AutoFlow
A software tool for annotating, studying, and writing the art of rap
(Rhythm, Rhyme, and Word Play)
2022 and beyond
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“Rappin’ like it’s automated
Lights I keep ‘em on like Vegas
_ Lava makin’ so hot I’m turnin hog to bacon”
- Mac Miller, Diablo (2014)
TLDR: AutoFlow
Problem: Most modern transcriptions of rap songs (e.g. Genius.com lyrics, rap anthologies) tend to show lyrics in their poetic form, completely neglecting the most core component of rap & hip hop, rhythm. The greats of hip hop spent a significant amount of their time studying the parameters of flow (rhyming, syllabic timing and accenting, etc.), each having to start from scratch, creating their own notation and corpus of songs studied.
Solution & Contribution: I developed a software tool, called AutoFlow, to be used for the study and eventual creation of the poetics of hip hop and their parameters of flow, able to filter by generation (80s, 90s, modern, etc.), artist, album, and more.
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Eminem
Detroit, Michigan
“Rhymes are like puzzles… I’m real into the technical part of it. I studied Ice-T, I studied KRS, I studied Treach… My number one goal getting into hip-hop was getting respect from other MCs. That’s kind of what I rapped for—I was very into the technical part of MCing and wanted to get respect from my peers.”
- The Art of Rap (2012)
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stic.man
Atlanta, Georgia
“Crafting a good flow is like doing a puzzle… In a rap lyric the syllables, pauses, pronunciation, wit, energy of our performance and tempo, all determine the parameters of what is ‘good’ flow or not.”
- Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop (2009)
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Del the Funky Homosapien
Oakland, California
“I could write out my lyrics like a drum pattern, because I know how to write drum notation, basically. Not gonna say I’m the best, but I could write out a drumbeat if I wanted to, like [the drum break of James Brown’s] “Funky Drummer” I could write out on a piece of paper… I could write out my flow, for every bar. So then you can visually look at it and see what you’re doing”
- How to Rap 2: Advanced Flow and Delivery Techniques (2013)
AutoFlow UI v0: Syllabic Parsing and On-Beat Rhythmic Annotation
Thesis: Syllables as the primitive musical unit for rhythm and rhyme of rap & hip hop songs
Frontend UI: left panel is original song lyrics, middle panel is automated syllabic parsing output with syllables on beat (4/4 meter) annotated in green (on beat rests annotated as Ø), and right panel is live song spectrogram. All artists, songs, and annotations are updated and stored live on the server backend in a standardized protobuf format.
One immediate milestone goal of this project is to build and annotate an anthology of rap music (ala The Anthology of Rap (2011)) but with a key component of rap music that differentiates it from regular poetry & prose, that being rhythm and its symbolic musical representation. Future work includes analysis, storage, and recommendation of rhythm schemes as part of an intuitive visual interface for the creation, writing, and editing of rap songs atop beats (laptop-based or iPad-based with handwriting recognition in a note taking app).