This article is going to be a little different than my first music theory article, which you can read here. Yes, in this one, instead of covering a wide swath of information, we are going to narrow down are focus on building a 7/8 drum groove and then a 5/8 drum groove. In doing so, we’ll work on developing our audiation skills, as well as go over some rhythmic elements. If you stay till the end, I have put together a little composition that makes use of the drum grooves we build.
Essentially this will just be a progression of ideas that hopefully inspires you to write your own music :)
7/8
Now, in that first clip we have the accents of the hi hats on the 1st beats of the seven. Counting these 7 eighth notes can be done in a few ways, one way is to use numbers in groups with larger numbers I like to split them into smaller groups, say 3 & 4. (One, two, three, four, one, two, three) and another way is to break down certain words based on their syllables. Autobiographical is a word with 7 syllables, au-to-bi-o-graph-i-cal. Either way is fine as long as you can feel the 7 pulses.
Accents are indicated by the little arrow underneath or above a note, when a note has an accent the musician should play that note in a manner that serves to accentuate the note, this could mean playing the note louder than the rest. Play that first clip again and see if you can hear the accent on the first of the 7 notes.
Straight eighth notes hits accenting the 1st beats is a good start, but where should we take this? What about adding some rhythmic variations? These manipulate how you feel the time in the music (the pulse that makes you tap your foot or nod your head). Changes in note values, tempo shifts, metric modulation (changing from one time signature to another), all can be identified as rhythmic variations. I think we could start by interspersing sixteenth notes and triplets within the groups of 7. See if you can identify where they are.
Before we listen to the clip, try and imagine what this hi hat groove would sound like.
I’m getting a marching type drum beat vibe.
Before we add in some bass and snare hits lets refresh ourselves on the notation of the elements we’ve used so far in this beat.
A 7/8-time signature denotes 7 eighth notes per bar.
An eighth note broken in two is a sixteenth note.
A sixteenth note triplet is 3 evenly spaced notes in the duration of 1 eighth note.
Those are all the elements we’ve used so far in creating this drumbeat.
Now, let’s look at where I placed bass and snare hits.
Let us first try to imagine how this beat would sound before we play it. This practice of audiation (the process in which we can imagine music in our minds) is called the foundation of musicianship. Developing this skill of imagination forces our creativity and over all musical skill to its highest potential.
Application
The best thing one can do to improve their audiation skills and breadth of creativity is to write out musical ideas (particularly without the aid of an instrument) and really force the limits of your imagination; this process combines your theoretical knowledge and your creativity. And, since the amount of nuance in music is endless, everything from ornaments, clefs, key signatures, time signatures, lyrics, accidentals, articulations, grace notes, tempo, dynamics, repeats and jumps, and more, music has endless possibilities, and correspondingly there is no limit to developing audiation skills. If that list of musical terms boggled your mind, no worries. I’ll cover many of these in future articles.
So far in this article we dealt only with a few of these possibilities, namely a 7/8 time signature, a 120bpm tempo, and a few (of the many) rhythmic variations. But you know, just working within those confines we created a neat little groove, and I think that’s enough to be happy about.
5/8
Since we covered the notation basics in the section above, I want to quickly build a beat in 5/8.
Like 7/8, this time signature has a denominator of 8 which means the pulses are eighth notes, so in one measure we will have 5 eighth notes. I’m thinking of contrasting this drumbeat to the 7/8 by having the ride cymbal play 2 quarter notes followed by one eight note, opposed to centralizing the beat around the hi hat. Because the time signature is an odd number of eighth notes, if we wanted to use straight quarter notes, the 3rd would go ‘over the bar lines’ it would spill into the next measure, 3 quarter notes = 6 eighth notes. In our case I have selected 2 quarter notes plus 1 eight note, this keeps us in the bar lines (this is just a personal decision, it is perfectly allowable to play notes that don’t begin or end at the beginning or end of a measure). This gives the groove a sensation of skipping. Overtop, I want to have the accented bass drum hits switch from the 1st and 5th beats in a measure to the 3rd beat. Check out what I mean.
Alright folks now its time! I put together a composition that uses our two drumbeats and music from piano, and bass guitar. Feel free to follow the score below and watch the music take its form. Hopefully you like it!
Composition
Conclusion
I hope this article was enjoyable to read. I certainly had a great time putting it together. Please subscribe, like, and comment. See you next time.
About the Author
Isaiah Grip is a 22 year old multi-instrumentalist composer (guitar, piano, violin, cello, and voice) out of Colorado who records and studies music independently under the name Tetra Veda, as well as collaborating with Ghostwrite Inc, and playing guitar in the progressive metal band Cloud Temple. His personal repertoire can be found on Bandcamp and YouTube under the name Tetra Veda.
Wish I had you as my music theory professor when I was in college. You seem to grasp difficult time signatures so much more easily than the collegiate professors!
So cool! The composition later on in the article is awesome!Thanks for your work.