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Different time signatures for the same lyric

You’ll need to understand rhythmic notation for this post. if you’re not sure about this, check out this post on sixteenth notes…

http://davewallmusic.com/http:/davewallmusic.com/topics/songwriting/songwriting/page/7/

…and another on quarter notes and eighth notes.

How to make chord progressions a pro would love, Part 14: Rhythm

Take this line:

“I walked through the doorway and saw you standing there.”

I’ll set this line in 4/4, in 5/5, and in 3/4.

For all of these examples, I use triplets at the beginning of the bar for two reasons:

• they fits naturally with the words
• they have a sense of forward movement, supporting the idea of walking

The end of the bar changes in each example to illustrate how extending or compressing the length of the bar affects the lyric.

4/4

In 4/4, we get 4 eighth notes at the end of the bar. This feels plodding and unnatural, like you feel nothing. If you came through a door and saw someone standing there, you would have more of a reaction, whether you were surprised or not.

5/4

With 5/4, the eighth notes on “saw you” are extended to quarter notes. This is better. There’s a sense of hesitation, communicating surprise. But it still feels kind of stiff.

3/4

The sixteenth notes carrying the words “saw you standing” convey a sense of tension. It’s as if you’re so surprised that you stumble.

It could always be better

I’m not sold on any of these. I would need to tweak the rhythm in each one to get it to flow better. Triplets may not be the best idea. Introducing syncopation would probably help.

Endless choices…

The point is that by changing the length of the bar, you’re able to communicate in ways that you weren’t able to before. You get a chance to consider the lyrics and what the mean to you, and to your audience.

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Communicating with different time signatures

4 + 3

It’s safe to say that most songs in the singer-songwriter category are either in 4/4 or 3/4. Tasteful use of these two time signatures gives you an expressive way of extending a line, creating tension, and communicating feeling.

For instance, what happens when you’ve been playing in 4/4 for the entire verse, and then switch to 3/4 for the chorus? What does that communicate? Is there a sense of tension, surprise? Or try the verse in 3/4 and the chorus in 4/4.

How about using a single bar of 3/4 in the chorus, just before going back to the verse? How about extending the chorus by adding one more bar of 3/4?

Sometimes this type of thing works really well. Other times, not so much. Sometimes it’s just a matter of getting used to something new.

Expectations

These kinds of moves are always unexpected, and add interest even if that’s the only reason you use them. But they’re always more interesting if you use them in support of the lyrics.

For instance, if the line at the end of a verse expresses a feeling of uncertainty or tension, then a time signature different than the one you’re already using might support that feeling. If the end of the verse expressed confidence, then continuing with the existing time signature makes sense.

Living, breathing music

Using time signatures in this way means that you wouldn’t be repeating the same thing every verse. There would be a sense of organic change in the music as the feelings in the lyrics change.

These are really broad ideas. In the next post, I’ll get more specific, and use different time signatures on the same lyric to show how they affect the meaning of the words.

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Becoming a better rhythm player: triplets and strumming

Two years ago, I started this blog with a series on songwriting. I finished fifteen posts, and then went careening off into other areas of personal interest. Some of it, I hope, was of interest to readers. Some of it was me clarifying my own process of music-making.

Triplets

I ended the series with posts about rhythm, but I didn’t get past quarter-notes and eighth-notes. Here’s the last post in that series.

How to make chord progressions a pro would love, Part 15: Rhythm III – Strumming

So I didn’t get to triplets. Too bad, because they’re kind of awesome.

Here’s what they look like, and how to count them.

As with eighth-notes, you need to keep a steady beat and distribute the notes evenly over that beat.

Use a metronome to get this right. Most metronomes can play eighth-notes and triplets while accenting the downbeat. This is really useful for hearing what I mean by “distribute the notes evenly over that beat.”

Eighth-note strumming

Strumming triplets turns out to be more challenging than strumming quarter-notes and eighth-notes. Here’s why.

With eighth-notes, you naturally use an up-and-down strumming motion, hitting the downbeat on the down-stroke (square bracket symbol) and the upbeat on the upstroke (wedge symbol).

It feels pretty natural. After all, you have to bring your arm up after the down-stroke in preparation for the next down-stroke. Might as well hit the strings as you do.

Triplet strumming

But with triplets, everything changes. If you use an up-and-down strumming motion, you wind up using an upstroke on every second down-beat. In the following example, that means on beats 2 and 4. Like this:

This means that you don’t get to use gravity to emphasize those downbeats where you use an upstroke. This feels weird, and it’s why some people use down-strokes exclusively when strumming triplets.

But practice it anyway. If you do, you’ll make your upstrokes as strong as your down-strokes. This will make you a more flexible and interesting rhythm player. It will also make people want to play with you more.

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Songwriting and sonic texture

I’ve been talking a lot about ambient/textural music and sound in the last number of weeks, but how does all this fit into song-writing?

Song-writing isn’t just about chords, melody, and words. Conceptually, it starts there, usually with words that seem to work only if music is supporting them. And that music usually has some relation to the words. Or it should, even if it’s only minor key for sad song, major key for happy song.

Conventions

Here’s some other conventional material that can be used to support words:

• A guitar solo (with or without the rest of the band) to illustrate loneliness
• Arpeggiated chords to illustrate a lighter mood
• Power chords to illustrate confidence or aggression
• Silence to build tension

This list can get pretty long, and of course any of these can illustrate something other than what I’ve indicated here. But each choice should have some sort of reason for being there. Music should support the story of the words somehow, otherwise what’s the point of including it?

(At this point, it’s not a bad idea to list all the musical ideas, techniques, etc. that you can think of, and then try to relate them to lyrics that you’ve written).

Ambient experiment

Ambient sound can function as support for lyrics, too. Using the guitar, you can create sound that illustrates thunder, wind, industrial sound, etc.

But can you sing over these kinds of sounds? Of course, you don’t have to; they can just be used for effect.

But it’s fun to try.

As an experiment, take a melody from a song you know (or one you’ve written), create and loop an ambient sound, and sing that melody with the sound. Here’s a couple of ideas for ambient sound:

• Delay pedal – set a delay of .5 second with maximum feedback; play long, single notes in the same key as the melody until you get a dense weave of notes.
• Distortion – maximum distortion; rub or scrape the strings; don’t try to get any sort of conventional harmonic sound; just think noise.

These sounds can be disorienting to sing over. But give it a try. It usually sparks ideas, and it’s not like you have to use it as part of a song. Although you might want to.

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