App Profile: Varney Rhythm

Varney Rhythm is a rhythmic texture construction tool developed to show musicians rhythmic roles of various instruments and how overall rhythm structure should work. The model is based on the idea of the construction of rhythms in a circular aspect, where elements could be placed on circles and then these circles could be independently rotated to create new rhythmic perspectives based on the same elements.

It can be a used as a metronome, but one with which you refer to numbers of beats. You can multi-layer the beats that you wish to coordinate with. It can also fulfill the requirements of a drum-machine. If you need to map out a basic rhythm for a drummer, you don’t have to write it out. You can just compose it around the circle, making the desired rhythm easy to see and play it back. You can build up multi-layered rhythmic structures and experiment with these, changing sounds and rotating component circles to experiment with all kinds of variations on basic ideas.

Another use is to train the user in familiarity with less-common rhythmic groupings. Various sound samples can be used to create interesting sound cycles.