Composing Activities - Rhythm

Tea Coffee Milk Sugar

In the composing activities you have just followed, you used the one beat note (crotchet). If you were to clap the rhythm of your melodies, it would probably sound quite boring. To add rhythmic interest to the melodies, we could split some of the one beat notes into two half-beat notes; these half beat notes are called quavers and look like this: . When two quavers are written together, they become joined together with a beam: . It is useful to clap these rhythms, using common words to help keep in time. One beat notes can use one syllable words such as Tea or Milk, whilst two quaver rhythms can use words with two syllables such as Coffee or Sugar. Rhythmic phrases such as Tea-Coffee-Milk-Sugar would look like this when written on a stave:

Practice clapping this rhythm whilst saying the words. Divide pupils into two groups; one group claps the rhythm Tea-Milk-Tea-Milk and the other claps the rhythm Tea-Coffee-Milk-Sugar. Make up other word rhythms for the pupils to clap.

Try making up longer rhythms and clapping them. What do you think these rhythms sound like?

Coffee Sugar Tea Milk | Sugar Tea Coffee Milk
Milk Sugar Coffee Tea | Coffee Sugar Coffee Milk

Make up your own rhythm words using one and two syllable words. Try and choose words which go together, such as Hot-Water-Cold-Water or Apple-Lemon-Peach-Plum. Don't forget to practise clapping your rhythms so that you can perform them accurately.

Adding a rhythm stave

To add a rhythm stave (or any other instrument stave) to Notate is very easy. Select New Track... from the Track menu in the menu bar to show the New Track dialogue box:

When you choose the Percussion Stave choice, the Clef choices will not be available as drum music doesn't normally use a clef. You can also see that any new track added to the music can be inserted as any track number. Click OK to see the new track in the window, then choose a suitable percussion sound by selecting Instruments... from the Song menu. (Note that only percussion sounds are available to be chosen for percussion tracks.) You should notice that your notes jump and lock to the single line on the track when you drag them onto the stave.

Now that you are using two tracks, you need to provide a good balance between the melody and the rhythmic percussion. Do this by opening the Mixer by selecting Show Mixer from the View menu or pressing Ctrl+M on the keyboard. You may want to add another percussion stave which uses a different percussion sound (e.g. bell or tambourine) and plays a contrasting rhythm. Don't forget to balance the music by using the mixer and by using the dials at the top of each slider, you can decide if the music should come out of the left or right speaker! Make sure you consider which stave is the most important when using the mixer! Save your music when you have finished editing.