When freestyling, both rhyming and counting need to use "muscle memory" in order to free up the rest of your brain for other more demanding tasks. This will requires some practice, and drilling but is well worth it. But don't worry because we'll get you there.
So what exactly is rhyme? Rhyming is the act of matching words with similar ending sounds.
IF YOU WANT TO SEE HOW MUCH OTHER STUDENTS HAVE LEARNED BY TAKING THIS CLASS, CHECK OUT OUR GALLERY...
Let’s look at a very basic rhyme of boat and coat. Each syllable can be split up into three parts (read more about it):
The 1 next to the OH indicates that part of the syllable is accented. Rhyming is about matching the nucleus and coda as closely as possible between two syllables or sets of syllables. In our example
B - OH1 - T
C - OH1 - T
both the nucleus and coda match exactly, which is what's called a perfect rhyme.
IF YOU WANT TO SEE MORE PERFECT RHYMES CHECK OUT RHYMEZONE.COM...
"But what about boat and code? Those rhyme too right?", Why thank you imaginary student, you make a good point. Let's look at their breakdowns:
B - OH1 - T
C - OH1 - D
You'll notice in this case their nucleus is the same but their coda is different. When either the coda or nucleus differ, this is called a slant or near rhyme. Understanding slant rhymes is critical to freestyling. This is because there are a limited number of perfect rhymes in the world but a near infinite number of slants, especially if you stress syllables differently. For example, the word orange is infamous because it has no perfect rhyme: OR1-IN-GH. But if you change the stress to the nucleus, suddenly it rhymes with the tinge family.
OR-IN1-GH
T-IN1-GH
ST-IN1-GH
And you can then rhyme with the inch family:
OR-IN1-GH
T-IN1-GH
ST-IN1-GH
IN1- CH
W-IN1-CH
So you can see how many more possibilities open up with slants and stress changes. This is the reason why rappers can still come up with unique or surprising rhymes.
DID YOU KNOW THAT 'TA' AND 'DA' HAVE THE SAME TONGUE POSITIONING AND ARE ONLY DIFFERENTIATED BY THE FACT ONE IS VOICED? THE CLOSER THE MOUTH MOVEMENTS, THE BETTER THE SLANT RHYME...
Another type of rhyme is called a multi-syllabic rhyme (multi for short). These are just rhymes that span over more than one syllable. For example, say this aloud:
“Advanced apathy, smashin the man’s cameras up,
Tan khakis an antagonist dan dappered up” - Earl Sweatshirt, Whoa
Whoa is right. Multis are any simple or slant rhyme that encompasses more than one syllable or in this case, the entire two bars. It's important to note that they can span across words.
Lastly, how do we practice rhyme in the context of freestyle? Let's recall a slide from the last video:
This is called a rhyme set. It's just a list of words that rhyme. Before continuing on, make at least ten rhyme sets of four words each, and drill them over any beat from the level one playlist until you have them memorized. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, I thought you were teaching us freestyle, not memorization!" That's a fair argument but for now, we're using this as a crutch so that you can learn freestyle faster. We will teach you how to freestyle without rhyme sets later.
Another reason to learn them is so that when you get stumped, you'll have something to fall back on rather than just freezing. Plus you'll still be making up the content of your sentences, which is our next lesson!
