How to Play Music vol. 4 - Rhythm

Rhythm

Playing rhythms isn’t the same as having a groove.  Rhythms are how you play with the groove.  Rhythms are the essential piece of your musical vocabulary.  There are an infinite number of possible rhythms.  Most music only uses 12 notes, rhythms are the source of nearly all vocabulary.  

Fortunately, it’s not hard to develop lots of rhythmic vocabulary.  Rhythms are like legos.  Each piece has certain characteristics that are immutable, but the ways to put blocks together are endless.  Let’s learn which legos are in our toolbox by learning every common rhythm that can fit into a beat.  

EXERCISE 5 - 1 Beat Patterns

Set your metronome, tap your foot along with the beat

Speak and clap all of the following patterns, they all last 1 beat but all sound distinct, I’ve included my favorite syllables to use in place of counting

1  (da)

1 and (da dee)

1 e and a (digguh digguh)

1 and a  (da digguh)

1 e and  (digguh da)

1 e     a  (ya daht da)

1 e         (ta daaaaa)

1        a  (daaaaa dit)

1 po let   (Day dig guh)

1      let    (daay   guh)

Sextuplet  (diggada diggada)

1 tuplet  (dah diggada)

Tuplet and (diggada da)

Trip tuple tuple (da digga digga)

Come up with some of the remaining variations

Additional practice tip:

Write out the notation for each one of these rhythms on a notecard or post it note.  You can use these to quiz yourself one rhythm at a time, or even better, mix up the order of cards to create musical phrases on the fly!

The beauty of exercise 5:

If you can play all of these rhythms within a beat, you can really play most any rhythm.  Quarter half quarter, eighth quarter eighth, and sixteenth eighth sixteenth are all exactly the same pattern, just performed at faster subdivisions.  If you are able to feel each beat broken into smaller parts, you will have no problem feeling the same pattern when it appears as a larger phrase.

Subdivision really matters, it’s one of the most obvious differences between average and good musicians.  At first, the difference in space and time between the third triplet and 4th sixteenth note of a beat might not seem too apparent, but with listening and practice, the difference becomes more and more profound.  Good musicians play the rhythmic phrase that they intend to, and they don’t blur it with similar rhythms.  This allows collaborating musicians to properly hear the remaining spaces in the music so that they can either fill them or leave them blank.  

EXERCISE 6 - Create rhythmic phrases

Set your metronome, tap your foot to the beat

Choose 4 of the 1 beat phrases you practiced in exercise 5, write them down if necessary.

Clapping or using your voice, perform your 4 beat composite rhythm in a loop with the metronome

Add one more beat to your pattern, making the full phrase 5 beats long, loop it

Add one more

Add one more

Add one more

Vocalise your full 8 beat phrase by counting and also by using a variety of different syllables

Come up with a series of words that fit your rhythmic phrase, rap them along with the metronome, any words will do, don’t worry about being silly