Graham English

Posts Tagged ‘meter’

Visualizing Relative Beat Strength

I was taught to organize rhythms into increments of two measures at a time. Some beats/pulses get a natural emphasis in relation to their placement in the measure. I put together this illustration of the most natural points of relative emphasis in a 2-measure unit of rhythm.

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 10

This dominant 7 pentatonic pattern sandwiches the tonic key with two full beats of the “outside” key on either side. It starts in the transposed key, moves to the tonic key, and finishes in the transposed key.

Don’t Forget Square One…

I’ve noticed a lot of resistance to “songwriting rules”. Most of the criticism falls in the Craft vs. Inspiration camp. And my defense is always that it isn’t an either-or argument.
From Don’t forget square one…:
Horse trainer Linda Parelli says that, and her take on amateurs-vs.-experts is that the amateurs forget the fundamentals. Her husband Pat, [...]