Melody is queen, sure, but many popular genres of music were driven by rhythm. So how can you let the rhythm take control?

It’s sometimes hard to play outside of the boundaries we know, and in terms of rhythm, our boundaries are pretty tight. Whether you play rock or r’n'b or funk, you will be used to writing and playing the same rhythm patterns song after song.

How do you break free?

Here’s a little exercise to open up your rhythm options…

Isolate yourself in a quiet but not silent space. Maybe you can hear a few cars driving by outside, or your computer is making its usual murmur, or your cat is running around the house.

Focus your attention on the sound you hear (the cars, the computer, the cat).

Tap out the rhythm you hear for a minute or so.

Distract yourself for a few minutes with a mundane task, like making a cup of tea or taking out the bins.

Get back to your quiet space.

Try to tap the same rhythm as you were tapping before.

Inevitably, because you aren’t hearing it now and it was rather random, you aren’t going to remember everything you were tapping before, and this is a good thing.

Tap again what you remember. And again.

Grab your recording device of choice and record yourself.

Now, grab your instrument of choice and try playing that rhythm, again and again. Don’t consciously try to make it fit into a pattern you know. If you feel the rhythm is slipping away from you, play along to what you have recorded.

Can you write a chorus or verse to this rhythm pattern?

This exercise uses randomness and memory selection to build up a rhythm.

At first, you select a random rhythm based on your environnement. The rhythm has no merit no predefined merit except for being different from your favourite rhythm.  

In the second part of the exercise, you try to remember what you have played.  Of course, you will not remember it exactly. Your creativity will morph the rhythm you have played before into a new rhythm. However, your focal point is still that random rhythm.

Usually, if you sit down and write a song, your focal point in terms of rhythm will be pre-determined by the genre you write. For example, rock songwriters will instinctivelly try to make their guitar riffs fit into a 4/4 rhythm.

The purpose of this exercise is to give you a different rhythmic reference. The reference is chosen randomly, and your brain is asked to build up on it, by trying to remember the random rhythm. For this to work, you have to genuinely try to reproduce the rhythm you were hearing before.

You might end up with a very weird rhythm that you don’t like much. But this doesn’t matter - as long as you end up with a rhythm that is not your rhythm of choice, this exercise has served its purpose of pushing away your rhythmic boundaries.