“If you think you understand it, that only shows that you don’t know the first thing about it.” — Neils Bohr
In this first part of the post, we explore what it means to ‘really know a rhythm’ from the angle of learning how to learn and learning how to teach.
Avoiding the Rhythm Collection Trap
Have you ever felt that you were falling into the trap of collecting rhythms rather than learning them?
Have you ever been tempted to judge your progress by the amount of rhythms you can name/remember rather than how well you can perform them?
Have you ever gone to a drumming course, a workshop or class, been taught a new rhythm, left your hastily-taken notes/videos in a notebook or on a hard drive and then been tempted to think, “I know that one now, tick!” without revisiting the notes? If so, you're not alone. I call it the ‘Rhythm Collection Trap’.
There’s nothing wrong with learning only rhythm names and patterns, of course. Sometimes that’s exactly what we need. If we have joined a new group and need to get to grips with a set of material, the first step is always going to be this surface level learning.
Where it may be a problem is if we think that by learning a rhythmic pattern that we have understood it. Or, if the desire to learn more and more patterns stops us really learning any of them. This can be a false sense of progress.
So how do we avoid this rhythm collection trap?
As a teacher
I don’t want anyone thinking this blog is a way of me ranting about my students or other teachers - it's a personal reflection as much as a resource for others. As a teacher of percussion since 2011, I too have been guilty of teaching in a way that encourages this rhythm collection trap.
When teaching in a large group there’s often an incentive to teach at surface level - just enough detail to get the students playing. In a one-off taster workshop we might only get 30mins or a couple of hours together to learn something from absolute zero to a basic performance. In this case, surface level is all we can hope for!
In a regular class we might be able to take more time to delve deeper, but still there is a tendency to remain at surface level. First, people might be there to drum rather than to stand around listening. Then, in preparation for performances, attention might turn to being really slick in and out of breaks, especially those snazzy, showy sections of material.
Increasingly, I am trying to find ways to help us all understand more about the rhythms we play as a group, whether it’s teaching during class time or through resources.
Mnemonics and their limitations
The use of words and phrases as mnemonics for rhythms can be a very helpful device. From my very first workshops I’ve been on both the teaching and learning side of this. They are invaluable in time-pressured one-off sessions, especially, or in remembering the structure of much longer sections of rhythm like solo phrases.
The downside of them, though, which often goes unmentioned, is that saying the words and playing the rhythm are two different things! Too many times I’ve seen students (of mine and of other teachers in equal measures) muttering the words while their hands are playing a rhythm quite far from what it should be.
Saying the words and playing the rhythm are two different things!
Sometimes when I’ve corrected my students they might reply “but that’s what I was doing! Look, it matches the words you taught me!”
I now use mnemonics sparingly and with the proviso that they are an “aide-memoire” - only there to “jog your memory” - and that once you’ve remembered the rhythm you should then focus on the sound rather than the words.
I do still like to get students to ‘speak’ the sound of the drum before playing it, but where possible sticking with sounds rather than words. I think leaving out words and saying the rhythm in onomatopoeic sounds can often encourage a more direct understanding of the rhythm itself. After all it’s often true that “if you can say it, you can play it!” We want playing the drum to feel as natural as speaking, but without words getting in the way of the music.
Where does it start? Where is the 1?
If I had a penny for every time I was asked this! It’s often a valid question, but I like to point out that there’s a difference between asking “how do I start the rhythm in our arrangement” and “where does the rhythm start”. It may sound pedantic, but, in the context of the groove - the part of the piece that repeats over and over again for people to dance to - it’s often best to think of it as a circle. That is, it has no start and no end. In the arrangement, you just hop on to that circle in the right place for it to work as a group.
Notation in a line or in a circle. Image from here.
Asking “where is the 1” (as in where does beat one align with this rhythm - where is the top of the circle) can be helpful to make sure you’re playing the rhythm the right way up compared to everyone else. But even better would be to learn to open your ears to the people around you and make sure your rhythm locks in with theirs in the right way. That way you are playing to complement the overall sound of the music and are less stuck in your own head. Often, two musicians can play alongside each other perfectly happily while each feeling the rhythm ‘the other way up’.
If you want to push yourself, try to feel the same rhythm aligned differently over the pulse. In other words, rotate the circle (or change the pulse by changing the subdivisions on the circle). This is always possible, although you’ll normally find one way that sits most comfortably.
Performing the rhythm
Just as saying the words and playing the rhythm are two different things, so too are playing the rhythm and performing the rhythm. In the context of a percussion only street band performance, as we play in Olá Samba, no one is going to want to watch a performance of people reciting rhythms to themselves. People are going to want to see an embodied performance. That is, the people playing the rhythms and arrangements with their whole bodies - owning it.
This requires at least a basic step in time with each other (the right way round!), a smile or some other facial expression beyond ‘concentration face’ and often much more complex choreography. To do any of which requires the rhythm to be automatic.
People talk about the rhythm being ‘in your hands’ so you don’t have to think about it. Only then can you free up enough attention to add the choreography. With still more practice, the choreography will then become automatic, freeing up more attention so that you can really engage with the audience.
So, before you think you ‘really know the rhythm’, check how automatic it is by thinking about the stepping while you play it, or, another good test, try talking about what you had for breakfast while you play it!
The feel of a rhythm
This is a big one. There’s much more to learning percussion than dots on a page or blocks on a spreadsheet grid. A complete beginner on a drum kit can learn a basic rock/pop drum beat (think Billie Jean) in minutes. But they will categorically not be playing it the same as a pro session drummer. They might be playing the same thing on paper, but it sounds and feels completely different.
Most of us could easily identify the less confident drummer from a lineup, even if we wouldn’t quite be able to put our finger on why. The accuracy of timing in performance, especially for percussion, is crucial to the feel of the music. We are talking precision down to the level of tens of milliseconds here. We can even perceive variations of just a few milliseconds with training and if you include subconscious preferences.
Take a pro touring band, but swap the experienced drummer for a novice drummer who’s only just learned all the parts. Never mind the fact that the guitarists and singers are still world-class, or that they’re using the same HGVs full of expensive sound/lighting equipment and playing in the same glorious sold out arenas. If the drummer is not on point, there will be no toes tapping and people will be asking for refunds. It just wouldn’t feel right.
Why is the drummer so important to the feel of a performance?
When we talk about rhythm we are really talking about patterns in time. We can deliberately play with these patterns - their spacing and their dynamics - giving rise to things like ‘feel’ and ‘swing’ that make people want to dance. But we can also accidentally mess them up, either because we don’t fully understand the correct feel of the rhythm or because we can’t execute it, or because we can’t even tell we aren’t executing it properly!
Click to expand: More from science about the importance of timing on music...
Scientists like studying timing accuracy. I suppose it’s a more easily measurable variable than most things to do with music. Here are some not-so-poetic quotes from scientific papers:
high-groove stimuli elicit spontaneous rhythmic movements (from here)
Musical training can reduce the variability of tapping from approximately 4% down to 0.5–2% of the intertap interval. From here.
The scientific jury is out as to how much microtiming is important in the perception of groove. Some studies find it crucial, others find it irrelevant. But who needs to ask scientists about that anyway!?
Swing
‘It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing’ - Duke Ellington, Irving Mills
One aspect of the ‘feel’ of a rhythm is its swing - a very important part of Brazilian music.
Some define swing in a more general way including the overall feel or the varying dynamics of notes as well as the timing.
To me, the word ‘swing’ refers more specifically to the timing of notes. To swing a rhythm is to move away from a mathematical grid, away from where they would be written on paper, to somewhere that both changes the ‘feel’ of a rhythm and requires ‘feel’ to execute. The swing of a jazz standard is one type of swing, while the swing of a samba is another. Broadly speaking and without getting too nerdy, jazz swing moves notes later while samba swing moves notes earlier.
To swing is to shift the timing of notes away from a mathematical grid, away from where they would be written on paper, to somewhere that requires ‘feel’.
This doesn’t sound like much but it feels so different that it has lent its name to whole genres of music (swing, electro swing...) and it really doesn’t feel like samba if it doesn’t swing like a samba.
I remember distinctly when I first heard samba swing from my first tutor of Brazilian music. I remember thinking it sounded lumpy and wondering why he was playing it wonky! It was only a little later on my journey into this music that I realised what I must have been hearing. Now, I get that similar uncomfortable feeling whenever I hear samba without swing!
I remember another time, when I first learned savalu, a rhythm from the musical traditions of the religion of Candomblé. The brazilian alabé’s super-strong swing kept pulling my ear into 3s instead of 4s so that I struggled to hear it in the way I knew it should be heard. It didn’t matter how I knew I should hear it, my gringo ear was not used to swing quite like it.
You can try to analyse and formalise a samba swing by saying “move this note a lot earlier and this one a little later”, but honestly, it’s missing the point. Moreover, other types of Brazilian music (and other music from around the world) have different, but related, types of swing. I hear time and again pro musicians in Brazil being asked how to swing and their answers are usually - rather unhelpfully, but also quite revealingly - along the lines of “you try not to swing”, or “you have to not think about it”, or “what do you mean, swing!?”
I’ve made it a personal mission of mine as a gringo tutor of Brazilian percussion to teach gringos (that includes myself) to swing. Watch this space to see if/when I succeed!
You can try to analyse a samba swing, but honestly, it’s missing the point.
Ok, enough geekiness about swing for now. Maybe we’ll explore swing more closely in a dedicated post.
The take away point here is that even when you can play exactly the same rhythm (on paper) as someone else, it doesn’t mean it feels the same.
Click to expand: More about Jazz swing...
At the start of a piece of written music, this ‘swing feel’ is precisely indicated on the page. The notation indicates that notes written halfway between the beats should be played two-thirds of the way into the beat. But this belies the subtlety and freedom around this point that plays a huge role in the drummer’s feel and therefore the feel of the entire performance.
This is already a long post, so let’s continue thinking about the question whether we ‘really know that rhythm’ in Part 2.