Award Sounds

Mixing rhythms can produce effective results.

Different time signatures

Think of the stress pattern of a 4/4 bar. It will have the main stress on the first beat of the bar. So that's:

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Now let's look at a 5/4 signature, the stress would again be on the first beat

That's 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5

If we keep them at the same speed, same beats-per-minutes, then the 5/4 bar is 25% longer than the 4/4 bar due to additional crotchet.

Now for a 3/4 signature, it would be 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 and only be 75% the length of the 4/4 bar due to the missing crotchet.

Adding them together

The stress patterns combine at different points in the song. I'll just use patterns with the accent on 1 for this:

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1


The first we see is where the 1 of 3/4 and the 1 of 4/4 align to result in a heavier accent. Then it happens again with 3/4 and 5/4. And so on. It's like a musical version of the game fizz-buzz. After 15 bars, the process starts again.

Edit - I'm afraid the full repetition wouldn't fit on the page, so I've had to remove it

That's for a very simple process where the accent is on the first beat of the bar for each time signature. Usually, we'd throw in other accents to achieve a rhythm.

I've taken a simple concept of a 3 track piece with very repetitive rhythms to show this. Each channel features a note from the chord of Am (A, C and E) using soft synths triggered by midi pattern.

How did I do this?