Ostinatos and Acid Riffs CAN YOU FEEL

https://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/passing-notes/ostinatos-and-acid-house-riffs

Ostinatos and Acid Riffs

The name may sound grand, but in musical theory an ostinato is simply a melody line or riff that repeats throughout prolonged sections of a track, typically over chord changes. As well as potentially creating a catchy and memorable hook, an ostinato can provide continuity and help keep a track moving, linking different sections together nicely.

In this instalment of Passing Notes we’ll examine some tracks which use this technique effectively, then we’ll have a look at writing an acid-inspired ostinato of our own. CAN YOU FEEL IT? To start off, let’s have a listen to Mr Fingers’ 1986 Chicago house classic ‘Can You Feel It’:

The Larry Heard-produced track uses the minor and major 7 th chords we discussed in a previous Passing Notes , but this time we’re focusing on the simple riff that repeats throughout the track. Here’s how it sounds on its own, and how it looks transcribed in a piano roll:

The riff uses just two notes, A and E. These notes form the 1 st and 5 th notes of an A minor or major scale. We can hear from the track how versatile this simple riff is in A minor, fitting over the chords A minor 7, F major 7 and E minor 7 (all these chords are constructed using notes from the natural A minor scale).

The lack of a major or minor 3 rd in this particular ostinato means that it could just as easily fit over an A major 7 chord, as we can hear below: FURTHER EXAMPLES Another effective example of an ostinato is the Nightrider-esque riff that repeats throughout The Chemical Brothers’ 1999 hit, ‘Hey Boy, Hey Girl’:

When the bassline changes from a D to a G at 0:53, the ostinato continues, keeping the track moving and simply linking these two sections of the piece together.

Now let’s look at a slightly more complex example, Spor/Feed Me’s track, ‘Mordez Moi’, this version of it taken from Noisia’s Fabriclive 40 set: https://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/passing-notes/ostinatos-and-acid-house-riffs

Below is the riff in F# minor that starts at 0:28. (The G, highlighted in red is not actually in a natural F # minor scale, but isn’t prominent enough to affect the key.)

At 0.58, we hear how it builds anticipation over the ascending bassline, (also in F# minor) F#, A, B, D, before continuing over the drop at 1.12.

As well as adding hugely to the movement and ‘groove’ of the track, the repeated melody provides continuity and helps link the different sections of the track.

Next, we’ll take a look at how to put some of this theory into practice… PUTTING THEORY INTO PRACTICE Let’s look at this in the context of some slightly pedantic but nonetheless useful theory:

Let’s start with a simple acid-style riff using just the notes A and G:

In this case the ostinato is in A minor. On a theoretical level, the G is the minor 7 th of A, rather than the major 7 th which would be G#. https://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/passing-notes/ostinatos-and-acid-house-riffs

As with nearly all aspects of music there are no hard and fast rules concerning what fits together harmonically, but it’s generally safe to assume that chords built using notes from a particular scale will fit nicely under a melody in that same key.

If we go up a minor scale in 7 th chords (ie starting with the root minor 7, then raising the root, 3 rd , 5th and 7 th of the chord one note up the scale each time) we can work out the ‘safest’ chords available to us for putting under this ostinato.

If you happen to be using an ostinato in a major key, it’s convenient to note that all minor keys have a ‘relative major’ key (and vice versa), which uses all the same notes. The 3 rd note of a minor key tells you its relative major, the 6 th note of a major its relative minor. Therefore, you can start the same progression above at its 3 rd interval, C major 7, to see all the chords available in A minor’s relative major scale, C major.

The chords we have available for our A minor ostinato (if we’re playing it safe!) are A minor 7, B minor 7 flat 5, C major 7, D minor 7, E minor 7, F major 7, G dominant 7 and finally A minor 7 at the top again.

They sound like this:

While these chords’ names might not be so important to us, the chords should fit nicely under the ostinato, and we can play some of them underneath to start building our track. Here, we’re using a chord progression of Am7, Em7, Fmaj7, Dm7:

The applications of ostinatos are limitless, from trance riffs to dubstep melodies via 303 acid lines. Depending on its subtlety or complexity, a simple repeating ostinato can help with anything from ‘gluing’ an arrangement together structurally to just giving a crowd something to point their fingers to.