A musical phrase that is repeated throughout a piece of music or a section of a song is known as an ostinato. Modern musicians are more likely to refer to a repeating section as a riff or pattern than to use the term ostinato. Ostinatos are used in a variety of musical genres, but they are most noticeable in classical works like Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana and the early looping work of minimalists like Terry Riley. Ostinatos include things like repeating melodies, bass lines, and percussive rhythm parts, and they’re all useful techniques for writing music.
A repeating section can be found in almost all pieces of music. A lot of modern music is based on repeating patterns that provide familiarity and a strong sense of rhythm. Most drumming patterns, for example, are composed of repetitive elements accented with additional strikes every now and then, and the larger patterns themselves frequently repeat throughout a song. An ostinato is a musical phrase that refers to a continuous repetition of a musical section.
An ostinato can be produced by a variety of instruments, whether percussive or melodic in nature. Many pianists who play in the “boogie woogie” style, for example, use their left hand to play a repeating bass line and their right hand to play melody over top of it. An ostinato is a bass line that repeats itself on the left hand. In rock and pop songs, many guitarists and bassists use repeating “riffs,” which often last the entire introduction and verse. Even if a repeating section is slightly different each time, it is still ostinato playing if the core of the phrase remains the same.
Looping is a musical technique that relies heavily on repetition. Musicians used to record small phrases of music on tape decks and play them back on a continuous loop. Whatever the original phrase was, it becomes an ostinato, which the musician then plays over like a backing track. Looper pedals, which can be thought of as ostinato machines, are used to accomplish this nowadays.
The use of ostinato when writing new compositions can make the process go more smoothly. After deciding on the beat’s basic, repeating skeleton, the musician can accent and add to it rather than working on a completely different section to follow it. The musician uses the repeating phrase to hold the song together, much like a pianist improvising with his or her right hand over the repeating bass part held by the left.