Wordrums

Wordrums is a portmanteau word I made up for the natural rhythms in language (word+drums) that can be the source of rhythms driving a piece of music, or rhythmic motifs. The are a part of the Songday system, where song ideas arise from random phrases taken from (in my case) diaries and journals, including my own.

Here I've distilled some of them to repeating rhythms in MIDI format, and only including the date or sometimes a title.

 

 

 

  

 

 

  

PS:

From "Music And Mysticism", Zakir Hussein, Music And Mind 

 "In India we take drone as a natural, everyday, living experience, not as a scientific phenomenon. Playing rhythms is almost like reading a novel while you imagine the story—or reading sheet music as you sing a song. That language must become like a second language; just as I have learned how to express myself in English, I had to learn to express myself in the language of tabla. There is a melodic and expressive element to the performance, almost like a question or a series of spoken phrases; the dynamics follow through naturally, like the inflection of a sentence. We first learn to recite and sing the rhythms before we get a chance to play our instrument, and fortunately it is able to show those dips and flows. Music and rhythm were, in fact, my first language, before I even learned to speak. When I was two days old, I was brought home from the hospital. Traditionally your father is supposed to whisper a prayer in your ear. But when my father took me in his arms, instead of whispering an actual prayer with words, he sang rhythms. “Why are you doing that?” my mother asked him. “You’re supposed to say a prayer.” “But this is a prayer!” he responded. “He’s going to be praying through this for the rest of his life and leading the flock through, so I’m starting him right now.” From then on that’s what he did every day; he would hold me in his arms for an hour or two and sing rhythms to me, perhaps to prepare me for what was to come later in my life."