The Stomp-Clap Mini-Challenge
Aug 19, 2019
Looking for some new inspiration?
Ditch your instrument, because all you need are your hands and feet!
This exercise will help you get out of the classic I-keep-writing-the-same-chord-progression rut and also get you experimenting with a different style and feel.
You’ll be surprised how something as simple as taking an instrument away can completely change how you approach melody writing. We find that our students often write more complex melodies (implying more complex chord progressions) when there’s no guitar or piano involved.
The reason? If you’re limited at all by your chord knowledge on an instrument, or you just find yourself gravitating to the same kinds of chord progressions or keys (it happens to the best of us), taking it away opens up all the possibilities. Your imagination takes the driver’s seat rather than your fingers, and you’re more free to go to some unexpected places.
And as a bonus, you then have the super fun (especially if you’re a music theory nerd) exercise of fitting chords to your melody after the fact. It may be a great excuse to learn some new ones!
Are you ready?
Here we go!
The Stomp-Clap Mini-Challenge
Step 1. Set your timer for 10 minutes.
Step 2. Hit record on your voice memos and start working on a one-measure (4 beat) stomp-clap pattern. It can be super simple. Play around with tempo too!
Ex. Stomp - clap - stomp stomp clap Stomp - stomp - clap stomp - stomp - clap 1 2 3 & 4 1 & 2 3 & 4
Step 3. After a minute or so, settle on a pattern that you like. Then try singing a 2-line or 4-line phrase over the beat. You can use non-lyrical Do’s or La’s, sing whatever words or nonsense words come out, or sing a lyric phrase you’ve previously collected.
Step 4. When the timer goes off, stop. Listen through your voice memo to see if there’s a melody in there that you like! You can write a new song based off of that or save it for a future co-write.
Optional step: Once you pick a stomp-clap pattern that you like, record it on your voice memo for a few minutes. Then sing over the recording instead of doing both simultaneously. This is helpful if the stomp-clap rhythm is tripping you up while you’re singing.
And there you have it!
We hope this exercise helped you expand your rhythm/melody vocabulary a bit and got you out of whatever patterns you’ve been stuck in. Maybe you wrote the next We Will Rock You.
Maybe you had fun but didn’t take it any further than this exercise. Either way, you did it and we're proud of you!
Happy Writing,
Allie & Bess
p.s. Did you do this exercise? Send us a voice memo or describe to us what you did in the comments below. You’ll be entered to win 10% off on a future Workshop or Song-Hang!
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