Tuesday, January 16, 2007

The most important beat ....

....is the one you don't play.
(But you'd better be playing it in your head!)

Here's one of those rhythms people play wrong more than right (partly because it goes by so quickly and maybe they figure they can just fake it and get away with it!).
It's from Til Eulenspiegel right before the big run...





That downbeat is pretty important!

Here's a verbal trick that might work: think, "um-digga-da da-da-da"

Um, of course, is that silent downbeat.
Slow that metronome down, down waaaaay down (dotted quarter equal 60 or so) and say that rhythm exactly in time. Then bump up a few notches and so on.

I've blogged about "ba-um" before, in case you're curious.