Feeling stuck when you’re working on melodies and phrases, there are lots of home remedies for this, but they usually involve the same thing, which is to somehow kickstart your process and get you doing something new. Here’s one that came out of class the other day. It comes from the jazz tradition called Trading For’s.
This works great with a partner, but I’m also going to show you how to do it yourself. Typically, we’d be generating rhythms and harmonies. We’re just doing it with rhythm today.
You want to create a call and response where you’re reacting to the thing that came before. Use long phrases, use short phrases, but borrow a little bit from the phrase that came before you. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.
Of chorus, if you’re not writing all that down, it’s going to be gone forever. Set your sequencer on cycle and load up any sound. It doesn’t really matter because we’re just thinking about rhythm right now.
And you’re going to load a delay plugin. Set it to something like two bars and record everything. You’re going to have to play two times in a row the first time, but then you’re going to get a break to listen and respond.
Check it out. Do it again. When you’re done, you’re going to have a lot of stuff to go through.
And in my case, a lot of stuff to quantize. But the point is, there’s probably a good seed for a melody in there. If somebody who belongs in a Beat Kitchen class, share this post.
