4.4 Ostinatos and Riffs

PROJECT 4.4 Overview

For this project, you are going to:

create a drumbeat (can be one you used before)
Create a bass line that follows our bass line rules (and includes at least one octave jump and one leading tone).
Create EITHER a 4-measure ostinato or 4-measure riff using your chord progressions (chords must be in proper inversions)

Ostinatos and Riffs

In addition to pads and punches, we can add two more musical elements to our songs to make them more interesting. These are ostinatos and riffs.

Ostinatos

Ostinatos are repeated rhythmic patterns found in a song. They generally follow a few guidelines:

They usually repeat the same rhythm every measure (sometimes, they happen over two measures)
They don't use the whole chord, but rather one or two notes of the chord.
They're lower in the mix - think more of a background element than a melody or bass line.

For both of the examples in this unit,

the chord progression is IV - I - V - vi

Here's a one-bar example of an ostinato. This rhythm will repeat throughout the four measures. Note the absence of the middle note of the chord:

Here's that same ostinato as the beat meap, recorded over 4 measures in Logic:

Check it out: in the last measure, I changed the voicing of the ostinato so that it omitted the top note of the chord. You can choose to make these changes at any point in your song - try different combinations to see what works best for you!

Riffs

Riffs can also be thought of as "the hook." Generally speaking, this is the part of the song that you tend to remember aside from the melody. Riffs are repeated figures, but function differently than the ostinato:

While riffs are repeated, they are usually longer - think in groups of two or four measures.
Riffs usually consist of the full chord but played at separate times, creating a kind of melody. You can think of these as "broken chords", or the fancy music word arpeggiation.
Riffs tend to be more forward in the mix - they are the part of the song that you want the audience to notice.

Here's an example a 2-bar riff. You can see that all of the notes of the chord are played, but most are played separately from the others:

Also, the riff changes rhythm completely in the second bar. This is 100% ok. At this point you would have two options:

Repeat the riff for bars 3 and 4, using the same rhythms found in bars 1 and 2, or
Create two new bars of riff to round out your 4 bar phrase.

Here's what those first two bars of the riff look like in Logic:

Here's the same riff recorded for all 4 bars:

Assignment 4.4

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE CHORD ORGANIZER

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE 4.4 PROJECT ORGANIZER

For project 4.4, you are going to record a 4 bar example of either a riff or an ostinato.

Your finished project should contain 4 bars of:

Drum groove
Bass line
Ostinato or Riff.

When completed, please upload your project to Schoology.

Page updated

Report abuse