If you're new to rapping, then consider this your first official rap lesson. What you're about to learn is not only going to demystify how rapping really works, but it's also going to reveal the most important skills that you need to be focusing on developing right now to make your raps truly impressive. My name is Cole Mize, and I've been helping rappers perfect their rap skills on this channel for the past nine years. Now, let's get straight to it. When most people begin rapping, they tend to focus on writing lyrics first because when they listen to their favorite rap songs, the rapper's lyrics is typically what resonates and connects with them the most.
They understand language and rhymes, and so when they're trying to learn how to rap, they tend to focus on writing lyrics first. Then they try to rap those lyrics over an instrumental, and then they suddenly realize those lyrics don't sound so good for some reason. And this is because they've only been focusing on developing half of their rap skills. You see, you can think of rap as an acronym, R.A.P., Rhythm and Poetry.
And it's the rhythm, that's the musical side of rapping, that drives the lyrics and makes the lyrics sound so awesome over an instrumental. So as you continue writing lyrics, you need to put a significant amount of focus into the musical side of rapping, which we're about to get into right now. First, let's define a few very important words that you need to understand as a rapper. The first one is BAR. A bar is a musical measurement of distance.
Just like in the physical world, we use miles or kilometers to measure distance. And by using bars as a measurement, it makes it easier to communicate the length of something musical. For example, instead of me saying, hey, I need you to write a verse for me that's 1 minute and 13 seconds, I can say, hey, I need you to write me a 16 bar verse.
And just like a mile or kilometer in the real world, a bar is typically always the same length. However, what does change is the speed that we travel across these bars. If you drive a mile on a lawn mower, the distance will feel so much longer compared to you using a sports car, and this is due to the difference in speed, known as miles per hour, or kilometers per hour. And in music, this is called tempo, or BPM, which stands for beats per minute. And a beat is a quarter of a bar.
So just like in the real world we can divide a mile or a kilometer into four even pieces known as quarters, we also divide bars into quarters known as beats. So there's four beats per bar, and typically the kick drum lands on the first and third beat, and the snare drum typically lands on the second and fourth beat. So when you hear someone use the term rapping on beat, it means landing words or syllables on top of these beats. But we don't always rap on top of every single beat, and we don't only place words on these beats. We also place words in between these beats.
But how can you know where they should be placed in between the beats? You can think of them as beats within beats, or as I like to call them, sub-beats. You see, making something musical is all about using division, and every single syllable you ever will rap will be some type of rhythmic music note.
And there's different types of rhythmic music notes, which get their names based off of their division of a bar. For example, if I were to fill in each beat with one note, these would be called quarter notes because they each take up one quarter of a bar. And practicing filling in these quarter notes is a great place to start developing your rhythm as a rapper. And this exercise is known as the 4 count.
Now let's try to do these together real quick. Just say the number of each beat. So 1, 2, 3, 4. I'll fill in one bar and then you'll fill in one bar after me. Let's get it. Now let's divide each quarter into halves.
Now we have two notes per beat which means there's now a note in between each beat. You can think of this as being a half beat. And this is one of those places you could put a syllable in between beats and it would sound great. As you can see, my bar is now divided into 8 even sections, which are why these rhythmic music notes are called 8th notes. Now let's try to do these together real quick by saying 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.
And this is known as the 8 count. I'll fill in one bar with 8th notes, and then you fill in one bar after me with 8th notes. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and Now let's divide each 8th note into halves, which gives us 4 rhythmic music notes per beat.
This gives you 3 more places to put your syllables in between each beat and it will sound great. As you can see, my bar is now divided into 16 even sections. which are why these rhythmic music notes are called 16th notes. These are some of the most common rhythmic music notes that rappers use.
And since we can fit 4 16th notes within each beat, You can think of there being four beats within each beat, which I like to call sub beats. Now let's try to do these together really quick by saying one you better, two you better, three you better, four you better. This is known as a 16th count. Now I'm going to fill in one bar with 16th notes and then you fill in the bar after me with 16th notes.
Let's get it. One you better, two you better, three you better, four you better. 1 you better, 2 you better, 3 you better, 4 you better.
Now when you're learning to rap, learning the 4, 8, and 16th count is a great place to start. But once you nail these down, it's time to advance to learning something known as cadences. A cadence is the use of a combination of different rhythmic music notes and pauses to create interesting musical patterns which drive our lyrics and make them sound awesome. You can think of these as like the dance moves of a rapper. The more cadences you learn, the more versatile and dynamic your rap flow will be.
And the way that rappers audition endless variations of cadences is by something known as scatting. Scatting is when we use random sounds with our mouth to rap cadences that we already know. And by not using real words, we're unrestricted. We are a 100% free to just be a musical instrument, just like how guitars and drums don't have any real words to go with them either.
In this example, the cadence I came up with for bar 1 has a pause for the first half of beat 1, then I fill the rest of this beat in with 2 16th notes. On the second beat, I use an 8th note, followed by 2 16th notes, and then I fill beat 3 in with 16th notes, and pause on the 4th beat. On the second bar, I fill in beats 1, 2, and 3. with straight 16th notes, and then I pause on the 4th beat. And here's how that sounds.
Now when we're writing lyrics, we're also typically scatting at the same time to come up with cadences that we can potentially use with our lyrics. And then we'll make any necessary adjustments between the lyrics and also the cadences to make them work. perfectly together. This is what I like to refer to as the engineering or problem solving part of being a rapper. And it's such a big part of what we do behind the scenes.
And when you're doing this, you don't always have to use the same sounds that you used in your scat for your lyrics. In this example, I was able to match the cadence perfectly, but I kept very few sounds from my original scat. Let's check out the before and after of how this sounds. Add some elabellation Most upon a break until your back are taken I don't wait, I just get to moving Working every single day, always improving And while we're on the topic of lyrics, it's important to structure your lyrics in a way that reflects how they're structured musically. Most beginner rappers will just group all their lyrics together into one giant paragraph.
Now you don't need to have crazy specific graphs like you're seeing me use right now to teach this lesson. But I do recommend treating every line of your lyrics as if it's a bar. This simply means that the first thing that's at the beginning of every line should be what's actually landing on the first beat of that bar.
This means that sometimes a multi-syllable word may be split between the ending of one bar and the beginning of another. Also, you won't always be rapping at the beginning of every bar. In these cases, make a notation of B within parentheses to signify that you're taking a break or breath. on the first beat. I also like to create a break every four bars just to make it easier on the eyes to navigate throughout my lyrics.
Also structuring your lyrics like this makes it easier to remember the timing of your rap flow and it helps a lot with figuring out solutions to problems that you will naturally encounter while writing your lyrics. One more added benefit is this will also help you keep track of where you're placing your rhymes. Speaking of rhymes there's two main types of rhymes in rap.
That's internal rhymes and rhyme schemes. A rhyme scheme is when you rhyme relatively in the same place for at least two bars. An internal rhyme is when you rhyme within a bar, but it doesn't carry over to another bar.
Now, the key to making your rap sound ultra catchy is all about creating patterns. Patterns add uniformity and predictability to what you're doing, so the listener can make sense of it and follow along to it. And without there being strong patterns, your raps will sound...
random and chaotic. And in rap, we typically create three layers of patterns that make our rap sound ultra catchy. And the first pattern is our cadence patterns. Notice how on my previous 2 bar cadence that I paused on the 4th beat of each bar. I also filled in half of beat 2 and all of beat 3 with 16th notes.
This is what gave these bars a solid pattern. But on bar 1 beat 1, I paused for half a beat, and on bar 2 I filled it in with 16th notes. On beat 2 of bar 1, I used an 8th note, and on bar 2 I used two 16th notes.
So while there are parts of my bars that are exactly the same, there's also parts that are slightly different. So when you're creating patterns with your cadences, the whole bar doesn't have to be exactly the same for it to still feel like a repeating cadence pattern. Now let's listen back and focus just on that.
Wait, I just get to moving. Working every single day, always improving. And the second pattern that we create is our rhyme scheme pattern. Notice how I'm rhyming on the second half of beat three on both bars with moving and proving. And I also have a more subtle rhyme scheme pattern happening on beat 2 of bar 1 with weight, and on beat 2 of bar 2 with day, and on beat 3 with ways.
This rhyme scheme isn't as noticeable because these are neighboring rhymes, which means they don't land on the same exact spot and there are also different lengths. Weight is an 8th note and day and ways are 16th notes. You must be mindful of where you're placing your rhymes on each bar. to ensure you're creating strong rhyme scheme patterns for the listener to follow along to while you're also giving yourself the flexibility to move rhymes around a bit to give them dynamics just like i did with my cadence now keep all of that in mind and let's listen back and focus on that wait i just get the moving working every single day always improving and the third pattern that we create with our raps are delivery patterns and by delivery you I mean the tone and the emotions that you're rapping your lyrics with.
Delivery is the acting part of being a rapper. Notice on my two bars how I have a really relaxing sounding tone overall, but I go up in tone on my end rhymes of each bar on the words moving and proven. End rhymes just mean it's the rhyme scheme we've created which typically lands on the end of the bar. This is typically the first rhyme scheme that we establish and then if we wish to push things further. we'll create more internal rhymes and rhyme schemes around it.
And rhymes are a great place to add a little bit more energy to your vocals because it causes your rhymes to really shine and pop out a bit from the rest of your lyrics, giving it like a 3D type of effect. Now let's listen back and just focus on that. And when you're creating a scheme out of your patterns, meaning that your patterns repeat for at least another bar, try to keep these patterns going for an even number of bars because if it's an odd number such as 3, 5, or 7, it's likely going to feel incomplete and less satisfying.
Now, if you want to dive even deeper into each topic that I cover today, check the video's description below to links to my free rap course here on YouTube called 5 Minutes to a Better Rap Flow, my three-part series called The Science Behind Rhyming, and my videos on how to quickly structure your rap lyrics and also how to find your rap voice. Again, my name is Cole Mize with colemizestudios.com, where I strive to make you a better rapper now. And before you go, make sure you grab your free bundle of goodies, which includes my ebook, the number one fundamental to rapping, bar sheets, which will help you structure your rap lyrics, six practice instrumentals, and a catalog of my favorite studio gear recommendations.
and subscribe to this channel for more straight to the point, no BS, how to rap video tutorials just like this one. And always remember, when it comes to rapping, there's no rules, there's only techniques. Peace. Look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself today I'm gonna kill it, kill it