Rhythm: Erasures

Arnold Schoenberg said that the eraser was the most important part of the pencil. I’m there.

 

Erasures

Take that rhythm we were working with in a previous post.

 

 

Erase the first note of the rhythm that you wrote.  I’ll call this act of erasing an erasure.

Play that.

 

Now erase just the second note.

Play that.

 

Erase the third note, and you get this.

 

You now have 3 new rhythms. Simple.

 

Continue this erasing process with the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th notes.

 

Combining rhythms

We’re not done. Play the original rhythm and follow it immediately with the first erasure.

 

Loop this. See if you like it.

 

Now play the original followed by the first and the second erasure.

 

Loop that for a while. This one is interesting because it’s three bars long, which messes with people’s expectations (people tend to expect 2 or 4 bar phrases).

 

You get the idea. Erase one note but keep the others. There are six notes in the original rhythm, so you’ll have 7, one-bar rhythmic ideas when you’re finished (the original and 6 erasures).

 

Longer rhythms

Take the original rhythm and add each erasure to it one at a time. This will give you 7 different rhythmic patterns.

 

Here they are:

1. original
2. original + erasure 1
3. original + erasure 1 + erasure 2
4. original + erasure 1 + erasure 2 + erasure 3
5. original + erasure 1 + erasure 2 + erasure 3 + erasure 4
6. original + erasure 1 + erasure 2 + erasure 3 + erasure 4 + erasure 5
7. original + erasure 1 + erasure 2 + erasure 3 + erasure 4 + erasure 5 + erasure 6

 

Play around with this. You’ll almost certainly find some really cool rhythmic patterns.

 

And then check out the next post. We’re still not done.