Music Theory for Songwriters: Rhythm

Music theory is fundamental to making and playing music. This course is designed to teach the fundamentals of rhythm in both a user-friendly and songwriting-focused way, demonstrating rhythm on drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, and vocals, allowing songwriters to learn music theory while they learn song craft on their instruments.

Music producer and record label owner David Franz starts the course with the building blocks of rhythm: counting, notes, measures, rests, rhythm notation, subdivisions, and tempo. He then explains time signatures, discussing common, compound, and asymmetrical time signatures, as well as double time and half time, and how to choose the time signature for a song. Next, he discusses the concepts of feel and timing, including dynamics, accents, articulations, tempo changes, swing, syncopation, polyrhythms, and playing ahead of, on, and behind the beat. Along the way, David demonstrates all of these concepts by playing musical examples on drums, guitar, bass, keyboard, and vocals.

Learning objectives
Notes, measures, and counting
Rhythm and drum set notation
Tempo, note lengths, and subdivisions
Building rhythms
Rests, triplets, duplets, dots, and ties
Common time and 3/4 time
Simple, compound, and odd time signatures
Choosing a time signature
Double time and half time
Dynamics, accents, and articulations
Tempo and tempo changes
Choosing to be ahead of, on, or behind the beat
Swing, syncopation, and off beats
Polyrhythms (two rhythms at once)