Ostinato October 18, 2014 No CommentThe ostinato is related to the riff. It’s a short, repeated melodic phrase. The difference lies mainly in how many times you repeat it. The riff is often used as a hook played a limited number of times at the beginning of the song. It can also be played elsewhere in the song. Its purpose is to draw the listener in, and give them something to remember. Length The ostinato is something that can go on for a long time. Its function is to act as an accompaniment to melody or improvisation. It’s used in both instrumental music and sung music. Here’s an example. The first piano you hear plays the ostinato. Listen for a couple of minutes. It can get kind of hypnotic. Then move to different places in the video; you’ll hear a variation of the ostinato. To hear how it changes, listen to first 10 minutes or so. Using ostinato in song A simple ostinato technique is to play the riff during a solo. A more interesting technique is to extend the riff and use that as the ostinato. This creates variety and more interest in general. You can extend a one bar riff by simply extending it by a bar. Or you can just add a couple of beats of new material. This creates a feeling of surprise. The listener is expecting a continuation of 4/4 and you give them a bar of 4/4 followed by a bar of 2/4. Time signatures Here’s a link to an explanation of time signatures if you need it. If not, you can skip this. http://www.musictheory.net/lessons/12 The explanation of the bottom number may not be totally clear. In case it’s not… If the bottom number is a 4, it indicates a quarter note; an 8 is an 1/8 note; a 2 is a half note. …and back to ostinato Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. This is a riff. Repeat it endlessly and it’s an ostinato. Here’s the same riff (bar 1) with an extension of another bar of 4/4 (bar 1 with a variation). And finally, the same riff with an extension of a bar of 2/4. The return to the beginning of the riff comes as a surprise. Experiment with extensions of different lengths: a bar of 3/4, a bar of 5/4, etc. Or shorten the first bar to 3/4 by erasing one of the beats. songwritingShare : Tweet
Idea density October 16, 2014 No CommentHow many things are going on in the music you’re listening to? How much is going on in the music you’re writing? In other words, how many ideas are you using at the same time? A common mistake is to use too many ideas in the same song. For instance, the guitar plays three different riffs, plays the bass line for one of the verses, and the whole song changes from a rock to a funk feel in the chorus while changing keys a couple of times. None of these are a bad idea on their own (although three different riffs is a bit much). Put them all into one song and you get a mess. Isolating ideas Try isolating each idea, and using it as the basis for an entire song. Having the guitar play the bass line is a nice idea. It varies the texture by eliminating chords for one verse. That simple move is memorable if it’s not surrounded by a bunch of other things competing for attention. A key change shifts the listener into a different world. This can be really effective, but not easy to do convincingly. A change in feel is a good idea if done well. Changing the genre is difficult to do convincingly, and can sound contrived. Instead of a straight up genre change, try changing the amount of activity in some way. For instance, the verse might have a driving guitar rhythm while the chorus uses longer, held chords. The art is in finding the right balance between rhythmically busy and relaxed. Finding it requires work and experimentation. Opposites A good tool for generating ideas is to come up with musical opposites. Then come up with ideas based on those. For example: Loud/quiet Solo performer/entire band Busy/sparse Legato/staccato Clean/distorted Arpeggiated chords/strummed chords Muted/resonant Come up with some of your own. They don’t have to be specifically music-related. For instance: Gritty/smooth Hard/soft Airy/dense These kind of practice can inspire good musical ideas. songwritingShare : Tweet
Noise October 12, 2014 No CommentI did a Mile Zero Dance show called Sho-tel a while ago. Mile Zero does a lot of really interesting things in this city, bringing together dancers, musicians, visual artists, filmmakers, archivists, folklorists. The show I did happened at a motel in the west end, seedy and gradually falling apart. I made noise. By noise I mean that I played with timbre. I didn’t worry about melody, chords, or playing in any conventional way. In other words, I concentrated on the sound character of the instrument. Check my soundcloud page under experimental guitar if you want to hear examples. https://soundcloud.com/stream Timbre and the electric guitar is an insane topic. There’s just so much you can do. Effects Here’s a basic list of effects: Distortion Phaser Chorus Delay Reverb Ring modulation Filters Harmonizers Equalizers Compressors Each effect has a range of intensity, so you can get a variety of timbre out of just one of them. When you start combining them… You can also get interesting sounds out of your guitar without effects. Prepared guitar All of this applies nicely to abstract or avante-garde music. But how do you use it to write songs? Try re-conceptualizing the guitar as a different instrument. Make it a percussion instrument by weaving some felt through the strings and tapping the strings with a chopstick. Can you hear this in an intro, or as a coloristic device in the chorus? When you use timbre this way, it’s a good idea to start simple. Don’t overplay. Play the sound once and let it ring (if it’s a sustained sound). If it’s different than the sounds around it, it will draw focus. Think of it as highlighting important events – beginnings of verses, choruses, etc. If it’s a percussive sound, you could use it in place of the drums, or as part of the drum sound. These are suggestions for where to start. As you work with this, ideas will occur to you. Follow them. Experiment by making sounds that don’t normally fit in the stuff you normally write. Composition, guitar, songwritingShare : Tweet
Failing October 9, 2014 No CommentBeing creative means that you’re going to fail. I’m sure you’ve failed many times. I have. Just like everybody else. Creative types train themselves to accept failure and look at it as a way to get better. They see it as an opportunity. Otherwise they would quit. It would be emotionally damaging to tell yourself you suck every time you fail, because you will fail a lot. And then you will succeed. That’s the process. Try. Fail. Succeed. Or as Samuel Beckett said: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Failing better means that you did that thing you’re trying to do, and you did it better than before. It’s still not perfect, but what is? More failing You never stop failing. The curse of creative types is that they see flaws in their work where others see perfection. Their strength is that they keep going. You have to really like doing this. And you have to redefine failure. Thomas Edison failed hundreds of times before he invented the filament for the electric light bulb. His assistant asked why he kept doing it if all he ever did was fail. Edison said that he hadn’t failed. He had learned hundreds of things that didn’t work. And then he made the thing work. I like this quote from Townes Van Zandt: “I don’t think you can ever do your best. Doing your best is a process of trying to do your best.” Samuel Beckett, Thomas Edison, and Townes Van Zandt – author, inventor, and songwriter. They all knew the secret: keep trying. Perception shift All of this takes a fundamental shift in the way you perceive the things that you make. Being creative allows you to watch yourself reacting to failure, and that helps you discover who you are. Not all of who you are. But pieces of the puzzle fall into place. It’s hard to look. But the good news is that you get better. A better artist, a better, more interesting person. You go on more adventures, meet more people, have a more interesting life, because you’re not worried so much about screwing up. Being creative isn’t just making stuff. It’s making yourself, and that happens by failing. Which, as it turns out, is succeeding. thoughtsShare : Tweet
Funk 2 October 4, 2014 No CommentIn the last post I talked about using a combination of scratch rhythm and chords to create accented rhythmic grooves. But I only looked at accenting the first 16th and the third 16th notes of a four note group. A reminder of those two: You may be wondering about accenting the second 16th note and the fourth 16th note. Perhaps you’ve been playing around with them. If not, here they are. The procedure here is pretty much the same as what we did with the first and third 16ths. It’s just harder. Body rhythms It’s harder because of the way we use our body when we play. Most of us tap our foot on the beat. This makes it necessary to lift our foot on the offbeat. Here’s what I mean: So we have a clear movement for the downbeat (the number) and the offbeat (the “and”). But there’s no foot movement that corresponds to 16th notes. They’re somewhere between your foot going down and coming up. Some people tap their foot on every 16th. Understandable, but this destroys the sense of the beat. Developing a good sense of rhythm means accenting the downbeat while feeling different rhythms in different parts of the body. Drummers do this every time they play. So our foot “feels” the 8th notes simply by moving up and down. Our strumming hand “feels” the 16th notes. In doing so, it goes twice as fast as the foot. This requires body independence that can take a bit of work to attain. Be patient if this is difficult. The new rhythms As always, play the 16th notes slowly and count “1 ee and uh, 2 ee and uh, 3 ee and uh, 4 ee and uh”. Just use scratching to start. Keep counting. Now play a chord when you say “ee”. Loop that rhythm until you’re comfortable with it. You should still be playing slowly. Now speed it up, but not too much. Funk generally falls somewhere between 75 and 90 beats per minute (bpm). Which reminds me… The metronome Get a metronome if you haven’t got one already. I use this one. https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/metronome-9th/id448155296?mt=8 Set it at a tempo slow enough to make the 16th notes easy to play. When you’re comfortable at that speed gradually increase the tempo. So if you start at 60 bpm, increase the tempo to 65, then 70, etc. Here’s a good article on issues to consider when using a metronome. http://tomhess.net/PracticingGuitarWithAMetronome.aspx Switch to the other new rhythm. Same procedure as the other one, but play the chord when you say “uh”. Mixing it up Now create some loops using all four rhythms. Here’s one. This is an exercise designed to challenge your concentration. No hook or riff is going to change this rapidly. As always, take it slow. Then speed it up. Create a few of your own by making one of the rhythms the main focus. Then improvise by inserting the other ones wherever it feels right to do so. Or you can structure this work more by deciding to play one of the rhythms three times in each bar. Then fill in the fourth beat with one of the other three rhythms. guitarShare : Tweet
16th notes and funk October 2, 2014 No CommentBack to sixteenths… A discussion of 16th notes needs to include funk. Develop your ability to play funk, and you develop feel and groove. This is important for overall development of rhythmic abilities. Funk basics First step: play nothing but four 16ths to the beat. The ‘x’ noteheads mean that you need to mute the strings while you strum them. This is called scratching. To get the right feel, do the following: lay your left hand fingers lightly on the strings keep your right arm and wrist loose as you strum go through the strings quickly as you strum whether the tempo is slow or fast. Try to make it sound like a percussion instrument Tap your foot on each beat, and count “1 ee and uh, 2 ee and uh, 3 ee and uh, 4 ee and uh.” Be patient. This can feel weird if you’re not used to doing it. Placing accents Once you’re comfortable playing the scratch rhythm above, move on to the second step: placing accents on different parts of the beat. Placing accents on different parts of the beat is really important for funk. It’s also important for developing a strong overall rhythmic feel. Here are a couple of examples. 1. Accent on the first sixteenth note. 2. Accent on the third sixteenth note. Slashes The slash indicates a chord. Use scratches for the rest of the 16ths. Pretend your strumming arm is a machine and keep the 16ths even. This works best if it’s a chord that covers all the strings that you’re playing. Open string chords generally don’t work, since some of the strings will ring when you release the chord. This one works. A lot do, but this is a classic funk chord. It’s the E7#9 chord. As you’re strumming, release it just enough to keep your fingers lightly on the strings for the scratches. Try to play just the strings that have your fingers on them. This chord is very forgiving since both the low E and high E strings are part of the chord. It won’t sound that bad if you hit them. Combining rhythms Mix the two rhythms I provided above, and create some four-beat loops. For instance: Come up with as many as you can. guitarShare : Tweet
