Look For Patterns

Check out these three posts about rhythm, and look for patterns

  1. Triplets
  2. 16th Notes
  3. Groups of 5

For example, within 1 beat there are:

  • 7 possible triplet rhythms
  • 15 semiquavers rhythms
  • 31 quintuplet rhythms

(There are 3 quaver rhythms and 1 crotchet)

So: 1, 3, 7, 15, 31

The pattern is doubling and adding one.

Or if you think of there being an additional possibility of no rhythm within a beat, that’d mean you’d add 1 to each group so it’d run 2, 4, 8, 16, 32.

So now you can work out how many sextuplet possibilities there are and so on, and you can see why I stopped :)

Patterns can be a great shortcut to learning something quickly or grasping things conceptually.

Music is FULL of patterns.

Look for them in melodic motifs, chord progressions, form, arrangement, composition, lyrics.

Look for the patterns in anything that has form: porticos, poetry, pottery, paintings, pomegranates.

Until next time!

Mike