Writing this because a few people have asked me for help with flow, and I figure it's better to just stick all my thoughts in one spot.
Flow is a skill that anyone can learn the basics of, but that does not mean that it's easy - building the ability to write and deliver complex, controlled, and creative flows can take years. But it's impossible to do complex and creative flows well without learning the basics, which is what this guide is aiming at. Once you've learned the basic rules, you'll have the foundation to start breaking them in interesting ways.
Personally, I've found learning basic flow skills fairly easy because even though I've only been rapping for a year or so, I've been writing electronic music as a hobby for 10 years, and getting drum lessons for a couple, and flow is strongly tied to musicality. I'm still building my chops with vocal delivery and hip-hop as a style though, and I still have a lot to learn about the finer details of crafting a killer rap flow. But here's what I know so far.
tl;dr version
- Write to the beat. Not all flows work on all beats.
- Rap to the beat. If you can't hear it, you can't feel when it sounds wrong. If you're just starting out, then rap it out loud to the beat.
- Count the beat. 1, 2, 3, 4. Nod your head and feel it. 2 and 4 land on the snare.
- Write your bars so that the main emphasised syllables land on the beat - especially on the 4.
- Space the in-between syllables out so that they hit beat divisions - usually no more than 4 syllables per beat, unless you're double-timing.
- Make the rhythmic patterns the same on consecutive bars to get that consistent feel.
How to count a beat
If you don't understand how a beat works, you can't flow. You can learn this intuitively just through practice, but a little bit of rhythm theory will help you get to that understanding faster.
Beats and tempo
Almost all modern popular music (pop, rock, hip-hop, EDM, and lots of jazz) is based on some variation of a rock beat. The most important parts of this are:
- It's in 4/4 time, which means that there are 4 beats per bar (quarter notes).
- There is a strong back-beat - usually an emphasised snare drum or clap on the 2 and 4.
To test your understanding of this, find any rock/pop/hip-hop track, and count along with it, making sure to land the 2 and the 4 on the snare/clap sound.
Usually it makes sense to divide a beat into smaller pieces, so that you can fit lots of syllables into a 4-beat bar. Knowing how to count smaller sub-divisions can help you plan out your flows:
- Beats/Quarter notes are counted
1 2 3 4 - 8th notes are counted like
1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & - 16th notes are counted like
1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a
Try playing a beat, and counting along with it like this, and see how it feels. Make sure the 2 and the 4 land on the snare.
The tempo of the beat is measured in beats-per-minute (BPM). Most hip-hop is between 70 and 100 bpm. If you download a free metronome app, you can tap along with the beat and figure out what tempo the beat is at.
Components of groove and feel
On top of this these elements are common, and can affect the groove/feel of the beat:
- A kick/bass drum providing a driving rhythm. In a simple rock beat, this is on the 1 and 3, but there are often variations. Most tracks have a kick on the 1 though.
- Often some other element like a high-hat keeping time on the 8th notes (but sometimes 16th or quarter notes).
- A bass that might play along with the kick, or might back-and-forth with the kick. Together these provide the foundation of the groove.
"groove" or "feel" generally refers to the intentional irregularities in the beat, that might be related to certain elements lagging behind the perfect divisions a bit, or to changes in intensity of elements in different parts of the beat. A common type of groove is swing, which is where every off-beat hit is delayed a little bit, which can give the beat a wobbly vibe, or make it feel loose.
The main thing here for a rapper to pay attention to is how the beat feels - nod your head or dance to the beat a bit to get a feel for the groove.
You can also start mumbling/scatting over that movement (e.g. "Da di di Da di Da di Da Da"), and see how it feels - avoid using real words at first, as they will mess with your cadence.
What is flow?
Flow is the way that the lyrics work with the beat. Flow basically has two parts: writing, and delivery. If you write flow badly, then it is very hard to deliver the lyrics over the beat in a way that sounds good. It's also very possible to fuck up a well-written flow with a bad delivery.
If you think of the voice as an instrument, then you can think of written flow as something like sheet music or tabs - it describes what to say - and if you annotate it a bit, it can also tell you when to say it. Delivery is using your instrument - your voice - to play the written flow along with the beat - to rap.
So before jumping in to how to flow good, it's worth going over some (super-simplified) rhythm theory.
Syllables and stress patterns in words.
Words are made up of syllables. "Cat" has one. "Horses" has two. Some words are a bit flexible, for example "Bubbling" can be pronounced bub-ling, or bu-bul-ing.
Each of those syllables in naturally spoken English has a different stress - the amount of emphasis you put into the syllable. For example, "horses" is pronounced HOR-ses, if you try to pronounce it hor-SES, it will sound weird in most contexts (the exception being when you're emphasising that there are multiple - "hor-SES, not horse").
Also note that not all syllables are the same length. The middle syllable of "bu-bul-ling" is quite short, the first syllable of "hor-ses" is long.
If you want to emphasise a syllable even more than it's natural stress pattern, you can do so by making it longer or louder, or higher pitched (or a combination).
The rhythmic structure of stressed syllables in language is often called meter in poetry or rap, or prosody in prose.
Meter and meaning in sentences
Understanding these stress patterns for each word is important, because you want to use those patterns to make the flow you write sound natural, and convey the meaning you want.
As an example, start with a sentence that might end up in a rap verse:
I'm gonna win this battle 'cause you can't rap
You can write it out and annotate which syllables are stressed:
X . . X . X . . X . X
I'M gonna WIN this BATtle 'cause YOU can't RAP
Say the sentence above, really emphasising the syllables marked as X.
Note that the stress pattern is not certain in written language until you speak it. Changing the stress pattern can dramatically change the meaning, for instance
. X . . X . . . . X .
I'm GONna win THIS battle 'cause you CAN'T rap
Suddenly the meaning shifts to something like "I know I've lost before, but I will win this one, because you aren't as good as you seem". It sounds a bit desperate.
This example shows how stress patterns are critical to communicating the meaning you're trying to get across.
The trick with rap is simultaneously making the stress patterns communicate the message you're trying to convey, AND making those stress patterns line up up well with the beat rhythmically. If you can nail both of those aspects, then you can rap.
Delivery
Rapping is talking rhythmically to a beat. It's not the same as singing, which tends to be less rhythmical and more melodic, but there are odiously overlaps. I think of singing as a melodic instrument, where rapping is more like a percussive instrument.
The main things you want to focus on with delivery are:
- Timing. If you don't get this right, then nothing else will make it sound good.
- Stress/emphasis: This makes sure the key elements are getting through to the listener.
- Tone: How your voice sounds - angry, happy, relaxed? Deep, nasal? Play with this to find what works for the verse you're delivering. Focus on tone only after you've got the timing and stress nailed.
How to flow good
The first thing to note here is that these aren't rules, they are just guidelines for someone starting out. You can absolutely break them if you want to. But you should only do so intentionally. Learn the rules before you break them, kind of thing.
Stressed syllables land on beat
Thinking about the example sentence above, there is a problem if we are going to use it for a decent rap flow: The number of stressed syllables doesn't work with a beat - the first stress pattern has 5 stressed syllables, the second has only 3. Ideally we want 4, for a basic flow. Maybe we could do something like this:
. X . . . X . . X . X
I'm GONna win this BATtle 'cause YOU can't RAP
Try saying this stress pattern out loud: Notice it doesn't change the meaning as much as the previous stress change, so it retains the meaning. Now we can match this to the beat, and space it out according to the beat counting pattern above:
. 1 . . . 2 . . 3 . 4
I'm GONna win this BATtle 'cause YOU can't RAP
If you rap this over a beat, you'll notice it feels easy and smooth.
This flip side of this advice is: Do not emphasise naturally unstressed syllables, and avoid landing right on the beat with them, because it sounds janky AF.
How many syllables per bar?
If we analyse the above pattern in more detail, we can see why it works well:
(a) 1 e & a 2 e & 3 & 4
I'm gonna win this battle 'cause you can't rap
Notice that some of the es and as are missing - this is OK, because it leaves space for the syllables that come before them to be lengthened for more emphasis.
Another way to look at this is in a table:
| (a) | 1 | e | & | a | 2 | e | & | a | 3 | e | & | a | 4 | e | & | a |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I'm | gon | na | win | this | bat | tle | 'cause | you | can't | rap |
Things to understand about this example:
- the first syllable ("I'm") actually comes before the 1 (on the
aof the previous 4), but leads into the 1- If you do this, it's important to make sure that the end of your last bar doesn't overlap with the start of your next bar. The easiest way to check this is to rap both bars consecutively and make sure there's enough space.
- The syllables from "cause" onward all have a gap after them, which lets you emphasise them a bunch more
- The last emphasised syllable ("rap") lands on the snare at 4, which gives it even more emphasis, which is great.
Obviously this is not a lyrically amazing bar, but in terms of basic flow, it's simple and good.
Once you have nailed this kind of flow, and understand what's happening, you can mess around with it by using different stress patterns.
X . . X . . X . . X . . X . .
1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a
This is particularly important for beats with strong off-beat patterns (e.g. beats with extra kicks, or bass patterns that don't hit directly on the 1 2 3 4.
I've built a flow analysis tool over here: https://naught101.gitlab.io/pages/flow-checker.html
You can use it to analyse your own flows or use it to dissect and understand flows from pros.
tl;dr: using normal time, you have a max of 16 syllables per bar, but you probably want to leave a bit of space at the end.
Double-time and triplets
Double time is basically fitting 2 syllables in the space of 1. That means that in a full double-time bar, you can potentially fit 32 syllables in. You can also use double time just for a few syllables within a bar, in order to fit a bit more in.
General rules of thumb for double time:
- Don't do it if it messes with the broader flow, e.g. if it makes it hard to land your main stressed syllables on a beat.
- Generally only double-time shorter, unstressed syllables. If you try to jam stressed syllables into a double-time burst it will probably sound awkward.
But ultimately you can ignore both of those rules, as long as you can make it sound good. If you're not sure if it sounds good, record it at listen back, and see if it feels rushed.
Sometimes, especially on beats with swing, you might find that triplet time also works well. In this case, you might be able to write in triplets (12 per bar) or sextuplets (24 per bar). A sextuplet groove (sometimes called triple-time, but this is weird terminology, because it's slower than double time) would be counted like this:
X . . X . . X . . X . . X . . X . . X . . X . .
1 tup let & tup let 2 tup let & tup let 3 tup let & tup let 4 tup let & tup let
Whether you can pull of double time depends on the beat, and how good you are at talking fast and clearly. Personally, I can easily pull off double time at BPMs lower than 70, and sometimes up to 80 or 85bpm, depending on the beat. Really skilled/fast rappers might pull off double time at 100 or 110bpm. If you think you're double-timing at 140bpm, then you're almost certainly wrong - you're probably rapping normal time at 140, or double-time at 70 (i.e. the beat is probably half-time).
Consistency across bars
Consistency is what makes a group of bars feel like the belong together. If you have bars that look like:
X . . . X . . . X . . . X .
X . . X . . X . . X . . X . .
X . . . X . . X . . X . X . .
X . X . . . X . X . . . X .
Then your audience is gonna have a really hard time following your flow, even if each individual bar sounds good by itself. It will sound janky, and even if your content is great, your verse will fall flat.
Music is about repetition with variation. So a really killer flow will have bars that are really similar, with some minor changes. There are different ways to do this: you could have all bars using the same basic pattern, or you could have consecutive pairs sharing a pattern, or you could have multi-bar patterns that repeats, e.g.:
X . . X . . X . . X . . X
X . . . X . . X . . . . X
X . . X . . X . . X . . X
X . . . X . . X . . X . X
Note that the second two bars repeat the same patterns as the first two, with 1 extra emphasis (the variation).
This approach to flow is ideal, but it's really hard to do well, while making the lyrics coherent, so treat it as more as something to work towards, instead of a hard rule that you need to follow every time.
A note on grammar:
I would recommend that you don't sacrifice your grammar for flow. The two critical things in rap that you should be aiming for at all times are:
- it sounds good, and
- it's comprehensible.
No one enjoys listening to a stream of random syllables.
Sometimes a bar is really cool, but it doesn't quite fit with a flow. Some options in this case:
- Change the grammar, but not so much that it becomes wrong. For example, you can change something from "I'm going to beat you" (6 syllables) to "I'll beat you", which saves 3 syllables. If you wanted it to be somewhere in between you could have "I will beat you" (4), or "I'm gonna beat you" (5).
- Re-write it in a different way, e.g. "You're gonna get smashed". This kind of re-writing can be great for finding better flows when you've got a good angle that doesn't yet sound great.
A general guideline here is: If you speak it out loud in a normal voice and it sounds wack, then it will sound wack when you're rapping too.
Tips on how to improve:
Cheat codes for learning flow faster
- Analyse flow from rappers you like. Start with just 2 bars, rap those bars yourself, and then annotate which syllables land on the beat, using the method above.
- Get a couple of drum lessons. Probably the best cheat code for flow. There's also lots of good youtube videos that can show you the basics.
How to practice delivery:
Once you've got a good written flow, you need to nail the delivery. Mostly this is just a matter of practicing a bunch of times until it feels good. If you're finding this hard (e.g. 'cause it's too fast), here are some options for practicing:
- Set the beat going, and rap the whole 4 bars
- Record one bar at a time, makes it easier to get right. Then you can splice them together and use that as a guide for how to nail the flow when you do one take
- Try slowing the beat down by 10% in a DAW, and practice over that in order to get the feel right. If it feels impossibly fast at that pace, re-write.
- Use-non word syllables over the beat in order to figure out the rhyme. like "DAH-di-di-di". These are easy to say, so they won't interfere with the rhythm. If the rhythm sounds jank against the beat, try a different one until you find a cool one, and then adjust your writing to suit.
If after all this you can't make the flow work, then note which parts sound good, and which parts don't, and try re-writing the bits that don't work.
How to check timing
One way that I use to check flow feels good, is to count the beats, and then figure out which syllables land on those beats, and then JUST say those syllables, without the syllables in between (so just 4 syllables per bar). It helps you lock in the main rhythm, and also helps you think about which syllables you want to emphasise.
So with this bar:
(a) 1 e & a 2 e & 3 & 4
I'm gonna win this battle 'cause you can't rap
You might just rap:
(a) 1 e & a 2 e & 3 & 4
GONna BATtle YOU RAP
It can really help to get a feel for the rhythm to fully YELL these syllables in time with the beat. Over-do it to get the feel for the timing, then back it off to make it sound good.
Then go back to the full bar, and see how that lines up with the in-between syllables included.
Flow check-list
- Which syllables are on each beat? Are they the ones that you want emphasised?
- Can you rap all 4 bars in one-take over the beat?
- Are there bits that have too may syllables? Could you slim it down?
- Is the flow consistent between bars? Or complementary?
- Does our flow respond to your opponent's?