Rhythmic Randomness vs. Melodic Randomness

["Rick Walker" <looppool@cruzio.com>]

--Andy Butler wrote:
"Western music teaching has a lot to say about harmony, 
and about what constitutes a wrong note, while it 
has little to say about rhythm. 
Those teachings have a lot of authority, perhaps to 
the extent that they change the way an individual might 
perceive a piece of music. 

Exactly Andy!!  As a drummer for most of my life, this last point you made 
has 
been a huge thorn in my side and is the reason for my post initially.

There is such a bias favoring harmony and melody over rhythm in Western 
music that 
we consider some of the world's greatest drummers (and we've been talking 
a lot about 
what a strong contribution  Mitch Mitchell made to the Jimi Hendrix 
Experience sound 
or Keith Moon or John Bohnam or Stewart Copeland to the Who, Led Zeppelin 
and Police 
sounds)   to NOT be included in the composition category of those artists.

I've had a tendency to be the leader of most of the all original bands 
I've played in during my life 
and despite the fact that I had a very large hand in shaping the musical 
and stylistic outcome of 
those bands (from the drumkit) I had to play a keyboard, bass or guitar 
part to be officially 
recognized as a composer in the piece.

A drum beat can certainly be a composition, but it is not officially 
recognized by the legal 
sound writing conventions................that's just wrong!    Play 
'Sunshine of your Love" in a cover band 
with the backbeat on 2 and 4 and hear how radically different the feel of 
the song is with the original 
the Tom Dowd suggested drumbeat that plays the backbeat on the 1 and 3.

This just gets my goat!!!!


It's my belief that rhythm has a huge impact on 
composition...............after all,   if you are playing a 
song with a single chord vamp during a section  you are only allowed 7 
scalar notes in terms of 
pitch.       What determines how the song sounds is where you actually 
play those notes , temporally 
and in what order they are played...........that's rhythm.

Additionally,  I will run into really accomplished musicians (and this 
happens to me all the time) 
who seem to almost eschew learning about rhythm in a formal 
way...............whereas they have 
learned harmony and melody up one side and down another.       I find this 
phenomenon is the rule 
rather than the exception even when it world class melodicists that we are 
talking about.

So,  I get a little frustrated.      As a drummer (and budding melodist as 
a multi-instrumentalist)  I am 
always trying to learn more about harmony and melody.   I feel lonely 
sometimes when it seems that 
the bulk of harmonic/melodic players don't seem nearly as interested in 
rhythm.   It's hard for me to 
accept the limited roll that rhythm has been assigned in western music 
(with the exception of a lot 
of later avant garde classical composition in the latter half of the 20th 
century)

Now, I'm confessing an emotional response that is pretty reactive (just 
one based on a lifetime of 
experience)  so I"m sure what I've just written will probably be shot to 
hell intellectually speaking,  
but I throw it out there, anyway,  as a challenge to the rhythmically 
challenged western world.

yours, 
Rick Walker
(admittedly a bit cranky from a bad night of insomnia.......lol)