Drum/rhythm knowledge rolling thread

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Blackdown and dHarry were having a discussion about beat structure in dubstep/reggae/soca etc, over on another thread that set me thinking: maybe it would be useful to have a separate thread for people to share their knowledge/questions in this area?

As most people on here who make beats probably know already, Wayne and Wax's website is amazingly useful for this: (click 'lessons') ; he also did an amazing explanation of his Blogariddims contribution, and the 3+3+2 structure connecting most of the Caribbean tunes there.


As a starter to discussion, Blackdown raised a very interesting question on the other thread (talking about a dubstep record):

given the cyclical nature of bars, how would a snare on the first and the snare on the third sound different to the reverse? i had Benny Ill explain a similar thing about the soca beat (it's snare kick kick, not kick kick snare) but, due to cycles, they appear indistinguishable in a tune.

I've always wondered how, in reggae, the listener can 'tell' that the guitar/organ chords are on the offbeat, producing the trademark skank. Surely this would depend upon there being an incontrovertible 'marker' of the beginning of the bar? Do we simply attribute the bass drum (which may be felt more than heard in many contexts) to the beginning of the bar automatically? And would someone who had never heard any music before automatically do the same?
 

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
maybe if the drums were just playing solo we wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but when all the other instruments are playing too you get a picture built up i guess - the bass doesn't play the offbeat in reggae does it?
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Yeah, there will be other cues in the music which indicate where the emphasis falls - human players will usually do this naturally but with electronic beats you can't always easily tell where the bars start, if at all.

I like the little pun in the thread title.
 

dHarry

Well-known member
With only the drum track playing you might not be able to tell where the bars start (and this can be exploited by producers - opening a track with a rhythm part on an off-beat, only to wrong-foot you when the music or beat proper comes in), but you can always tell with a full musical track - there is always a countable 1-2-3-4; and just because bars cycle doesn't mean that this isn't apparent - they just cycle back around to 1 after the 4, and this isn't the same as starting the count at say 2-3-4-1 (if this were the case musicians/singers wouldn't be able to play together!)

Or am I not getting something about the question (I didn't understand Blackdown's original point either)?
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
With only the drum track playing you might not be able to tell where the bars start (and this can be exploited by producers - opening a track with a rhythm part on an off-beat, only to wrong-foot you when the music or beat proper comes in), but you can always tell with a full musical track - there is always a countable 1-2-3-4; and just because bars cycle doesn't mean that this isn't apparent - they just cycle back around to 1 after the 4, and this isn't the same as starting the count at say 2-3-4-1 (if this were the case musicians/singers wouldn't be able to play together!)

Or am I not getting something about the question (I didn't understand Blackdown's original point either)?

Now I'm getting confused! :confused:

I understand your point about singers, so taking the instrumental track on its own...what is it that means that, as a listener, one can identify the '1'? Is it that the bass drum always falls on that beat?
 

dHarry

Well-known member
Yeah, the bass drum usually falls on the 1-beat, which makes it easier to hear/feel.

I've always wondered how, in reggae, the listener can 'tell' that the guitar/organ chords are on the offbeat, producing the trademark skank. Surely this would depend upon there being an incontrovertible 'marker' of the beginning of the bar? Do we simply attribute the bass drum (which may be felt more than heard in many contexts) to the beginning of the bar automatically? And would someone who had never heard any music before automatically do the same?
I'd say "yes", "yes (although even if there's not kick drum on the 1-beat, the 1-beat is still there, in time - see below)" and "probably".

Also reggae sometimes leaves out a strong beat on the 1 and hits the kick drum on the 3 (i.e. on what's usually the snare beat), which is what can give it a lop-sided feel (but of course the time is still counting away whatever the instrumentation/arrangement).

My original point to Blackdown was that this reggae rhythm has AFAIK never been used in dubstep and could sound/feel great in that context - his response that "it doesn't matter, given that bars cycle around" isn't valid to this point, so maybe he misunderstood me (due to my poor explanation possibly!).

So again (sorry if this is boring to many)! Instead of a typical rock/funk/hip hop/dubstep beat (they all do the same thing typically) with the Kick & Snare on the 1 & 3:

1-2-3-4-
K---S---

why not try the reggae variation:

1-2-3-4-
----K---
 

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
no, it varies with the style of music where the bass drum falls (one drop reggae riddims miss out the bass drum on the first beat), it's just that i think the point people are making is that you can always tell where the 1-2-3-4 falls in music, if there's two or more instruments playing together.
 

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
1-2-3-4-
K---S---
[/FONT]

[/FONT]
that's dubstep but not rock surely? Where halfstep broke with 2 step was placing the snare on the 3rd beat instead of on the one and two.

Sorry, minor quibble.

I guess the only way to prove this is for someone to make the drum tracks on something, post them up and see if we can tell the difference.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
(sorry if this is boring to many)!

This is a thread where we can be as nerdy and tedious as we like! :)

Seriously, I find this kind of stuff fascinating. Must consult with my friend who's into Cuban music, who had really interesting things to say on the way in which the clave rhythm has become so embedded into the minds of Cuban riddim followers, that sometimes it can simply be implied and the listener will hear it.

This seems to me to have parallels with a point that Kode9 (?possibly?) made in an interview about how the jungle/Amen rhythm was so instantiated in the minds of those who followed the 'hardcore continuum'/London pirate radio, that many of his tracks suggested this rhythm (perhaps through such things as ghost notes? I'm out of my musical depth here :slanted:) without actually employing it.

As well as possibly having parallels with what we're discussing about reggae, of course.
 

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
There's nothing special about the Amen though. It's pretty much the same rhythm as "Funky Drummer" and a bunch of other funk beats.

Kick on the 1, snare on the 2 and 4.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
that's dubstep but not rock surely? Where halfstep broke with 2 step was placing the snare on the 3rd beat instead of on the one and two.

Sorry, minor quibble.

I guess the only way to prove this is for someone to make the drum tracks on something, post them up and see if we can tell the difference.
It's true, take away the swing and triplet figures and many simple halfstep rhythms are pretty much the same as plodding rock.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Wait...I thought halfstep was accused of not having any swing.
No reason why it can't have swing at all, good halfstep tracks have a definite groove, but without it it is going to seem pretty stiff. Sometimes people use the word 'swing' to mean the extremely swung rhythms of 2step.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
From the little I know, seems like (aside from 2-step) quite a lot of genres use a generous amount of swing. My memory is possibly failing me, but doesn't southern hip hop typically use a lot of swing on the hi-hat pattern? (It may be reggaeton that i'm thinking of....) :confused:
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Definitely. Hip hop will nearly always have swing, especially apparent on the hi-hats, and reggaeton uses loads I imagine.

I suppose with halfstep if you just have a kick on the 1 and a snare on the 3 you won't hear the effect of the swung beats until you have some other elements going on that fall on the alternate 8ths or 16ths.
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
Contrary to what's been said upthread, it's not always possible to say what's the 1. Especially in electronic dance music. A lot of producers play with this, to fool you into locking onto one groove, and then continuing with another. Typically you have a full on A section, then an A' section which
takes out the bass drum, and other elements that mark the downbeats strongly, just leaving synth pads and the highhat marking every crotchet, quaver or semi-quaver, but without giving any hint as to the downbeat (AKA, all hits have the same volume, tone quality). this goes on for a while leaving you , your body to infer/hear the BD/downbeat. Then the bass drum kicks back in, but not at the place where the listener expects it, but somewhere else, thus marking a new downbeat. Lot's of detroit techy tracks from the 90s for example. DJs also mix on off-beats or backbeats sometimes for the same effect.

The book Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music by Mark Butler goes on about this, although, i think it's a bit crude.

But in most 'normal' music, the downbeat can always be felt easily, because there are many many clues on many musical levels.

I think what makes music dancable is to a large degree a certain ambiguity about rhythms. The technical term is syncopation. That means that several rhythms (units of repetition) happen at the same time, and prevent rhythmic resolutions, precisely because there's no definite sense of closure.

The clave rhythm mentioned earlier is a famous example of this (and lots of house and garage tracks play clave variants in their keyboards lines, famous recent example: "Me & U" by cassie). Clave (in its 3/2 variant) starts with a beat that is divisible by 3:

X..X..X​

which is then not continued but replaced by something divible by 2:

X..X..X...X.X..​

This constant ambiguity about the downbeat makes latin music like salsa so infectiously dancable. The lack of resolution with respect to the downbeat has its melodic/harmonic match in dance music, where full V -> I resolution is avoided like the place and phrases usually end on an unstable note.
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
There's nothing special about the Amen though. It's pretty much the same rhythm as "Funky Drummer" and a bunch of other funk beats.

Kick on the 1, snare on the 2 and 4.

Wot? Funky drummer is a crazy rhythm with lots of shares, ghosted or otherwise, almost nothing emphasis the downbeat. I don't remember it off the top of my head, and it's too complicated
for me to work it out on the fly by listening, but i have programmed it (don't have my XS key at work sorry). i can post it next time i go online if anybody cares enough aboutWork of art. Amen, if i remember correctly, was produced by recording several drum takes and splicing them togetherwith tape and a razor blade, so it should be something that's not really possible for humans to play.
 

continuum

smugpolice
Not sure if this fits in with this thread so feel free to ignore but Wiley has a track up on his myspace called 'Information Centre' (www.myspace.com/eskiboywiley) where he seems to be playing with structure and rhythm in a different way. Can anyone who knows more about this than me (such as the above posters) spread any light on technically what he is doing in their eyes?
 

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
how do you mean? Sounds like a fairly standard albeit fast and with more kicks than normal 3rd beat snare rhythm to me - i could be wrong.
 

tate

Brown Sugar
I think what makes music dancable is to a large degree a certain ambiguity about rhythms. The technical term is syncopation. That means that several rhythms (units of repetition) happen at the same time, and prevent rhythmic resolutions, precisely because there's no definite sense of closure.
Your explanation of syncopation is not one that I recognize. It does not require "several rhythms at the same time" (one implied and one actual are sufficient, hence the prefix "syn") (e.g., I can make a syncopated rhythm by clapping my hands, no need for additional rhythms, so long as a basic pulse is implied), and it does not "prevent rhythmic resolutions" or occlude a "definite sense of closure" (in fact, a syncopation works because at the end of the moment of syncopation there's closure). It's a basic term for alternating/shifting accents or ghosting them that can be applied to dance music or a violin melody or anything reallly. And on the contrary, this does not create ambiguity, it creates a very identifiable rhythmic phenomenon - which is why it's gotten its own term in the first place. Maybe I've just misunderstood you?
 
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