KOOROW
If the vertical lines in Ableton’s piano roll have always looked like “just lines”, this one is for you. Music theory has two main parts: notes and harmony on one side, rhythm on the other. In this lesson KOOROW explains rhythm in simple terms: bars, beats, tempo, note values and time signatures, including compound and broken rhythms. He also shows how all of it maps onto Ableton’s grid.
The video is in Persian. This article walks through every step in English.
Rhythm in one sentence
Rhythm describes how an instrument, a set of notes or a melody is written and played: how fast, and with which accents. In practice that means dividing time into bars, bars into beats, and beats into smaller note values, which is exactly what Ableton’s grid shows you.
Bars and tempo
Music divides time into sections. Each section is called a bar, or measure, and every bar has a fixed time value, meaning how long it lasts. How long that is depends on the tempo, or BPM. Set a BPM where one bar lasts one second, and every bar in the track lasts one second.
Note values: from whole notes to the grid
KOOROW builds the note values step by step in Ableton’s piano roll:
| Notes per bar (4/4) | Name | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Whole note (1 bar in Ableton) | An empty circle with no stem |
| 2 | Half note (1/2) | A hollow, “white” head with a stem |
| 4 | Quarter note (1/4) | A “black” note. In 4/4 this is the beat |
| 8 | Eighth note (1/8), quaver | Set the grid to 1/8 and a bar splits into 8 |
| 16 | Sixteenth note (1/16), semiquaver | The grid we write bass lines and closed hats on |
| 32 / 64 | Demisemiquaver / hemidemisemiquaver | Smaller values exist in software, but a human cannot play them |
It is simple division, the kind you learned in primary school.
Beats and accents
The quarter note in 4/4 is called the beat, and the bar is the unit those beats belong to. Count them out loud: 1, 2, 3, 4.
- Beat 1 is strong.
- Beat 2 is weak.
- Beat 3 is semi-strong.
- Beat 4 is weak again.
Because the first beat always carries more emphasis than the others, you can count bars by ear. Counting and accenting is a much bigger subject, but this is the foundation.
Time signatures
The two numbers at the top of Ableton are the time signature. Almost every electronic track is in 4/4. The top number says how many beats you count in a bar, and the bottom number says which note value makes up the beat. So 4/4 means: write four quarter notes per bar and count 1, 2, 3, 4.
- 3/4: count 1, 2, 3. Waltzes work like this.
- 2/4: count 1, 2, like marching.
- 6/8: very popular in Iran. Count six eighth notes per bar: 1 2 3 4 5 6. This is called a compound rhythm.
Broken rhythms: 7/8 and friends
One of the hardest kinds of rhythm is the broken or odd rhythm, where the beats are not balanced. 7/8 means seven eighth notes per bar, but you do not count them like a robot from 1 to 7. The accents group them, for example 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4, or the other way round.
You cannot write this cleanly in 4/4. Try it in Ableton’s grid and one note is always missing or left over, so you would have to count an extra rest before the next bar. In rhythm, silence counts too. That is exactly why different time signatures exist.
KOOROW loves this world and sometimes makes odd-meter sketches for fun. In the electronic music most of us make, unless it is breakbeat, everything is 4/4.
Try it in Ableton
- Change the time signature at the top, for example to 7/8. Create a new clip, because an existing clip keeps its old time signature.
- Write a pattern and lower the velocities of the weak notes. The contrast between strong and weak hits creates the accent and makes the count audible. This kind of rhythm is common in rock.
- Switch back to 4/4 for your psytrance and darkpsy work.
Reading Ableton’s grid
You will be working with Ableton’s grid for the rest of your production life, so always know the distance between two grid lines. Ableton shows it in the corner of the editor. A “2” there means two bars. Don’t confuse it with 1/2.
- Fixed grid, for example 1 bar or 1/16, stays the same when you zoom.
- Adaptive grid (Narrow and the other widths) changes as you zoom in and out.
Learn music theory for electronic music
Koorow Premium includes music theory lessons alongside weekly production lessons, project breakdowns and feedback on your tracks. Private Ableton Live lessons cover rhythm, harmony and arrangement on your own project.