Rhythm Reading Basics

I'm going to screen share again. Okay, now what we want to do is we want to work through slide two, following the rules on slide one. All right, so we're going to have to have a metronome up and running. Yeah, Jeff Berlin would be mad at me. Why is that? He doesn't like metronomes. Really? I mean, he says don't use them at all, he's like, throw it away, use your internal clock. And I agree, to a point, but my thing about a metronome is that it's a perspective check. It lets you know where you can actually audibly work on tightening stuff up, because the biggest thing with a metronome, I think, is not that it helps you with time or anything, but it teaches you to lock with an external time source, like a drummer, or a click track in a studio, something that you've got to listen to somebody else and stay in time with. That's what a metronome gets you used to doing, that's its real benefit. But it's also, you know, a reality check, in the sense that if you find yourself pushing ahead a little bit, or falling behind a little bit, it'll let you know. So anyway, a thousand apologies, Jeff, but we're going to use it anyway. What does he know? Actually, quite a bit, yes, I know, we're not going to mention that. Yeah, actually he's an extremely great bass educator, as well as being a great world-class player, he's really got his ducks in a row as far as education goes. He's got a school down in Florida called the Players School of Music, in Orlando, or Clearwater, I think, and it's supposed to be a really good bass school. They might do other instruments too, I think, but it's kind of like the MI I teach at, you know, kind of like one of those vocational-type instrumental programs. Do you teach those folks? Today, I am, the reading, the music, and everything like this, actually. This level one reading, yeah, I designed the whole reading course. Oh, good. I started that bass program in 1985. Wow, so many years. Yeah, I ran it for its first six years, then left for a while, got busy playing, and I came back, I guess, about five, six, seven years ago, something like that. First rule, count off out loud. All right, the count off synchronizes your internal clock with what's going to be playing, so do not underestimate the power of a count off. In fact, it's probably the most important part of the whole song. You see, count off like one, two, but in this case, since we're working with this slide, if we look at it, everything's eighth note based, in other words the count, everything is going to line up with one and two and three and four and, you understand that everything has to exactly start or stop on one of those counts. So the count off is going to synchronize us with the metronome, in this case, so you really want to focus on that count off and give it some serious attention. Keep counting out loud as you play, this is a practice technique that's going to reinforce our subdivision and counting that we would want to have going on mentally while we play. Keep your eyes on the music, that may seem obvious when you're reading music, but I've seen people hit a whole note and check their text, and wait for the whole note again. So keep your eyes on the music, no texting while reading. So anyway, tap your foot on the downbeats, and observe exact note duration. We're going to be focused on reading literally, starting and stopping the music exactly where the music is telling us to. All right, now as far as four-four time goes, what is four-four? For me it's four beats per measure, and a quarter note has one beat, right? What does the top number tell you? The top four means, what would I think, the number of beats per measure? Well, yeah, but suppose, that's correct, but specifically I would say the top number tells you how many of the bottom number are in the measure. I mean, it's just a different way to say the same thing, really. Yeah, I mean, the top number tells you how many of the bottom number are in the measure, and then the bottom number tells you what value of note gets the beat. So we've got four quarter notes in the measure, four quarter notes in a measure, with a quarter note getting the beat. The next question is, okay, well, what is getting the beat? It means kind of two things, in four-four time, and in different time signatures this part of the definition will change, but since ninety-five percent of the stuff we're going to play is in four-four, it's okay to kind of think of just four-four for now. But in four-four time, getting the beat means it's where you place a number part, what value of note gets a number part of the count, in other words when I'm counting one, two, three, four, the quarter note's getting that. It's also where we tap our foot and feel the pulse in the music, that's what getting the beat means. Okay, now in working with exact note duration, we want to start and stop the notes exactly with the syllable that the note starts or stops with, and we can use a technique I call the out-of-time approach. With the out-of-time approach, basically we don't count off and we don't tap our foot, because we're not working in a strict sense of time, but we still keep our eyes on the music, we still count out loud, and we still start and stop the notes exactly with the syllables we're supposed to start and stop on. In fact, the out-of-time approach specifically focuses on starting and stopping the notes exactly with the syllables, we're taking it out of context, focusing on starting and stopping the notes with the syllables, that's really what that's about. Okay, now we're reading literally here, in the respect that a lot of times when you're working, especially in groove oriented music, like R&B or stuff like that, if you're reading those kind of charts you're not going to necessarily play the value of the note exactly the way it's written, you're going to feel it to a degree, you're going to interpret it musically. In order to interpret effectively, having a solid point of reference on the starting and stopping of the note, exactly what it is, in full duration, gives you better control and manipulation of that note value. So by focusing on reading literally first, it helps stylistic reading later, where you use your musical judgment on how you want something to feel, you shape the notes to a degree. Okay, all right, so as an example of the out-of-time approach, if I look at measure number one of slide two, I can take as much time as I want on each note, thinking about it. Now, at this point it doesn't really matter what note you're playing, although the note indicated on the music, there, which would probably first be played, you'd probably go the second fret on the D string to play that note, but it really doesn't matter, this is all about the rhythm. So actually playing a different third or second fret note on each string each time you practice is a good idea, because the strings actually react differently, the thicker strings respond a little bit slower than the thinner ones do, they have to be whacked a few more times before you actually hear them, getting into physics properties there. Right, so I first noticed this when I got my first five string, and had my low B string, and for the first week or two I couldn't figure out why I wasn't locked in when I was playing on the low B string. It's like, what is wrong, I thought something was wrong with the bass, but actually, yeah, because I could not get that string to lock, but see, the thing is, I was hitting it like I did the E string. So I had to learn to hit the B string a little bit faster than I did the E string, it's something you naturally adapt to on four string bass that you don't think about. So you actually hit the thicker strings a little bit quicker than you do, we're talking milliseconds here, but it's an interesting thing. But anyway, that's why it's good to work on the accuracy on all strings because they do not respond the same way.