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Rhythmic Randomness vs. Melodic Randomness
--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)