As I’m
exploring percussive ukulele, I’m working to develop a systematic approach that
will help me. Eventually, I hope to turn that systematic approach into a system
that will help others. The basic unit (in terms of rhythmic ukulele) is a strum
pattern. My initial plan is to build percussive strum patterns that are based
on common strum patterns and drum patterns—a toolbox of techniques I can use to
make music.
However,
the strum pattern isn’t at the foundational level of the beat. The strum
pattern rests upon the foundation of the beat. Gloria Estefan would be proud
because the rhythm is going to get me!
The Beat and Barre
The
foundational unit of rhythm in music is called a barre. You could think of it
as a short rhythmic sentence. Each barre has a number of beats. But, how many?
Fortunately, music is written in a way that tells us. It’s called the time
signature. The time signature looks like a fraction that sits on the left end
of the musical staff (all those lines and spaces). The top number in the
fraction tells us how many beats are in each barre.
The most
common number of beats is four. You may have heard of four-four time or common
time. That is the most common time signature in Western music. For now, we’re
not going to worry about the bottom number in the time signature fraction.
Each beat
can receive a different amount of emphasis—HI, MID, or lo. So, with four
beats we generally have the following pattern:
One Two Three Four
HI lo MID lo
This
pattern of HI, lo, MID, lo keeps repeating throughout the song. It forms
the rhythmic spine upon which the notes and percussive sounds are built.
How Are Beats Emphasized
You may be
wondering, “How do I distinguish between the HI, MID, and lo emphasis?”
One way is by volume. We do this when we’re speaking, don’t we? We naturally
emphasis certain syllables in a word. The same is true of music. One syllable
(beat) can be louder, softer, or somewhere in the middle. If you listen to
lyrics, you may notice some lyrics really don’t sound the way someone would
write. The words may be in a little strange order (at least when looked at
solely as writing). Or, phrasing may be a little unusual. Yet, when you sing
it, it sounds great. Why is that? The person writing the lyrics needs to line
up the ordinary emphasis of the syllables of the words with the normal emphasis
of the beats of the music. Obviously, this isn’t always a one-to-one
correlation, but certain ways to organize words just sound more musical or poetic—and
that’s because the emphasis of the syllables has a musical rhythm to it. The
lyric writer at times may be doing this unconsciously, but they must write with
a sense of beat.
Percussive
sounds can also provide different emphasis to beats. A bass drum (some sort of
kick drum or concert bass drum) grabs the ear’s attention with a thunderous
sound. Just imagine The 1812 Overture with those earth-shaking cannon
blasts. Low frequency sounds tend to grab our attention more than the snap
of a hi hat or cymbal. If you’ve ever heard a pipe organ live, the visceral
feel of the pedal tones gives a satisfying feel to the music.
Ever
notice that many drumbeats are based around the kick drum, snare, and hi hat.
Why is that? The kick provides a HI emphasis with its low-end rumble.
The snare provides a MID emphasis, with its clean sound. The hi hat gives a lo
emphasis with its tsk sound.
There are
other drums we could look at. The djembe and cajon base their sonic palette
around three sounds: bass, tone, and slap. Hmmm? That sounds familiar. Bass: HI,
tone: MID, and slap: lo.
Please, if
you’re a drummer, don’t be offended by this discussion. I’m aware drums are
capable of an enormous range of sounds and I’m oversimplifying your craft. I’m
in the process of figuring out how to make percussive sounds on an ukulele,
which has a much smaller array of percussive sounds than a drum kit, djembe, or
cajon. So, I must simplify the drum sounds. Thinking in terms of using the three
main sounds of HI, MID, and lo emphasis is fitting for the percussive
limitations of an ukulele.
Another
way to emphasize is by the grabbiness of a sound. Some sounds just grab our
ears. More cowbell, please!
So, we
have three ways to emphasis beats: volume, frequency, and grabbiness. Can you understand
why many bands have a bass player and drummer? They help to create the beat,
which provides a rhythmic foundation for music. With percussive ukulele, we’re
not trying to exactly duplicate the sounds bass and drums create. What we’re
trying to do is to play in a way that helps to reinforce the beat.
The Offbeat
Let’s
consider the word “ukulele” for a moment. Listen closely to how it sounds. In
general, the first two syllables—“uk” and “u”—are spoken in a way that each
syllable lasts about the same amount of time. But, those last two syllables,
“lele”, take up about the same amount of time as the “uk” syllable or the “u”
syllable. What is happening is the word is broken down into three beats with
that final beat broken down into two quick syllables.
Beat one Beat
two Beat three
Uk u le-le
The same
thing happens in music. A beat can be broken down into subdivisions. The most
common subdivisions would be two, three (called a triplet), or four. Let’s look
at our four beats with subdivisions.
One and Two and Three and Four and
HI lo MID lo
The second
subdivision in each beat (the and’s) are called the offbeat. Now, here’s where
things get a tad confusing. When we break down a beat into a two-part
subdivision, we call the first part the “beat” and the second part the “offbeat”.
So, the term “beat” can be used to refer to the entire syllable or the first
subdivision of that syllable. It’s not super confusing, but you do need to
understand the context for the term “beat”.
Understanding the beat and offbeat is
foundational to ukulele strumming. In general, the down strum is on the beat
and the up strum is on the offbeat. It’s most common in the beat-offbeat
subdivisions to put a little more emphasis on the first subdivision. In terms
of ukulele, it may be more helpful to think in terms of down strum and up strum
as opposed to beat and offbeat. The down strum in general is a little more forceful sound than the up strum.
When
investigating music, there really aren’t absolute rules. There are general guidelines
and often those guidelines vary between musical styles. So, is it possible to
down strum on the offbeat and up strum on the beat? Can one put a more emphasis
on the offbeat than the beat? Of course, you can! What you’ll find is that all
of a sudden you’re transported to the Caribbean and you just want to listen to
some Bob Marley. Emphasizing the offbeat gives the music a Reggae feeling. And,
who wouldn’t want to strum their ukulele on some warm Caribbean beach?
So, let’s
recap before we move on. The foundational rhythmic unit for music is called a
barre. A barre is broken down into a number of beats. So far, we’ve looked at
four beats per barre. Each beat can be further broken down into subdivisions.
What is common in ukulele strumming is to break each beat down into two
subdivisions: beat and offbeat.
Beats and
offbeats can be given HI, MID, or lo emphasis by varying their volume,
frequency, and grabbiness. How emphasis is used can give the music a different
feel and different styles of music and different cultural heritages emphasize
beats differently.
Take Me to the Waltz
Instead of
four beats, let’s base music off three beats. Let’s try the following emphasis pattern:
ONE two three
If you
just start speaking the pattern in a repeating loop, you should feel like you’re
about to dance a waltz. ONE, two, three, ONE, two, three, ONE,
two, three, ONE, two, three. Can you feel it? Can you feel yourself
gliding across the dance floor?
Now,
imagine singing Amazing Grace to that rhythm. Once you find the Waltz
swing it kinda works, but it just doesn’t feel quite right. It’s not really a
song you want to dance to. Amazing Grace is built on three beats, so let’s
change the emphasis. Instead of ONE, two, three, try ONE, TWO,
THREE, ONE, TWO, THREE, ONE, TWO, THREE, ONE, TWO, THREE.
Ah, there you go! Now, it seems to work. By compressing the amount of emphasis
between the downbeat and the other beats, the song takes on the dreamy quality
of dancing with the Lord.
I just
introduced the term “downbeat”. The downbeat is the first beat in a bar. It's usually emphasized more than the other beats. I say
usually, because there are no absolute rules in music—only guidelines.
Let’s Start Marching
Two beats are
sometimes used in music. So, you can have a ONE, two emphasis, which is
how I would generally emphasize something with two beats. You could also have a
ONE, TWO emphasis.
Let’s
stick with a ONE, two emphasis. I want you to imagine the ONE
being played on a kick drum—DUM— and the two being played on a hi hat—tsk.
DUM, tsk, DUM, tsk, DUM, tsk, DUM, tsk. Keep it
going until you can really hear it. Do you want to march? A two-beat barre
creates a marching feel. Just imagine that poor kid in marching band that must
lug around that bass drum. If they’re playing a song that has a marching feel to
it, he’s going to have to feel that ONE, two, and strike the drum on the
ONE. He probably won’t find the beat, because he’ll be distracted by the
girl who decided bagpipes are a marching band instrument, and her daddy is a lawyer!
So, the
number of beats and how we emphasize the beats really create the feel for
music. Simply by changing up those variables, we can create an extreme amount
of variability in the sound of music. While two, three, and four beats are most
common, one can theoretically use any number of beats. If you want to write
some music based on seventeen beats, go ahead! Just don’t expect me to help
you.
Let’s Go to the Dark Side
While I’m
not going to look at all the possibilities when it comes to the number of beats
and how to emphasize, there are a few others worth a short investigation. Let’s
briefly get into the dark side of five, six, and nine beats.
Five
Beats. So, we’ve already established that the strongest emphasis is
generally on the downbeat (the ONE). How are we going to emphasize
things with five? We could break things down into subdivisions of two plus
three, or three plus two.
ONE two three FOUR five
Or,
ONE two three FOUR FIVE
Or,
ONE two THREE
four five
Or,
ONE two THREE FOUR FIVE
If you say
these, you can hear each one sounds a little different and conveys a different
feel. There’s another trick that’s done with five beats. That’s creating music
that has two long beats (one and a half beat X two = three beats) and two short
beats. The Mission Impossible theme does this. What the composer is
doing is basically writing a four-beat song composed of two long beats and two
short beats. The time signature is designed to write music where each beat is
equal length, so the composer must figure out a way to write the music in a way
others can play it. Basically, it breaks down as follows:
How it feels
O-----N-----E t-----w-----o THREE FOUR
How its translated into musical language
ONE and two AND three and FOUR and FIVE and
If you don’t
quite follow that explanation, find a recording of the Mission Impossible theme
and listen to it. Sometimes music theory doesn’t make any sense until you hear
it.
Six Beats.
When you get into
beat numbers that are divisible by three, it’s helpful to think in terms of
groups of three. So, class, what is six divided by three? If you answered two,
well done. If you answered something different, you may have trouble with music
theory.
So, which
beat is going to usually get the strongest emphasis? If you answered the
downbeat, you’ve been paying attention. So, we have the downbeat followed by
beats two and three, which will make up our first group of three. Beat four
starts the second set of threes. So, it’s probably going to be emphasized, but
not quite as strong as the downbeat. So, we’ll give beat four a MID emphasis.
That MID emphasis won’t sound emphasized unless beats two, three, five, and six
are given lo emphasis. So, we have the following pattern with six beats:
ONE two three FOUR five six
As we discuss
all these beats and variations, is it getting confusing? I know I’m confused
and I’m writing this! It really helps if you have a metronome that plays
different time signatures so you can hear what they sound like—particularly one
that allows you to adjust how beats are emphasized. We’re not going to talk about
the bottom number in that time signature equation, but you could use the
following time signatures to hear what the number of beats sounds like:
Four beats: 4/4
Three beats: 3/4
Two beats: 2/4
Five beats: 5/4
Six beats: 6/8
Nine beats: 9/8
Nine
Beats. So, we’re
again thinking of a multiple of three. So, it’s helpful to bring things down
into sets of three. How many sets of three? Someone in the back of the room
says three. Good, we’ll go with three. Now, where are we going to put our
strongest emphasis? The downbeat! Yes, I see someone has been paying attention.
The second
set of three begins with beat four; the third set of three begins with beat
seven. So, it seems logical to give them MID emphasis. Everything else we’ll
give a lo emphasis. So, we have:
ONE two three FOUR five
six SEVEN eight nine
Summary
Phew! We’ve covered a lot. Music can
be broken down to a basic rhythmic unit called a barre. A barre will have a
number of beats. We looked at two, three, four, five, six, and nine beats. But,
any number of beats is theoretically possible.
Each of
those beats can received a different emphasis: HI, MID, or lo. These
emphases are achieved by varying the loudness, frequency, and grabbiness of the
sounds.
The first
beat in the barre is called the downbeat and generally receives the strongest
emphasis. Beats can be further broken down. For ukulele strumming, it is common
to break a beat down into two subdivisions. When strumming, the down strum is
generally put on the first subdivision and the up strum on the second
subdivision.
The number
of beats and the emphasis given to each beat create a basic rhythmic feel to
the music. It gives us a rhythmic foundation upon which to build our
strumming and percussive playing.
