Misusing Rhythmic Tools
Problem:
You have a variety of tools in your DAW arsenal—such as quantization, slicing, and beat-juggling effects—that are designed to help you work with rhythmic material. But you feel like there’s more potential in these tools that you haven’t yet discovered.
Some workflows and effects are clearly designed for use with very specific types of material. But there’s no reason why you can’t
repurpose them for other uses. Here are some ideas for how to creatively misuse rhythmic tools to achieve unexpected results.
Solutions:
Misusing Quantization
Quantization is typically used to correct timing errors in manually
played MIDI material and, in some DAWs, audio samples. But there are a number of ways to use quantization “incorrectly,” sometimes with
surprising results.
One interesting experiment: Try quantizing to a note value that is substantially slower or faster than the source material. If you played sixteenth notes, for example, try quantizing to a slower note value like quarter notes. If you originally played a monophonic figure, you’ll end up generating chords. You can even apply successively larger
quantization values to already quantized material to achieve the same effect. Here’s a figure played in sixteenth notes:
And here’s the same material after quantizing to quarter notes:
Another way to generate unexpected results from quantization is to start by playing your parts at a dramatically faster tempo than you actually intend. Because the errors in your playing will likely be more extreme than usual, applying quantization will then “correct” the note
placements to unusual positions. When you then slow the tempo down to a more musically appropriate one, you may have created patterns that you never would have played intentionally.
Misusing Slicing
Slicing is typically used to separate rhythmic events (such as drum hits) from audio material such as drum beats or bass lines. But there’s no reason why you can’t slice any audio material, including entirely ambient pads, field recordings, or other non-rhythmic samples.
Another idea: If your DAW allows you to create or move markers in the original audio to determine the positions at which slices will be created, try placing the markers in deliberately “wrong” places.
In many DAWs, slicing generates a new instrument—and potentially a new effects chain—for each slice. This makes it easy to apply
dramatically different types of processing to individual slices, regardless of their source. For this reason, slicing can often lead to interesting
results even when you’re slicing things in the “wrong” ways.
Misusing Beat-Juggling Effects
Effects that chop and rearrange incoming audio material in real time are normally used for creating variations of beats. But, as with the slicing examples discussed previously, you can also create interesting results by feeding these effects with any other material, including things that have no clear rhythm at all.
Although these are some examples for how to misuse specific
workflows, consider applying this approach to all of your tools. Any effect, instrument, or workflow can potentially yield interesting results when used in unusual ways. Learn what your tools are supposed to do, but don’t be afraid to make them do something else.
3+3+2 Rhythm
3+3+2 Rhythm
Problem:
There’s a particular off-kilter, asymmetrical, funky rhythm that you keep hearing in music of all kinds, from hip-hop to footwork to rock and roll.
What is it, and how can you use it in your own music?
For new producers, there’s a tendency to be overwhelmed by the
perception that all music is radically unique. The reality, however, is that there is a shared vocabulary of underlying musical patterns that
artists frequently reuse across a variety of genres. Here’s one of the most common.
Solution:
The tresillo, or 3+3+2 pattern, is a widely used rhythmic pattern. Its origins are unknown, but it’s a staple of African and Latin music and was eventually incorporated into early jazz, after which it made its way to all of jazz’s descendants: R&B, rock, funk, and eventually modern electronic music. In its simplest form, the 3+3+2 pattern looks like this:
The “3+3+2” refers to the number of sixteenth notes between hits, and the pattern repeats every two beats. The pattern can also be played with other note durations; a half-time version would be measured in eighth notes, for example, and would repeat every four beats.
As a stand-alone pattern, 3+3+2 might not be so useful, but it really becomes interesting when overlaid against other patterns that are more symmetrical. For example, here’s the previous example as a kick drum pattern underlying a basic rock groove and expanded to fill a full bar:
If the backbeats occur at half the speed (on beat 3 rather than beats 2 and 4), this same pattern begins to resemble a simplified version of the drum programming heard in a lot of bass music. With the addition of hi-hats on the offbeat eighth notes, the drum part for the track “No Think”
by Sepalcure is based off this basic pattern:
As you can see, there is a huge range of possibilities available just by combining the standard 3+3+2 rhythm with various other rhythms.
Additionally, there are a number of ways to subtly vary the basic pattern, which can yield even more possibilities.
Skipping or adding one or more notes. By leaving out certain notes of the pattern, you can maintain the syncopation and asymmetry but in a more subtle way. Conversely, by adding notes to the pattern, you can create an embellished version. The main drum pattern in Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What” is an example of both processes at work. This is a four-bar phrase in which the kick drum pattern consists of three different
types of 3+3+2 pattern:
The first and third phrases are identical, with the middle “3” of the 3+3+2 left unplayed. The second and fourth phrases play the whole pattern, but the fourth also adds an additional sixteenth immediately before the final “2.” But because the 3+3+2 pattern has already been so strongly established, we hear this note purely as an ornament; the
underlying 3+3+2 is still dominant.
Extending the “3.” The “2” portion of the 3+3+2 pattern serves to resynchronize the gesture with the metric grid. But very interesting things can happen if you delay this resynchronization by repeating the
“3” parts of the gesture additional times. An example of this can be
heard in the track “Tenderly” by Disclosure. Here, the two-bar kick and clap pattern looks like this:
There are six kick drums in the first bar, which are all three sixteenths apart, followed by a pause and then a clear “realignment” with kicks on beats two and three in the second bar. This creates a strong contrast between rhythmic stability and instability, tension and release.
Now that you’re familiar with the 3+3+2 rhythm, you’ll start to notice it in various forms in all sorts of different kinds of music. And it’s not just useful for drum patterns. You can use 3+3+2 to build bass lines, chords,
and melodies as well.