Looper's Delight Archive Top (Search)
Date Index
Thread Index
Author Index
Looper's Delight Home
Mailing List Info

[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Date Index][Thread Index][Author Index]

RE: Rhythmic Randomness vs. Melodic Randomness



As a musician who approaches music from the prism of the blues (and who 
does
not consider himself a fucking genius, regardless of harmonic variance), I
can agree with much of what Rick is saying here.  Considering that blues
music is primarily a juxtaposition of African rhythm (for both 
communication
and storytelling) and European harmony (for the same purposes, though 
driven
largely by the enforcement of Christian church attendance on many slaves in
America), neither harmony nor rhythm supercedes the other.  

The necessity of secrecy in early African-American communication led to the
adaptation of meaningful tribal rhythmic patterns that could communicate
well enough over long distances to cause some plantation owners to ban 
drums
and drumming among slaves.  The planters were unsuccessful, however, in
eliminating the classic double-entendre in lyrics that still lives in the
more artistic blues songs of today (though primarily in sexual context now,
whereas before it was social and political, as well as entertainment).

Besides the four drummers mentioned, the recently-deceased Earl Palmer of
New Orleans and later L.A. was one of the main codifiers of
the-beat-played-around-the-world now, as American style pop music seems to
have a huge presence in nearly all cultures.  Earl took the striking
backbeat from the shout choruses of traditional jazz (Dixieland) and
installed it entirely through songs, along with the parade-derived
syncopations of which New Orleans is the fount.  Everything has been
different since then.

Why this is not considered a compositional attribute is beyond me.

dave 
 

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)