Art & Music - Module 6: Creating Rhythms (Fall 2024)

For Teachers
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"Creating Art & Music" is an introductory course designed to introduce creative activities in the context of art and music. Thus far the course has been taught at the middle school, high school, community college, and university level (with appropriate adaptations for each level). Each week this fall, students in the course are posting their projects in this strand of the Snap! forum. Here's a link to the course materials:

Art, Animations & Music

This week's module is titled "Creating Rhythms". In this module, we will dive into the world of multi-track recording and the importance of rhythm in music. You’ll build on the melodies you created in the previous module by writing a drum track using a step-sequencer in Snap! to accompany your melody. Alongside this technical exercise, we’ll explore the cultural and historical significance of rhythm and percussion across different musical traditions and how technology has influenced modern music production.

The Role of Technology in Music

Multi-track recording has revolutionized music production, allowing artists to layer sounds and create complex, richly textured compositions. In the mid-20th century, artists like The Beatles and Brian Wilson (of The Beach Boys) were at the forefront of this innovation. By using multi-track recorders, they were able to experiment with layering vocals, instruments, and percussion in ways that were not possible before. This technique allowed musicians to push the boundaries of what was possible, creating iconic albums like The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.

Later, the rise of hip-hop and electronic music in the 1980s and beyond introduced new tools for creating drum tracks, like the Roland TR-808 drum machine and MPCs (Music Production Centers). These technologies allowed producers to craft beats using step-sequencing, where beats are programmed in a sequence of steps, giving rise to legendary drum tracks in both genres.

The Multitrack Revolution: From Les Paul to the Beach Boys, The Beatles, and Boston (Podcast, 18 min)

Rhythms Around the World

Music has always been a powerful form of cultural expression, and rhythms are central to many musical traditions. It even plays important roles in how we process information, from speech and hearing to pattern recognition. In this module, we’ll explore how drums and percussion are used across different cultures:

  1. African Drumming Traditions: Drumming plays a crucial role in many African cultures, particularly in West African countries, where it is used in ceremonies, storytelling, and communication. Instruments like the djembe and talking drums are central to these traditions, and their complex rhythms often involve intricate layering of patterns that form the backbone of African music.
  2. Latin American Rhythms: The influence of African music extended to the Caribbean and Latin America, where it fused with local traditions to create vibrant genres like salsa, rumba, and samba. These styles emphasize syncopation and polyrhythms, adding dynamic complexity to the music. The rhythmic patterns in these genres have since become foundational in global popular music.
  3. Hip-Hop and Electronic Music Production: In modern music, rhythm has taken on new forms thanks to technology. In hip-hop, producers use drum machines and samplers to create beats that serve as the foundation for songs. In electronic music, artists often rely on step-sequencers to create intricate drum patterns that repeat and evolve throughout the track.

The Extraordinary Ways Rhythms Shape our Lives (Article)

Assignment

Your task this week is to create a drum track to accompany the melody of motif you composed in the previous module. Use the step-sequencer track block in Snap! to create a rhythmic pattern and assemble it in the Play Tracks block format with your melody. To do this effectively, you'll need to convert your melody into measures and ensure they match the time signature you have selected.

As always, please share your project on the Snap! forum, and let us know which rhythms or techniques inspired your drum track!

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Hi! In my project this week, I have transferred the motif I made into track-form along with the new drumbeats. I have made slight modifications to the background echos (the chords) and turned them into the forefront rhythm; doing the reverse for my original main melody. I also adjusted certain notes to make it fit better acoustically. The two drum tracks I made is also my original piece - I've played around with it to achieve harmony between all elements. However, I wonder if there is an easy way to loop through chords only for a certain amount of times like the drum track does.

Here's the link:
https://snap.berkeley.edu/snap/snap.html#present:Username=rachael_yuan&ProjectName=Music%20Rhythm%20Project_Rachael%20Yuan

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My project for this week has been another rendition on the friends theme song. I made it into measures using 4/4 time, which required a little tweaking of the notes but it still sounds recognizable. The two drum tracks add a little more energy to the song and is a nice twist in my opinion. Here it is :Musical Track

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This week I created a simple song in which the melody and the beat match but at different time intervals. All of the piano melody notes are whole, while the drums are set to eighths. This creating an interesting sound and I'm overall satisfied with how it sounds. Rhythm - Spencer Lewis

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This week I built off of my melody from last week: Week 7 Project. I modified my composition from last week a little bit as I increased the bpm of the piece. For the drums I used a mix of drums at different speeds to give the piece a different feeling from last week. I am unsure if I used the Time Signature correctly, however in playing around with it I found I liked how the drums pause briefly before returning to the melody in the 7/4 time signature I used.

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I created the same song "rain rain go away," I used cello as my base as I think it sounds the most familiar to the original, and added a bunch of drums that go with the beat. Here is my project

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This week, I used the project guidelines to create a drum pattern for the "Over The Rainbow" melody I used last week. I wanted to drum pattern to have a level of intricacy while still not overpowering the melody. After playing around a bit, I decided to use 4 different types of drums that either play on the quarter, eighth, or sixteenth notes and then combine when they play to create a background pattern. One goal of this pattern was to make it flow well with the beats of the melody which is why I added the symbols at the end of each measure. Here is the link to my: Drum Pattern

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For my project, I reused the first part of the song from last week's assignment and added a snare and bass drum over it. There is a sound glitch that happens around the mid part of the song which likely happens because the song is not correctly measured in 4/4 time. I will investigate this issue and try to change the notes to work better in 4/4 time.

Update: I took the advice of the comment below and updated my project to include rests so that I can Play Track the parts of the song in order.

Project Link: Creating Rhythms

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For my project, I just remade the song I used from last week's assignment and tried to put it into measures. I don't think it's in the correct measures so I'll have to check again and fix it. I did add a list for a bass drum but haven't matched it up to the melody yet.
Link

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For this assignment, I decided to do La Vie en Rose. I tried to incorporate some drums, but when this happens, the chorus of the song just stops after two notes. I will investigate this problem throughout the week. Snap! Build Your Own Blocks
Update: I have also have the block code ready for mary had a little lamb which matches my animation from last week.

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https://snap.berkeley.edu/project?username=zdb3qg&projectname=Week%207%20

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For my project I remade the song I did last week (Another Day of Sun from La La Land) and I added a drum pattern over it that included the bass drum, cymbal, and snare drum. The bass drum and snare drum parts take inspiration from the treble clef of the piano part and trombone parts of the song (playing on the 1st quarter note and the 4th quarter note of every other measure). The snare drum part I created by myself through trial and error of what I thought would sound good to make the drum part more complex. Somewhere roughly halfway through the melody I feel like the drum parts get out of sync with the music kind of and I'm not exactly sure why but it doesn't flow as well for the 2nd half of the song. I am still happy with the overall sound of the project though! Link to project: Snap! Build Your Own Blocks

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For my project, I recreated a whole new song (Trees Under Shrubs by Men I Trust) as my previous song didn't fit well with percussion. I incorporated a high hat 4 quarter drum pattern and plan on adding more drums through the weekend. My issues with the piece is that many parts of the song will 'break' or loop weirdly through play tracks. Depending on the tempo, it could mean my third or eighth measure will repeat itself or skip over a note/measure, which messes with the whole work. I hope to fix this or at least minimize it as much as possible.

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@francesdai

I see the problem here. I don't know why it's happening, but I think I've identified what is happening.

I listened to the song with each individual drum track and then built them back up together. The snare track is the only one that's drifting, and the drift is happening consistently in the 10th measure of the song.

I found that switching the snare track to play four quarter notes (XXXX) rather than every other 8th note (X_X_X_X_) fixes the problem, though it does drop out that last snare you had on the 8th note off-beat at the end of each measure.

It could be that the Play Tracks block is thrown off by your current use of both eighth and quarter note rhythms in the drum tracks, but that should not happen. I've added it to the list of possible bugs to be investigated.

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@zdb3qg

I think this is fantastic. Also one of my favorite songs. It looks like everything is working smoothly now that you've gotten the beats in each measure properly sorted.

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@aileen7ch

As we discussed previously, for this to work, you're going to need to get the appropriate number of beats in each measure. This will be based off of the time signature, so if you're in 4/4 time, there should be the equivalent of four quarter notes in each measure. As you probably know, an eighth note is half of a quarter note, and a half note is the equivalent of two quarter notes. This pattern extends in both directions.

Dotted notes are more esoteric. For a dotted note, you add the duration of the note and half of its duration again. So a dotted half note would be equal to the duration of a half note plus the duration of a quarter note.

If we look at your first measure as it's currently written, all of your notes are dotted half notes, meaning that each note has a duration of three beats. This actually works out to our advantage, since the song you're doing is written in 6/8, meaning that each measure has six eighth notes in it. We could rewrite it in 4/4, but that wouldn't sound quite right.

If we stick with 6/8, we get most of your notes will be their own measures:

Snag_517ba074
Snag_517ba0741063×579 160 KB

This is everything except for the last two measures. I'll let you add them in on your own. If you were playing this on a real instrument or singing it, you'd likely let the notes before the rests ring through the rests as well, but we don't currently have a way to do that in the TuneScope library.

After that, all you should need to do is add whatever drum tracks you want and make sure that they match the time signature.

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@kedf

I like what you're trying to do, but the way the Play Tracks block is currently structured, it acts as a launch block. Code inside of it is initiated and then program control immediately passes to the next command in the sequence. This means that multiple Play Tracks blocks snapped together will play simultaneously, not in sequence.

It's not particularly elegant, but you can use the Rest block after each Play Tracks to provide your own wait, though you may have to fine tune it for latency in web routing. Here's a sample of that using your code.

https://snap.berkeley.edu/snap/snap.html#present:Username=maketolearn&ProjectName=KED%20Music

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@mdolan047

This will work really well with a little fine tuning.

We always want the melody track to be the first track. Many other features in TuneScope that interact with the Play Tracks block reference the first track and expect the melody to be there. If anything other than a melody is there, weird things can happen.

One of the things that references the first track is the Loop feature on the Drum Track block. It counts the measures in the first track and then creates a loop that will cover that duration of notes. If you move your melody track to the top, you should then be able to switch all of your drum tracks to Loop and have everything run smoothly.

If you encounter any problems, please let me know.

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@desireeho

Overall, this works really well. If you add up the duration of all of your notes, you'll find that you're just an 8th note off in the last measure. This could be easily corrected by changing the last note to a quarter note or adding an eighth note rest to the end of the note list by using an "R" instead of a note name. Since the missing note comes at the very end of your melody, it doesn't make much of a difference here, but if you were to try to add a second part, it would likely cause a synchronization issue.

Also, for your last drum track, you have it set to repeat 12 times, but you only have 2 measures. I'm assuming you meant 2 and this is just a type, but you could also set it to Loop since your first track is a melody.

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@reecemullahy

Technically the beats in the measures do not match the time signature here. Each of your measures has 4 quarter notes, so if we were being strict about following time signatures here, you should be counting in multiples of four (e.g., 2/4, 4/4, 8/4, 8/12, etc...). However, what you've done here is exploit the way TuneScope re-synchronizes tracks to create a rhythmic effect that works very nicely. By mismatching the beats in the measures with the time signature, you've created just enough drift for the drums to be off for approximately one sixteenth note every two measures.

I would be curious to see if this pattern would continue if you extended the melody track further. I'm also not sure how it would effect other tracks (e.g., chords, basslines, etc...)