3), and it’s really cool. Get comfortable with beats divided in 3, there are lots of wonderful rhythms there to learn. I’ve spent the last few years just getting comfortable with quintuplets (dividing beats into 5), and it has unlocked a cool little secret room. It’s tricky because I know that if my audience doesn’t feel quintuplets, they won’t connect with the ideas. Another thing I’ve been working with are acceleration or deceleration patterns. These are a series of notes that speed up (like a bouncing ball) or slow down (like a “wheel of fortune” carnival wheel). The rhythms are based on curves where the ratio’s between adjacent notes are 3:2, or 2:1, etc. It’s pretty cool sounding.