Tastefully adding a few beats to a part of your song, or taking a few beats away in another part of your song can dramatically influence the effect your music has on listeners. For one thing, this technique briefly breaks the steady beat of your song and forces your ear to look for the new “center” of the beat. Let’s start off with an example: In this example, the opening groove is in an odd meter – 5/4. When the verse begins, it transitions to common time (4/4). This mixing of meters is one of the most effective yet most overlooked songwriting techniques available to you. Introducing an “off” meter like 5/4 or 7/4 or 9/4 shifts the center of the beat enough to make your listener do an aural “double take” and when you return back to a standard meter, it resolves the tension that not being able to find the beat created. Adding beats is pretty straightforward. Say you have a song and the rhythm goes: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + You can add a beat and change the lyrics to be: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + Adding the beat lengthens the final phrase, which delays the resolution that your ear is expecting. So it builds a little tension and changes up the words for added variety. Subtracting beats is a great way to abruptly end a musical phrase or even the whole song. For example: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 3 Here you cut out 1 and a half beats. But unlike adding beats, subtracting them often causes your ear to fill in the silence to complete the phrase. So even if you play: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 3 (+ 4 +) Your ear anticipates the ending to be on the 1st beat. It’s just like if somebody sings “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you….” You expect to hear the “are” so much that you finish the phrase in your head. You can write entire sections of songs – even entire songs – in uncommon time signatures. As you experiment with adding and subtracting beats, it can become tempting to use this technique all the time. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, manipulating time in a unique way can also become a part of your “signature sound”. Some artists are great technicians and use this and many other techniques. But then their songs becomes a collection of techniques rather than an organic expression of thoughts and feelings. And you can actually feel this mathematical approach to songwriting in the music itself. It has brains but it has not guts, no soul. It’s like if you add a little hot sauce to your chicken, it can really make the flavor pop. But if you drench your chicken in hot sauce it will ruin the flavor of both the chicken and the hot sauce and the whole mess will have to be thrown out and you’ll have to order take out to forget the entire frustrating situation! One way to spice up the time signature without sacrificing pop appeal is to write a section of the song in an odd meter such as 5/4 or 7/4, and then make the chorus in a common meter such as 4/4. The Beatles used this exact technique in their hit song “Don’t Let Me Down”. The main hook of the song is in 4/4 time and the verse is in 5/4 time. By the way, when I say “find the beat”, what I mean is this. Your ear is looking for the “2” and the “4”. 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + A typical pop/rock drum beat accents the 2 and 4 by hitting the snare, and the Western ear is very accustomed to this sound. So when you try to find the 2 and 4 in a different meter, it keeps slipping away from you. 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + You don’t have to go outside of standard meters such as 4/4, 3/4, 6/8 and 12/8 to create interesting time effects. For instance, this Radiohead song believe it or not is in 4/4 time, but the rhythm is broken up soo unusually that it’s almost impossible to find the beat. Yet the song obviously has SOME sort of time structure otherwise how would all the band members be able to follow along in unison? |
