Reading and Writing Rhythm, and How Drums Work

The idea

To write riffs you need two tools: a way to write rhythm down so you can keep and change your ideas, and a basic understanding of what the drummer is doing, because a riff is always heard against the drums.

Note lengths. Each value is half of the one before:

Note	Lasts	How many fit in a 4/4 bar
Whole note	4 beats	1
Half note	2 beats	2
Quarter note	1 beat	4
8th note	half a beat	8
16th note	a quarter of a beat	16

A dot makes a note half as long again: a dotted quarter lasts one and a half beats. A tie joins two notes into one longer sound. A rest is silence with a length. Rests are part of the rhythm.

The counting grid. Count 16th notes as “1 e & a, 2 e & a, 3 e & a, 4 e & a”. Every possible position in the bar has a name:

1  e  &  a  2  e  &  a  3  e  &  a  4  e  &  a

Any rhythm in 4/4 with nothing faster than a 16th can be written as hits and gaps on this grid. That is exactly what the grid below is: each cell is one 16th note.

The drum kit has three jobs:

Drum	Job	Typical place
Kick (bass drum)	The low punch. Marks the strong points.	Beats 1 and 3, plus extra hits
Snare	The backbeat. The crack that defines the groove.	Beats 2 and 4
Hi-hat or ride	The clock. Shows the subdivision.	Steady 8ths or 16ths

Five patterns cover most rock. Load each one and listen. Then change it.

The basic rock beat: kick on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4, 8ths on the hi-hat.

Half-time: the snare moves to beat 3. The tempo is the same and the music feels twice as slow and twice as heavy. This is the breakdown beat.

Four on the floor: kick on every beat, hi-hat on the off-beats. Dance, disco and many rock choruses.

A 16th-note groove with a busier kick:

The gallop: the “long, short-short” rhythm of classic heavy metal, with the riff on top of a simple beat.

Double-time is the opposite of half-time: the snare lands on every “and”, so the music feels twice as fast. Punk and thrash live there.

On your instrument

• Lock with the kick. The tightest-sounding riffs put their accents exactly where the kick drum plays. When you write a riff, decide the kick pattern at the same time.
• Leave the snare alone, or hit it on purpose. A chord that lands with the snare on 2 or 4 sounds huge. A busy riff that covers every snare hit sounds flat, because nothing stands out.
• Write your riffs on the grid. Use the grid in the next lesson, or 16 boxes on paper. Tab shows where to put your fingers. The grid shows when.

Worked example

Writing down a syncopated riff rhythm. Say the rhythm out loud first: “DUM … da DUM … da DUM, DUM … da DUM … da DUM”.

Now find each hit on the counting grid:

1  e  &  a  2  e  &  a  3  e  &  a  4  e  &  a
X  .  .  X  .  .  X  .  X  .  .  X  .  .  X  .

The hits are on 1, the “a” of 1, the “&” of 2, then the same three places in the second half of the bar. The groups are 3 + 3 + 2 sixteenths, twice. Here it is with drums. The kick doubles some of the riff accents and the snare stays on 2 and 4:

Exercises

1. Clap each of the five drum-pattern grids while it plays: first the kick line, then the snare line, then both, with your foot on the beat.
2. Take three riffs you know and write their rhythm on the 16-step counting grid, one bar each.
3. Program your own one-bar beat in the last grid above. Then write a riff rhythm on the riff line that hits with the kick at least three times.
4. Play any riff you know over the half-time pattern instead of the basic rock beat. Notice that you changed nothing and it became heavier.

Common mistakes

• Writing riffs without imagining the drums. The same riff over a rock beat and a half-time beat is two different parts.
• Filling every 16th. A wall of notes has no rhythm. The gaps make the pattern.
• Ignoring rests when counting. Count through the silence. The rest is as long as the note would have been.