![]() ![]() The snare plays what is known as a ‘clave’ rhythm- more on that in a later post- while the bass drum simply plays ‘four on the floor’ (unlike a true bossa nova, which has a more complicated pattern in the bass). In some (mostly older) funk music, we hear the fourth beat (or second backbeat) delayed instead.Īnd back to Latin feels, here is an interesting example of a derivation from a Brazilian beat, the bossa nova. If we add a bass drum stroke under the delayed backbeat, it begins perhaps to take on a bit of a Latin feel: Here is an example that interestingly is a rhythm common to traditional Middle Eastern drumming, as well as to a lot of contemporary electronic dance music and hip hop, usually at a pretty fast clip in both cases: I say this because things can get a little murky once we get into the concept of ‘ghost notes’. I believe that we could also think of this as a derivation of the double backbeat- in other words, a double backbeat with the main stroke missing. With that basic definition, we can see that the general emphasis in rock and roll on the backbeat is inherently syncopated, but more strictly speaking, we are usually referring to this occurring within smaller divisions of time- on the ‘and’ of the beat if we are generally in a eighth note rhythm, or on the ‘e’ and ‘a’ divisions in a sixteenth note based rhythm (counting one-e-and-a, two-e-and-a, etc).Īnd speaking of syncopation, this now leads us to:Īnother common technique of rock drum beats is to delay one of the backbeats by an eighth note. Most simply put, syncopation is emphasis or stress placed on the weaker beats. Here we double the fourth beat (and incidentally, you’ll hear a bit of those in the aforementioned Rolling Stones song as well):Īnd here we’ll add a little more forward motion through a bit of syncopation in the bass drum: This practice was very common again in 60s rock (think the Beatles’ ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’) and in particular, surf music (The Chantays’ ‘Pipeline’ comes immediately to mind). The double backbeat is the practice of doubling one or both of the backbeats by striking the snare on the ‘and’ of two or four (or both) as well. ![]() Far more common are elaborations of the backbeat tendency, which leads us to: This may be found as an effect or transitional pattern, but were it to be used as the basis for a song, it would simply sound a bit ‘off’ or confusing to most of our ears (of course you may find yourself seeking that effect). But you’ll find that it is very rare for a drummer to, for example, play the reverse of this- snare on one and two, bass on three and four. I discussed in part one the tendency- throughout the history of music, and across cultures- for rhythmic music to tend to assemble itself into ‘stronger’ and ‘weaker’ beats, and further, a tendency (operative word) toward low pitched sounds on strong beats (in the case of 4/4 time, one and three) and higher pitched sounds on the weaker beats (two and four). In spite of this, some of these possibilities tend to be rare. Here are a couple of common examples, with typical bass drum patterns:īoth of these rock drum beats were quite common, particularly in the rock and roll of the sixties, and remain commonly used (with many variations possible, of course) whenever a driving or ‘stomping’ kind of feel is desired- Think of the intro to Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’, or the tag at the end of the chorus of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Get off of my Cloud’.īut of course within our current framework, we have given ourselves eight different points in our measure to work with (the most basic of ‘basic rock drum beats’!). I’ll begin with one of the simplest and most common ways this is done, which is to simply strike the snare on all four beats. ![]() What we have left to play with then is to vary the pattern of the snare drum. So let’s remain for the time being within the eighth note framework, with the ride pattern (high hat or ride cymbal most commonly) unchanged from before. ![]() In this part, we’re going to look at some of the ways this can be further varied, and a bit about what seems to work and what doesn’t. In my previous post, I discussed the basic approaches to the construction of rock drum beats, focused primarily on a straight eighth note division of the bar, 4/4 time, and with an unchanging back beat (two and four on the snare). ![]()
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