Fun with

Rhythm

Musical

Example

Fun with

Rhythm

 Secret

Score

Fun with

Rhythm

 Music/

Score

Introduction

We often think of rhythm as simply the vehicle that delivers our musical pitches. Like any vehicle, it can go slow or fast. But rhythm plays much more than a secondary role in the world of music. While you cannot create harmony or melody without pitch, you can show great expression with just the use of rhythm alone.

In this example, we've created a fun musical environment by crafting playful rhythms. While we've used many percussion instruments to produce this rhythmic composition, we can reduce all the parts to one main rhythmic pattern:

This two bar rhythmic pattern is played twice to form our four bar composition. Listen to this rhythmic pattern when performed by one single drum:

Now listen again to just the first two bars of our full piece, as played by a variety of percussion instruments:

You can hear that while interesting rhythms are important, it's the variety of percussive colors that brings this rhythmic pattern to life.