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Looper's Delight
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Joe Rut wrote: "With rare exception, hip hop vocal rhythms are all subdivisions of standard 4/4 phrasing, and while very musically pleasing (to some, myself included) I would not put them in the same category of rhythmic complexity as balkan music where the bars constantly change beat length (4/4, 3/ 4, 7/8, 5/8, 2/4, 12/8etc.)." Then you missed my earlier point, Joe. I've met many a middleeastern and balkan musician who did not understand the underlying principles of hip hop rhythms in 4/4. The complexity is intrinsic to the music. Again, I site a Timbaland production of Missy Elliot.....................there is incredible complexity in some of those rhythms in 4/4 and it takes a very sophisticated drummer to duplicate something like that live. What follows is a long winded but hopefully illucidating example of my point: When I was first learning Samba as a bone head rock and soul drummer, I went to my teacher, Russ Tincher and said, "I've practised and practised these rhythms and although I can play them, they don't feel very good or soulful". I'll never forgot what he told me: "Rick can you play rock and roll?" <yes, of course I can play rock and roll> "Can you play rock and roll in your sleep?" < of course, I can> "Samba, Rick, is the rock and roll of Brazil. These guys play the same set of rhythms over and over and over the way you played rock and roll over and over and over" He said, "If you want to be able to play Samba well, I would advise that ever where you go that you play the Samba foot pattern over and over...............if you are standing in line......................taking a bus.......................watching television...........make your feet move constantly in that pattern over and over." I took his advice and low and behold, I became a pretty good Samba player after a couple of months. The point is that Balkan musicians have the same neurophysiological limitations that we do in 'North America'. They are not intrinsically more sophisticated rhythmically than we are. They just play rhythms that are in odd time signatures and have been doing it since they were little boys (no unconcious sexism here, women just don't play the drums in that culture) Additionally, the folk musics of the Balkan countries are very, very simple outside of the fact that they are not in 4/4. They repeat endlessly........................When I first got excited about playing music like that I was shocked to find that I would get really bored playing for dancers because the rhythms were (and needed to be) very repetitive and also go on for much longer than we are used to in Western dance clubs. The rhythmic variety of a typical hip hop gig was far more interesting from a rhythmatists' standpoint, imnsho Joe also wrote: "I would not consider improvising over a solid 4/4 beat, where the "one" is rarely in question to be particularly sophisticated (opinion alert)." Ahhhhh, let me show you some classical Indian subdivision and polythrhythmic improvisatory exercises that will make you take that opinion back ********** By the way, if soloing over 7/8 seems daunting write me off list and I'll show you some really simple exercises to get free in that rhythmic space........................you'll see that it is actually no more complicated than playing in 4/4..............you just haven't done it since you were a kid like they have there. One piece of advice if people find anything difficult..................burn a CD with the feel in a song that you are not getting and play the song over and over and over in your car......................every day ...............every time you are in your car...............in two or three days you'll get it, I promise you. That's how I learned the authentic Batucada feel of street Samba. I put Bateria Nota 6 on a both sides of a cassette and played it over and over for an entire week.................bang, works like wonder.