Ostinatos

Ostinatos are short repeated pieces of music that repeat throughout a piece of music or throughout a section of a piece of music. They’re common in lots of different genres and styles of music.

The video above of “Let’s Groove” by Earth, Wind & Fire has an ostinato that starts with a vocoder part and then moves into the bass line. It’s played throughout almost the entire piece of music.

“Bolero” by Maurice Ravel is another piece of music that has an ostinato.

They’re common in electronic music too and can be heard in Deadmau5’s song “Imaginary Friends”.

They’re also common in film music and electronic music.

All an ostinato is is a repeating piece of music that repeats over and over again.

Easy arrangements

One way to make arrangements of songs easily is by using ostinatos. Layering ostinatos on top of each other can create a really interesting texture with a lot of lines. Those lines don’t have to be complicated, but they’ll add some interest and a backing for the melody to be played on top of.

One fun way to do this with singers is to take pieces of the melody and create ostinatos out of them. This is done in the elementary and middle school classroom often because it gets the students singing different parts, but the parts are related to each other and somewhat easier to sing than proper harmony or choral parts.

It can also be used to create arrangements with instruments as well.

Use as a starting point

Ostinatos can be a great place to start a piece of music. It gets you out of the rut of constantly writing chord progressions and melodies. You can start with an ostinato and add different parts on top of it to change it up. Another idea is to add multiple ostinatos on top of each other.

All of these things are great places to start to get yourself going with writing music.

ISJ