Aratu course

A course in Aratu from the first bar to a maracatu: rhythm, drums, Brazilian percussion, melody, harmony, form and live music. Each lesson has examples to hear and change, and exercises Aratu checks by their sound.

▶ Open in Aratu to hear the examples, change them and do the exercises

1. Welcome to Aratu

   Aratu is a way to write music on the computer keyboard and hear it at once. You write the way a musician thinks: in bars, beats, notes and chord symbols.

2. The bar and the tempo

   Every Aratu piece starts by saying two things: its meter and its tempo. meter: 4/4 is the time signature: four beats in a bar.

3. Dividing the beat

   So far every beat had one symbol, a quarter note. But music divides beats: two eighths, four sixteenths, triplets. In Aratu that takes one rule.

4. The drums

   Each drum has a short symbol. The symbol decides the sound, whatever the line is called. Each line also has a name, written before the =.

5. Rests and long rests

   Silence is music too. In Aratu every rest is written with the same sign, -, and its length comes from the same rules as sounds: a - takes one part of the…

6. Compound and irregular meters

   So far the beat was always a quarter note, and a bar had two, three or four of them. In this lesson the beat changes size: in 6/8 it divides in three, in 7/8…

7. Brazilian percussion

   The drum kit has one symbol per piece. Brazilian percussion is different: each instrument has a line of its own, named after the instrument, with its own…

8. Notes and melodies

   So far there were only drums. Now, notes. A note is written with its name and its octave: c4 is middle C on the piano.

9. Rhythm in a melody

   The rhythm rules work for notes too, with one care: two notes in the same beat go in brackets. [c4 d] is two eighths in one beat.

10. Chords and strumming

    A progression is written as a lead sheet, on a line called chords. Each bar between bar lines has its chord: On its own, the chords line plays each chord…

11. Harmony by degree

    In the last lesson chords had names: Am, F, C, G. Harmony students often think another way: not "A minor" but "the sixth degree of the key".

12. Dynamics and articulation

    Dynamic marks are the score's: ppp pp p mp mf f ff fff, and also sfz and fp. Inside a bar, a mark sits on its note with a colon, and holds from there on:

13. Repeats and jumps

    A score's repeat signs are written in Aratu too. |: and :| enclose a passage that is played twice: Listen: the first two bars twice, then the ending.

14. Sections and form

    A song has parts: intro, verse, chorus, ending. Each part comes back more than once, and their order is the form of the piece.

15. Motifs, sequences and rows

    Much music is made of a few ideas used many times: a motif that comes back, rises or falls, turns upside down.

16. Tempo: rit, accel, fermata and pickup

    The tempo can change at a bar marked with at bar: rit to 60 over 2 bars is a ritardando to 60 over two bars (rall works too).

17. Expression: swing, rubato and humanize

    A computer plays every note in its exact place. A musician does not: they swing the eighths, breathe in a phrase, never hit twice the same way.

18. Playing live

    In Aratu, playing live means changing the text while the music plays. A few ideas make it easy. A pattern is a named group of lines, prepared ahead.

19. Changes in the right place

    In the last lesson the music changed when you changed the text. Often, though, the change is decided ahead of time: the fill in bar 8, the drums dropping out…

20. Chance

    A loop that repeats exactly the same every time soon sounds mechanical. A drummer never plays two bars quite alike: a hi-hat note drops out, another appears.

21. Sounds and effects

    So far each part played with the sound Aratu chose for it. Now you choose: a piano, a steel-string guitar, a slap bass, a synthesizer.

22. Numbers that move

    A DJ turns the filter knob slowly and the whole dance floor feels the music opening up. A guitarist rocks the pedal and the sound sweeps back and forth.

23. Mixing the whole piece

    With several parts playing together, there is still the job of the person at the mixing desk: putting each instrument at the right volume, each in its place…

24. Project: a maracatu

    Now you have everything to build a whole piece. We will build, part by part, a groove inspired by the maracatu de baque virado of Recife, in Brazil, in a…