Clear, easy to follow drum patterns.
Practical, for you to play along with.
Modern music is built around the drum kit. In particular, most popular music is built around certain drum patterns originating in American popular music (primarily the Swing Era, 1930's). And, since drums and cymbals have no key/pitch/scale component, you don't have any pitch elements to distract you from hearing and learning rhythm.
You can much more easily focus your attention on the rhythmic element as you listen and play along with drums.
So even though you are probably not a drummer, listening for and understanding them will improve your musicality greatly, very greatly. We acquire musical expertise by hearing music played well, internalizing those sounds and feelings, and then working to reproduce them in our own playing.
"music played well" ~ Los Lobos, live at the Aztec, 2014
My RBTs are programmed from sampled sounds and grooves played by professional session drummers, intended for use in pro recording studio applications. They sound great.
I craft each RBT to demonstrate a particular rhythmic feature so that you can hear it clearly and join in with it, whatever instrument you play. All of these patterns are derived from the best performance techniques of modern drummers, but - and this is crucial - I simplify them. I leave out most of the usual flourishes, embellishments, variations, and the fun showing off that we all love to hear. These tracks demonstrate the core of what it means to play, hear, and feel Rhythm - with a capital R.
Speed Matters. Each RBT is given at seven different tempos, from 60BPM to 120BPM in ten click increments. Rhythm feels different at every speed. This is not a race, the point is for you do develop the ability to hear and play at any tempo you choose. Work through this range of tempos and that ability will be yours.
Designed for you to learn specific rhythmic patterns:
- Their construction
- How they sound
- What they feel like
- How to count them
- How they can be written out
- Memorizing them
- Playing along with them
- Playing other rhythms which fit within them
Repetition is the soul of practice.
In order for us to WANT to do a lot of reps, we have to like what we’re doing, what we’re hearing, what we’re playing. And the examples we're hearing must be within our realm of possibility. That’s why I made these grooves both clear and artistic.
Kids - notorious for obsessing over playing ball - b/c they have fun, not b/c they're "good".
Internalization of the above list is your goal here.
Do enough thoughtful repetitions, adapting and gaining familiarity as you go - and it will become second nature to you, as it is for every competent musician.
Musicality. That is the biggest payoff of all!
Musical rhythm is a skill. We can all learn it.
Everyone processes and performs rhythm differently.
- Some will get this immediately and wonder what all the fuss is about;
- For others it will seem like an alien world;
- Most people are somewhere in between.
METER
I organize tracks by their METER.
You may not know this word but believe me - all of us who have ever been to music school know it intimately. Yet I have almost never seen a tutorial on the web teach this term. . . . . . but I don’t want to rant here . . . . .
Meter is how we count musical time. When we use clock time we must make certain decisions, such as:
- use a 12 hour am/pm method?
- use a 24 hour ("X hundred hours")?
- do we include minutes? seconds?
- what about the date?
Meter is defined and heard by us simply through a regular pattern of beats.
BEAT ONE: accented always.
BEATS Two, or Three, or Four: unaccented, weaker beats.
That’s it.
(Alas, most writers jump right to time signatures at this point. Time signatures confuse the bejeezers out of people. You don't need them. Yet.)
LINKS TO RHYTHM BACKING TRACK PAGES
DUPLE METER means two beats per measure
TRIPLE METER means three beats per measure
QUADRUPLE METER means four beats per measure
It’s easy.
HOW TO USE:
🥁Simply counting along - “One two. One two. . . .” is great practice.
The repetition allows you to focus, and sink in to the rhythm, entrain yourself to it. Doing this deliberately until we have it internalized is how we learn to “Just feel” rhythm.
🥁Play along. You can do this on just a single pitch on any instrument. Limiting it to one pitch allows you to focus on your rhythm. For guitarists, Ukulele players, Keyboard players, you can play one single chord the whole time.
- Play each beat of each measure
- Play only beat one, with the kick drum
- Play only the second or third or fourth beat of the measure (depending on which meter it is in)
- Play one measure, listen one measure
- Play two measures, listen two two measures
- Play four, listen four (no need to go to any longer segments than this)
-
Play any rhythm you can think up
(This means you improvise rhythms other than the single pattern that is played on the recording. You can stretch out here, you do not need to worry about your new notes and rests or how to count them or even what they are. This is you being a creative artist with only the rhythmic materials in your mind. Very cool!)
*If you cannot do the above: Keep at it. Then take a break. Do it again tomorrow. This is a whole mind/whole body skill and it takes effort to assimilate your learning.
🥁Add pitch elements. Once you can play along you’ll have the brain space to begin adding more complex pitch elements to your playing (I won't go into it here as this page is about the rhythm alone). You can choose any pitch material you are practicing, include any thing, in any way you want.
- a scale
- scale segments
- chord changes
- improvisation
- a song
- . . . .
The tempos played are in ten-click increments from 60bpm (one second per beat) up to 120bpm (half a second per beat).
- You can play along using any instrument (including voice).
- Play around with one tempo until you feel comfortable
- You can progress smoothly through the entire range of tempos
- You can jump from one tempo to another to practice larger changes in speed
- You can switch from 60bpm to 120bpm and back to practice half/double time
- Follow the on-screen graphics, the visual helps build your understanding of the pattern