~ Using Rhythm To Add Creativity To Your Songwriting ~

In order for you to understand this lesson, you need to be familiar with the common note values
such as the quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth note and eighth note triplet. (if you are not,
review them here: http://tomhess.net/RhythmNotationReview.aspx )

What I want to show you in this lesson is a new kind of note value that you may not have fully
explored in your rhythm guitar playing. It’s called the “Quarter Note Triplet”. An example of it
is seen below.

Hear it

This kind of triplet is very effective when used in 4/4, 3/4, 5/4, 7/4 or any time signature that has
a quarter note receiving one beat. The reason is because in these time signatures, the beat is
usually divided by 2 or 4 (an even number). When the beat is divided by 3 (an odd number), it
creates a lot of musical tension.

You can easily exploit this idea in your songwriting. When you are composing something that
needs to sound tense, dark, intense, heavy, powerful, inserting quarter note triplets in appropriate
places will often contribute to achieving the desired effect.

For example, after a steady stream of sixteenth notes or eighth notes, you can insert one or two
measures of quarter note triplets to add variety and help to carry the music forward into the next
section. When you use this idea in contrast to something predictable or something that is already
established in the listener’s ear, it helps to add MASSIVE tension to your music.

A slight word of caution: don’t overuse this idea. It tends to really lose its effectiveness on the
listener when used too much. When used at just the right time however, it is very powerful.

As an example of this idea, consider the riff below. It is in 4/4 time and starts out using
traditional and predictable rhythms of sixteenth notes and eighth notes. When quarter note
triplets are used, your attention is automatically taken off the “listening autopilot” and is being
placed back on the music:
 Listen to it

The quarter note triplets are circled in the notation above. Of course, this is a simple example,
but it illustrates a possible effect that these triplets can have.

Notice by the way, that it is not necessary to play fast in order to build very strong musical
tension, you can very often achieve a more dramatic effect simply by altering rhythm (of course
using quarter note triplets is only one out of many possible ways of achieving tension with
rhythms).
What I want you to do as an assignment for this lesson is to take any of the rhythms that you
know (either by having composed them yourself or learned from other sources), and find creative
ways of applying the quarter note triplet idea. Hint: for maximum tension, use these triplets over
chords that are also tense (diminished chords, dominant 7th chords, chromatic chords etc...).

Be sure to practice these ideas to the metronome to work on your timing. It may take a few
practice sessions for you to get used to the quarter note triplet feel, and the best way to get it to
make sense to you is to practice playing it in time to the metronome clicks. Once you get used to
how the notes fall into place, you will be able to play quarter note triplets as easily as you can
play eighth notes or sixteenth notes. Also, it is important to practice transitioning between eighth
notes and sixteenth notes and quarter note triplets. You need to train your mind to shift gears
from processing each of these note values.

Of course, this one rhythmic idea is not the “be all end all” of songwriting or creativity. It is
simply one (often overlooked) way of how you can exploit one of the seven elements of music
to add greater expression to your songwriting.

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