Chapter 5
Rhythm
Let’s add ingredient number 2 to your song: rhythm.
Rhythm translates to speed (beats per minute or bpm) and time (4/4, 3/4, 6/8), with time being the more important aspect in my opinion.
If you don’t know what time you should pick, you can always use the safe bet, which is a 4/4 beat. It’s the most commonly used time in popular and rock music and you are for surely familiar with it.
However, I encourage you not to be afraid to experiment with other times as well. Writing a song is really a lot about trying things out that you have not tried before.
Once you have picked your time and speed, pick how often you play the chord in that time. You could for example repeat the first chord twice before playing chord 2, 3 and 4. Or you play all chords for the same amount of time.
Experiment with different timings when it comes to the chord change until you found a progression that works best for you.
The last step is to create the real rhythm of your progression. Let’s say you chose a 4/4 time. There are many ways how you can play a chord in a 4/4 bar. You could pick the strings like an arpeggio on every note (e.g. Nothing Else Matters by Metallica), or using a strumming pattern to strum the chord (e.g. something that Bob Dylan might do). You could strum the strings on all beats of the chord (1 – 2 – 3 – 4) or apply any other kind of strumming pattern.
Experiment with different techniques and patterns. Move from strumming to picking and vice versa, ad a rest somewhere in the pattern that you are playing to see how it sounds.
In case you cannot come up with a pattern of your own, check StrumPatterns for inspiration.
This step is a real creative process and it might take some time until you feel you have it right. Don’t worry if you do not come up with something that pleases you within half an hour. It usually takes me 2-3 days with some breaks between my songwriting sessions to create a pattern that I really feel comfortable with.
For my song, I wanted to pick an odd-time signature of 3/4. 3/4 is the time of the Waltz, which is typical for Vienna. As my song was going to be about Austria, I deliberately chose to take this time.
So I played around with my little chord progression (D – G – A – D) in a 3/4 signature and this is how it sounded.
When it comes to the timing of the chord changes, I went for something very very simple: Just apply a chord change every bar.
By now I had a very rough sketch of a chord progession with a time. In my case, I wasn’t too happy how static my rhythm sounded… so I started playing around with changing emphasis on the time, until I came up with a rhythm that was actually in the key of 6/8.