A-Z of Rhythm -For Beginers

[Tricky-Loops]

All this theory blah doesn't help anyone...

…If I want to make a beat, I usually stomp with my hands, clap with my feet, bang with my ears and shake my head...

And I walk over to my drum kit, sit down and play. What about it?

We can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time (i.e. talk theory and talk practice), right?

I have never understood the hostility to music theory that threads like this often seem to reveal.

I've never understood people who perceive hostility where there isn't any hostility at all!

I've recommended people so many books about music theory here at KVR that it should be easy for non-blind people to see that Tricky Loops has nothing against music theory...

But our kind of Western music notation system was made for classical music without drum beats, and there are better music notation systems for beat composing like the Tabla system that I've mentioned...

[stringtapper]

But our kind of Western music notation system was made for classical music without drum beats, and there are better music notation systems for beat composing like the Tabla system that I've mentioned...

I don't see anything better or worse about either system. The fact is both are based on a collection of symbols that have a certain syntax, and in this sense both systems, like languages, are arbitrary in their symbolic meaning. In other words the symbology of each system is potentially incomprehensible to a person if they haven't already learned how the system works.

I also don't agree with your statement about western notation. It makes it sound like western notation was created at some single point in history and that's not really how it has happened. Western notation has evolved over hundreds of years and this includes the notation for the instrument we call the drum kit that happened mostly during the 20th century. Personally I can read drum set notation just fine.

Of course there are things like swing that are hard to convey in western notation and in this way it certainly fails, but I see nothing in the document you posted that conveys something like "feel" in any better way.

[jancivil]

All this theory blah doesn't help anyone...

…If I want to make a beat, I usually stomp with my hands, clap with my feet, bang with my ears and shake my head...

Tabla system that I've mentioned...

if you want to talk about tala, it will be difficult to get into it past the surface without getting into the principles and procedures which is going to amount to 'theory blah'. This is an utter contradiction.

Dha Dhin Dhin Dha Dha Dhin Dhin Dha Dha Tin Tin Ta Ta Dhin Dhin Dha...This is a Tabla rhythm...

this^ is some letters you typed. They are signs for 'bols'. Rhythm is not indicated by what you typed. If we do not get more into the 'theory', which is some more meaningful signs to describe/explain the practice, we don't really have anything. Even though I know what the signs are supposed to indicate, I have yet to obtain a rhythm from this.

I think if someone took the time to go into the theory, it could be helpful to the extent it's clear and/or comprehensive. What you're doing, not so much.

[jancivil]

Picking up a tablet today and connecting it to the speakers is the modern equivalent of wailing with a kantele.

It isn't equivalent. To wail, you have to make sound yourself through the mechanism of the instrument. Connecting a machine, whether it is a record-player or the computer is not equal to making a sound on an instrument, not until you have at the very least accessed a virtual instrument between 'the tablet' and 'the speakers'. And then it may still not be equal to the things that go on with the actual contact with the instrument. This gesture was bullshit. It is bullshit in service of some more bullshit:

The Internet is a continuation in the way of orally passing down understanding of music, from musician to musician, and if you think it's bad for someone wanting to make music, well, let me tell you, think it over again.

I for one am happy to transmit information over the internet if I have noticed the person asking an honest question. OTOH, the original post canvasses for people to have at it with no input himself; many of us will in order to show what we know, and to me there is no problem; but there was nothing from the original poster. That is not a continuation, that is something unique to the internet. So you don't get that some people aren't inspired to teach from this impetus? Fine; but you use this as a soapbox for what for me is pretty unexamined yet very confident rhetoric.

Now someone might make the argument that a tutor-to-student situation is the same thing, but it's not. There's no authority, no extra baggage of self-righteousness.

The salient difference between typing at people via the internet and personal tutelage is the absence vs the presence of person-to-person feedback. The anti-authority trip is whose baggage really? Formulating it as if it makes canvassing the internet a better way is kind of just twisted up. If you're going to gain something in particular from the other person, you're going to grant that they have something you don't. If it is a program you're asking from that person, they will be authoritative or they will be your peer. There is something to gain from a straight peer-to-peer experience, but you're not going to take a class from someone that doesn't know more than you do, are you?

And for those working in the field of education and feeling somehow wounded by what the Internet is today to music education... Try and do something about modernising the methods. Seriously. Notation and roman numbers feel incomprehensible to the uninitiated. Surely they are tested and true, but they have very little to offer to someone who launches clips from a grid of pads, or to someone who also has to deal with learning all that is making music today.

Grammar and syntax concepts are equally new to those starting out trying to come to grips with their language.

Launching *clips* - by which you mean music arrived at by someone that did more than launch, you mean phrases of music that once upon a time could only ever have happened by hand (whether that was via 'notation', or rote or oral tradition) - and doing nothing else? Sure, why learn any music? 'little to offer'; what are you trying to argue? They offer what they offer. You're challenging people to offer you what exactly? Another dodge? Something to replace it with while you remain in your comfort zone? What will you offer someone to do this trick for you?

"someone who also has to deal with learning all that is making music today"? So you're pressed for time and stressed? Where exactly did you get the idea this wasn't a life's work?

You're presenting a justfication for your preference for the internet over a more rounded and rich experience I think.

[jancivil]

• 1. That the single instrument that defines 'rhythm' in popular music is the drum kit (or electronic emulations thereof).
  
  2. That the traditional pedagogy of rhythm predates the drum kit by hundreds of years.
  
  3. That there has been no systematic or concerted effort to provide a viable, consistent alternative to the traditional pedagogy of rhythm.

I think that the best way for anyone to learn about drum rhythms is to emulate existing rhythmic patterns.

I personally think that the virtual stuff is a lot of work. Just listening to parts and trying to play along on your legs or a table top until you can do it without missing a beat is definitely every bit as educational.

When I took drum lessons as a child, the teacher asked me what song, what drum part did I want to learn or work on (I was not a total beginner. I had a basis for rhythmic notation going in.). I said "Fire", Jimi Hendrix, that was what I was after.

He helped me with whatever I was missing from it, but what he made me do was write it all out on drum staves. So I gained the independence of the kick, snare, ride and hat from sorting it out as parts. I would not have gotten from the level I was at, "Mary, Mary", The Monkees, to "Fire" in a couple of weeks left to my own devices.

So I think regular notation is perfectly suited for drums qua 'drum kit'.

OTOH virtually I am using two things with the two approaches: the BFD things require only a note-on. there is no meaning in the piano roll to provide the libraries with anything more than the shortest duration. OTOH there is VSL percussion where a cymbal may behave differently if you give it duration enough to exploit the entire sample.

Caring enough about notation of percussion duration has to be a matter of conveying it to someone else to deal with. I don't think 'western notation' is in itself not up to the task.


If we're even going to begin talking about Indian notation of rhythm, the terms 'measure' and 'beat' even, we're in music theory land in some form. Notating that is not the point, it can be conveyed fully in hand gestures if you know the tala, which is taught directly, shown and told, not as written out.

[Tricky-Loops]

Dha Dhin Dhin Dha Dha Dhin Dhin Dha Dha Tin Tin Ta Ta Dhin Dhin Dha...This is a Tabla rhythm...

this^ is some letters you typed. They are signs for 'bols'. Rhythm is not indicated by what you typed.

Of course I stand corrected: Not rhythm but melody. The different syllables are indicating where you have to hit the Tabla to achieve a certain timbre.

I don't see any similar melody notation system FOR DRUMS in the notation system in Western Music, however.

[herodotus]

• 1. That the single instrument that defines 'rhythm' in popular music is the drum kit (or electronic emulations thereof).
  
  2. That the traditional pedagogy of rhythm predates the drum kit by hundreds of years.
  
  3. That there has been no systematic or concerted effort to provide a viable, consistent alternative to the traditional pedagogy of rhythm.

I think that the best way for anyone to learn about drum rhythms is to emulate existing rhythmic patterns.

I personally think that the virtual stuff is a lot of work. Just listening to parts and trying to play along on your legs or a table top until you can do it without missing a beat is definitely every bit as educational.

When I took drum lessons as a child, the teacher asked me what song, what drum part did I want to learn or work on (I was not a total beginner. I had a basis for rhythmic notation going in.). I said "Fire", Jimi Hendrix, that was what I was after.

He helped me with whatever I was missing from it, but what he made me do was write it all out on drum staves. So I gained the independence of the kick, snare, ride and hat from sorting it out as parts. I would not have gotten from the level I was at, "Mary, Mary", The Monkees, to "Fire" in a couple of weeks left to my own devices.

So I think regular notation is perfectly suited for drums qua 'drum kit'.

OTOH virtually I am using two things with the two approaches: the BFD things require only a note-on. there is no meaning in the piano roll to provide the libraries with anything more than the shortest duration. OTOH there is VSL percussion where a cymbal may behave differently if you give it duration enough to exploit the entire sample.

Caring enough about notation of percussion duration has to be a matter of conveying it to someone else to deal with. I don't think 'western notation' is in itself not up to the task.

No, and if you assign every instrument in a drum kit to a different stave (like, say, a single line with a time sig) it becomes even easier to read.

I don't think it's that traditional notation doesn't work for drums, it just isn't very useful for analyzing rhythm.

[jancivil]

To me, the inadequacy of notation of time lies in two areas: duration is conveyed through a shorthand, leaving a lot up to the reader and too much to chance; and the ebb and flow, elasticity of time is only conveyed through metronome markings occasionally. So, piano roll; and you might go on out to 4000 pulses per quarter note and really know time. The quality of swing in jazz drumming, and push/pull in funky time is so subtle and with enough variety it is tricky to suss in terms of numbers in the end.
But piano roll is objective.

Such as you import a .mid from a notation program to your DAW sequencer or expect that the notes are going to provide you with a musical result... you see all of these tricks in the sophisticated notators, 'humanize' and so forth. It's quantized. You're essentially trying to make a Rhythm Ace into something real. No human really quantizes, we don't even want that.

But again, I don't think there is any notation that's going to be more suited to read a drums thing, 'Fire'... delivering the sustaining parts of that is not very pertinent, there are not whole notes or half notes to worry about. At some point you want to choke the crash cymbal
There are 'x' heads and sometimes other 'descriptive' heads on the stem; eg., Zendrum gives the key editor the shortest possible value.


Indian tala is a more subtle thing than time signature, actually so when you see marks denoting that it is different, but it is not in itself conveying more about hitting things.

[Nystul]

The benefit of traditional notation for percussion is that it doesn't reinvent the wheel. The elements that you use on drums work pretty much the same as they do on another instrument, or on the vocal melody line. Things like note length and pitch classes aren't relevant for rock drum set, but in other contexts of course they can be.

I did pit percussion for a few school musicals back in high school, reading through a book of tunes I didn't have recordings of and wasn't all that familiar with. I wasn't great on a drum set but I had the foundation and I could read the music. Senior year we did Godspell. That one evil song... Alas for You. Our poor student teacher couldn't figure out how to direct it. She was like, everybody follow the drums and piano on this one. I think drum set can mostly be picked up by ear, but I'm glad I could read the music for that one.