In this video, I’m going to show you how to improve your rap flow by using this one practice drill which uses something I like to call ”Interval Training” which will make your overall rap flow much more fluid and free and less rigid and restricted. This is due to you learning to use many more combinations of 16th notes and pauses than you typically would use by default.
This is going to be a guided practice where you simply repeat the cadence I rap into the empty space I leave behind.
Beats Within Beats
The most common rhythmic music note rappers use are 16th notes. There are four 16th notes per beat,so you can think of 16th notes as the beats within each beat. So let’s say I begin rapping on the 2nd 16th note of beat one, an easy way I could communicate that is by saying I’m landing on beat 1.2. Or the 2nd beat of beat 1. If I were to pause on the 4th 16th note of beat 4 I could say, I paused on beat 4.4 or the 4th beat of beat 4.
To keep things as simple as possible we’re going to use the same sounds for each cadence/interval. We will be saying the beat number for the 16th note that lands on each beat, so for example, One, Two, Three, Four.
And for the 2nd beat of each beat, we’ll say “Yuh”, for the 3rd beat of each beat we’ll say “beh”, and for the 4th beat of each beat we’ll say “duh”. Using these combinations of sounds will allow us to easily keep track of the beats while using sounds that roll off the tongue because each sound uses a different part of the mouth. “One yuh beh duh, Two yuh beh duh, Three yuh beh duh, Four yuh beh duh
With that being said we’re going to cover a total of 12 intervals/cadences. Each one will be 1 bar in length so I will rap for 1 bar and then I will leave you 1 bar of empty space to fill in with the cadence I did before it, and we will both say each cadence/interval a total of 4 times a piece before moving on to the next cadence.
For today’s practice, I’m using an instrumental that I produced called Midnight Drive. If you like this beat and want to support the channel you can get it over on my beat store.
Now let’s get started with something easy and then we’ll advance to some more uncommon difficult cadences.
CADENCE 01
For our 1st cadence, we’re simply doing a straight-up 16 count by filling in the entire bar with 16th notes. Let’s get straight to it!
CADENCE 02
Now for our 2nd cadence, we’re going to do the 16 count but pause on the 1st and 3rd beat.
CADENCE 03
For our 3rd cadence, we will build off the last cadence and pause on all 4 beats.
CADENCE 04
For our 4th cadence, we’re only going to land on the 3rd and 4th beat of each beat.
CADENCE 05
For of 5th cadence we’re going to basically do the 16 count but begin rapping on beat 1.4
CADENCE 06
For our 6th cadence we’re going to build off the previous cadence and a pause for beats 1,2 and 3 of beat 3.
CADENCE 07
For our 7th cadence we’re going to only land on the 1st and 4th beat of each beat.
CADENCE 08
For our 8th cadence we’re going to build off our last cadence and only pause on beat 02 of each beat.
CADENCE 09
For our 9th cadence we’re going to fill in beats 1 and 3 with 16th notes and only fill in the 1st beat for beats 2 and 4.
CADENCE 10
For our 10th cadence we’re pretty much going to do the 16 count but stop after the 1st beat of beat 3.
CADENCE 11
For our 11th cadence we’re going to land on beats 1 and 2 of each beat.
CADENCE 12
For our final cadence we’re going to use the same move as our previous cadence but just shift it to beats 3 and 4 of each beat.
Possibilities
As you can see, there are so many different cadences that you can create just from using 16th notes! And when we’re rapping we use a combination of rhythmic music notes such as 16th notes, 8th notes, 32nd notes, and triplets, so just imagine how many more possibilities that that creates!
Wanna Dig Deeper?
If you’re wanting to dig deeper into perfecting your rap flow, stay tuned because I’m about to drop a game-changing rap course that’s going to help you take your rap flow to the next level and beyond! If you’re watching this in the future, I’ll post a link to it in the video description below.
My name is Cole Mize with ColeMizeStudios.com where I strive to make you a Better Rapper Now! And if you’re trying to perfect your rap skills, make sure you get yourself a FREE copy of my eBook The #1 Fundamental To Rapping via the form below. And always remember, when it comes to rapping, there’s no rules, there’s only techniques. Peace!
