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7 Tips on using Rhythm for your songwriting

22/3/2022

Rhythm for me is not only a beat. It beholds a feel for the song, and a tempo to determine if that all fits together. And I am going to keep it simple at first. There are so many possibilities of how to time rhythm, that alone is years of study. Most of the songs however, have a 4/4 time signature. I'll keep to that and do some extra dividing in that time signature. Okay ready?
And a 1 & 2 & 3 & 4!

Tip 1 on Rhythm: The basics of rhythm.

Learn how to count your music and keep the intended rhythm.
When you know how to count in music, it will help you in every aspect of making music. As a musician, but definitely as a songwriter too. Keeping the rhythm as straight as possible, means not speeding up or slowing down. Unless you intend to do that in your song. But even when slowing down or speeding up is intended, you need to practice this.

To start with practicing counting, I'll start with the basics.
So, 4 counts is a bar. Every count is a quarter note. 4 quarter notes become a bar. Full circle here, right? On to the next step.

Hold it: If music was that simple, you wouldn't need much more tips.

In the picture above you can see in the column on the left side:
Pitch | Instrument | Snap Drum and a blue line with 3.2 | 3.3 | 3.4 Drum | 4
It is 1 bar starting at 3 and ends at 4, making it 1 measured bar.

C1 | Bass drum (kick) | 1/16 and a total of 16 diamond shapes.
When I solo play this in a example in a D.A.W. I'll get a very fast playing bass drum sound. Mostly used in Hardrock and Metal music, although not throughout the whole song. I am just making sure that you know a little bit more about what genre it could be useful in. More about that in my next blog on Genre.

C#1 | Side Stick | 1/8 and a total of 8 diamond shapes.
8 is half of 16, right. You do not have to be a mathematician to know this, right?

D1 | Acoustic Snare | ¼ and a total of 4 diamond shapes

D#1 | Hand Clap | ½ and 2 diamond shapes

E1 | Electric Snare |1/1 and 1 diamond shape

I am sticking to a 4/4 rhythm, but you can imagine that there are many more time signatures to play around with. Also, when using different kinds of drums, you'll get more different possibilities in sounds too. I limited the sounds to these 5 instruments as an example, nothing more.

In some D.A.W.'s you use a piano roll, and then it could look like below.

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7 tips on creating Chord progressions for your song

8/3/2022

Hi ya'll,

Chord Progressions means you play 2 or more chords in a certain order.
In this blog I will give you tips to start your creative flow with maybe some on-orthodox suggestions on how to create a chord.
How to use these in a real song, might even be more strange at first. You might not really get a song when you only use these tips, but we are still building up to get a song at the end.

I have never heard an artist saying:

'Well I started this song with 3 chords that became my verse, and the same 3 chords became my chorus and I made a bridge from the same 3 chords in the same order, played in the same rhythm in the whole song. I just started writing them down, added some melody parts and lyrics, choose a genre and some emotional feel, picked these instruments and we can now play and record this hit.
We do not need to change anything anymore, just play what it says and get it done'. :-)

Tip 1 on Chord Progressions: The simple start

Just start with what you know and how to use it. If you find yourself without any knowledge of music theory, you can still make music with Lyrics and Melodies.

Using an app or a DAW can help you to find more suitable ways.

To be able to use 1 note, for example a C and the software can add the rest of the notes for you. It adds an E and a G. It makes the music sound more complete with a quick way to add instruments to your song.

For the exercise of all the tips in this blog, please stick to only 3 notes in each chord. So it will be the root note, the third and the fifth of a chord.

Cubase Midi Editor

In the example, I have used midi in Cubase. I use the piano roll to see where the root note is. On the left side, you can see what kind of 3-note chords/triads you can vary with. The selected White block with 'maj' is now representing the black lines on the right. The chosen chord is .....?
You can answer it in the comments below.

Below those are the more diverse 4-note chords. After clicking on a note in the grid, it automatically adds 2 more notes from the traid.
I clicked on F2 and the A2 and C3 where added by Cubase.

After that I can press play and it start playing the first chord and the next I have looped in Cubase. In this example, I can change the last chord to one of the 5 other chord possibility's, (min - sus4 - sus2 - dim - aug) by just clicking on the knobs on the left side. I can instantly hear the change to the new chord. When I loop the play, the first chords will be followed by the changed one. Now I can decide what chord is the best to follow the first one.

If you do not have a D.A.W. You can go to the website HookTheory https://www.hooktheory.com/

These guys have a free midi player that lets you work with chord progressions and melody's. Like in any D.A.W., you need a bit of time to find out how it works. It has a few very cool features. And very usable for writing down quick idea's. Very handy when you do not have money for a 'real' D.A.W. yet. But there are more apps, if you search further.

Fancy chords

Tip 2 on Chord Progressions: Stacking melodies

When you have a few melody lines from my last blog. And you know what notes they have, you can write them down on a piece of paper. Put them right underneath each other and when you have two or three lines, you can figure out chords.

First example: These are notes in 1 bar that need a chord.

First melody: g g g g b g
Second melody: b d d b d d
Third Melody: g g d g

When you take a look at the first 3 notes that are under each other, you see g-b-g. The second column it is g-d-g, the third is only g-d. I would write them down. I also know a B and a D are in one of the melodies. And add all missing notes with the notes I know like this:
G – A – B – C – D – E (– F# - G).
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 ( – 7 – 8).

So the first chord is a G. (3-note/triad) When I look at the other notes in the melodies, they are also conforming the scale of G. The 3rd and 5th note make this complete to a chord.

Second example:
First melody: g g bes g bes g
Second melody: bes d d b d d
Third Melody: g f d g
When I write down all the notes I have in my melodies.

g – bes – d – f
And add the notes that I am missing to the line, it will become:
g – a – bes – c – d – e – f – g
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8
(bes is called bflat in some parts of the world)

So again we figure out what are the most used notes and see if 3 of these make up a chord. When using the numbers you see it's first, third and fifth of a chord. G – Bes – D
For a major we have had a major third through the b (see first example) Now we have a bes, which is a half step lower note than a B on the scale.
(Probably why some parts of the world call it 'flat' and when it is higher, sharp)
But it makes my chord become minor and has a less cheerful sound to it.

When you find these techniques difficult, or need help with other chord progression questions for your songs?!? Feel free to schedule a
Free Co Creation Call with me.

Free Co Creation Call

For every part of the song and each chord you can use this method.
It can be a slow and long process at first. And after a while you might not need to do this anymore. When you discover which works all the time in your songs, you can probably make it work much quicker. Take your time to build on your skill set.
You now know how to play them simultaneously on an instrument. And know when changes are coming, you can play chords and by changing them, when the melody line changes, you'll get a chord progression.

For now, it can help you decide what chords and in what order to play along with the vocal melody or other melody parts. It is a puzzle, but you can learn a lot from it. See if you can find 3-note chords with the root, third and fifth first. You match these in your melody. Do watch out, not all notes of your melody have to be in the chord. Find the most used notes that match a chord you can find.
On a later time, you might want to find inversions of these notes in the melody. For example, the fifth might be lower than the root note.

Tip 3 on Chord Progressions: Tacking up musical theory