Rhythm, Tempo & Note Lengths

Rhythm

Another important aspect of the musical sound is duration. Every sound used in a musical composition has a particular length (duration). A succession of this lengths are forming the rhythm.

A good understanding of rhythm is essential for a producer especially when we are talking about drum programming, because when it comes to dance music the drum track is probably the most important, in the end is the beat that we dance to. But of-course understanding the rhythm also bring you the base when it comes to melody and harmonic composition. Harmonies and chords also gave their particular rhythm called harmonic rhythm.

Beat

Musical time is divided into regular beats, or pulses of a consistent duration. Regardless of whether the music has a percussion track, an ability to listen to and to understand the music heard depends upon the ability to pick up and fallow the beat.

Tempo

Evert beat can have his speed. This speed is called in music tempo and is measured in BPM. I am sure that many of you have heard about 128 BPM ( beats per minute ) that is the perfect beat tempo as your heart is beating at that range. This is just a myth, our heart actually beat somewhere at the range of 80 bpm, but what is scientifically discovered is that when hearing BPM higher then our heart range it tend to stimulate and excite. In the opposite way we can thing that lower tempos then our heart beat tend to calm.

Styles and BPM: Ambient music 50 to 100 BPM | Hip-Hop 70-95 BPM | Deep House & Techno 110-130 BPM | Trance 130 -145 BPM | Hard Dance/ Hardcore 145 - 170 BPM | Drum'n'Bass 160 - 180 BPM

Note Lengths

The music world has two different ways of notation for the note lengths. The english way and the American way. In electronic music production the DAW tend to use the American way. As you can see in the table we have Whole Notes, Half Notes, Quarter Notes etc ...

Dotted Notes extends the value of a note by another half. Hear we can understand that a dotted half note is basically a three quarter note.

Rests can be explained as pattern of sounds and silences. Silence is also extremely important in music.

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The Major Scale

A scale is a repetitive rising or falling series of notes within the range of an octave. Choosing the right notes from a scale is useful for creating melody and harmony. In a melody we use the notes successively. In a chord we use the notes are played at the same time. Type of scales There are many scale types out there : chromatic , major , minor, pentatonic, microtonal, modal, octatonic, hexatonic and exotic scales. The Major Scale there is something universal about the major scale that appeals to everyone We can say that the major scale is bright sounding scale, and can express strong emotions. To understand the major scale, we need to understand firs the music-key . The Key is the note upon with the scale is built. The most easy scale to learn is the C major scale. This is because is compose by all white key in an octave. So as long as you know where C is located ( on the left of the group of two black keys ). Intervals C major scale is ca...

The Notes or the Keys

The White Keys Learning the notes is very important in order cu make use of the basic materials of music , such as chords, scales, keys, modes and so on. So let's start the first step. So we have the midi keyboard in front. As we noticed we have black and white keys. The black key as we can observe are grouped in twos and threes, and as well it stands in between the white keys. The most important note to learn is C. This is a white note that stands always on the left of the group of two of the black keys. As you also noticed there are more then 1 C key. This means that the C note occurs in different octaves. In a regular piano we have up to 7 octaves, so that means we have C , C1, C2 ... and so on till C7. So if we take for example C , this note generates harmonics. In this case C is the fundamental frequency and C2 is the second harmonic. Because the second harmonic had a frequency double than its fundamental, we can deduct the ratio 2:1....

I started my journey into sounds back in 2000. At the beginning i was very much interested in minimal and micro house, music that dominates in Romania in that times, and later moving towards progressive house and deep house, fallowed on by deep tech house & melodic dark techno. In 2013 i rolled in at CENK UNIS ACADEMY, Ableton Certified Training, and since then I have spent thousands of hours in digging and perfecting my sound, that later in 2017 i come out with my first releases : Amsterdam EP, including 2 tracks of deep house. In 2018 i have 6 new releases coming out and my plan is just starting. Currently proud student at SAE Institute in the Netherlands finishing the Advance Music Production Class. The pack of skills learned in the last years can position me a versatile producer, going from down tempo to melodic and deep darkish techno. After my experience at SAE i discover the education part of the music industry and automatically i got ho...

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