Structure

 In this segment, I'll show you how to hook rhythmic phrases together into overall structures or "songs". MP3 files will be used as examples. Clicking on the song sample links will open a new window to MP3.COM where you can stream or download the sample and listen while reading. If you are new to MP3.COM, you will be asked to provide your email address, age and language preferences. The worse thing that will result from this should be that you will get periodic newsletters from them about new releases and featured artists. These are not overly intrusive and I think most of you will like getting them.

 In the last tutorial, we constructed boxes to represent the beats in a measure and filled these beats in with different sounds including breath sounds. Each diagram represents a rhythmic phrase or "vamp". Now we'll hook some of these phrases together into bigger boxes that will represent a larger structure or song. While I'm using examples of my own here, it's important to realize that these are concepts which you can use to create compositions of your own. You are invited to learn to play the examples presented, use them as building blocks to more complicated compositions or your own or simply take off and do your own from scratch. The examples are merely references. But the concepts, I hope, will be useful to the student didjeridu player.

 First let's break down the parts that make up Chocolate Frog. The link to hear it follows:

Chocolate Frog

 There are basically two parts, each containing two phrases. Part "A" phrase 1 (one measure repeated) :

1	and	2	and	3	and	4	and
Dat		Dat		Dee	daa	Dat

Part "A" phrase 2 (two measures):

1

and

2

and

3

and

4

and

1

and

2

and

3

and

4

and

da

da

da

da

da

dat

dat

dat

dee

da

 So the entire part "A" is : "dat dat dee dat, dat dat dee dat, da,da,da,da,da..dat,dat,dat, dee, da".

The "B" part is , "Daa de dat da dat dat dee da, Daa de dat dat dat dat dah". Both the A and B parts are varied slightly on individual repetitions. The phrase is two measures of 4/4 time, I"m somewhat arbitrarily going to divide those two measures into 16 boxes each representing en eight note. There is a problem right away. The first Daa is a little longer than an eight note and not quite as long as a quarter note. I'm going to decide it's a "dotted eight note" for this notation and as such it gets held about half again as long as a normal eight note or a sixteenth note duration. Remember how we counted eigthnotes and sixteen notes before? "One and two and three and four", for eigthnotes. "One e and da two e and a  three e and a four e and a", for sixteenth.  So I slipped in an "e and" in the second box of each measure. This is just a little way of communicating that the first note of each measure is held just a little longer. We gave that note a little longer duration and you'll see that we took a little duration a little later on in the measure to play a couple of sixteenth notes on beat 3.

1

e and

2

and

3

e and

4

and

1

e and

2

and

3

and

4

and

Daa

- de

dat

dat

da

dat de

da

Daa

- de

da

da

da

da

daa

aaa

 So now on to the overall structure. We assemble the A and B parts and we have the structure of the song. This can be firmly set or varied according to a prescribed plan, or improvised on the spot as I did on the recording. This step works like a time line where we put the parts in the order we like. We can, for example, just play part A twice through, follow with part B and then repeat that sequence through a set number of repetitions. If that's the case, we can express the overall structure as : A A B A A B and so on until the desired length of the program is reached. We could invent a C part that is only played once after a B part, for example. Then our song structure might be AABCAABC, and we can arbitrarily end the piece on whatever instance of the C part we wish.

 Improvised structure is fine for solo work, but one of the greatest advantages of having a structure is that you can detail it in advance for playing with others. I have, in fact, detailed the structure of this piece to another didjeridu player and performed it live with very little rehearsal. That is one of the big advantages to using a structure. The next solo piece we'll examine has a more flexible structure, more like a sketch for improvisation where there are structured passages but they are hooked in as repetitive themes which I can fall back too when I feel appropriate. A lot of my solos are like that and after we look at "Ode", I'll talk about some of the structures or plans for solo's I've recorded or performed in the past. Like "Yael" which is on Didgeridoo USA.

Let's consider a more abstract solo. Listen to  Ode. This is a piece that really only contains a theme which is repeated through the course of improvised playing. This is another approach to composing a named solo piece. This theme is a simple eighth note followed by three quarter notes, "Dat Dah Dah Dah". To answer the question of how to make such a simple phrase stand out, I took the easy answer. Play the notes all as overtones most of the time, play some of them as overtones some of the time and play none of them as overtones once or twice. What you hear is the result. This is a very un-structured form of structure. A sketch. It means that no two performances of Ode will be exactly alike, but they will be enough alike to be recognizable. You could use the same theme and create something very different. If you want to add "Ode" to your list of solos, you already know everything you need to play it :

1	-	2	-	3	-	4	-
Dat		da	ah	da	ah	da	ah

Sketch

 Before moving on to some basic exercises to work on Breath and Rhythm, I want to introduce a type of structure which is a bit more free form. That is to "sketch" out a rough plan, name that plan and use it for all performances of that named plan or "sketch". For those of you who have it, Didgeridoo USA contains just such a piece which I have performed live several times, used as a workshop exercise and recorded once. If you don't have the recording, don't worry. I think the concept behind it's composition is evident.

 My contribution to Didgeridoo USA was Yael. The Structure is in three parts. The introduction is an improvised free rhythm section of droning, vocalizations and harmonics. I have performed this piece for many audiences and can tell you that about 20 seconds duration is plenty of time for this part. The purpose of the introduction in this piece is solely to set a mood and ground the listener to the instrument. The second part introduces a rhythmic theme for the finale. It is in 6/8 time and is moderate in tempo. The finale is the same rhythmic pattern as the second part, but played in double time. It races along with more frequent and loud vocalizations until I end it with a familiar bird call. This type of structure can be expressed as follows :

Intro (15 to 30 secs)	Main Body approximate time 1 min	Finale (approximately 1 minute or until collapse)
Free rhythm ad lib	6/8 Samba style beat	Main rhythm played as fast as you can. Dramatic sudden end.

Breath exercises