Jazz Rap Beat
Karola
I don't think it's really an advantage, but more of a stylistic choice. It's like a form of syncopation, only instead of emphasising between the beats of the bar, you're emphasising the weak beats(or between the stressed beats) of the bar.
It's a staple technique of certain genres like Ragtime and Ska, but in the case of Jazz, funk and most other genres it's more something that's occasionally used to add interest and contrast to the music.
It's supposed to mimic the jazz sound of the hi-hat on 2 & 4, and the theory is that learning to play over that kind of counting/tapping is better for your rhythmic awareness and swing feel. It definitely takes more practice. YMMV.
Beats 2 and 4 are equal in weight. The downbeat is always the strongest beat, followed by the third beat. When you count all four you count "ONE two Three four ONE two Three four" with weak and strong beats. Counting on two and four is like "(rest) two (rest) four / (rest) two (rest) four" with two and four being equal in weight.
Additionally, counting on the strong beats gives a feeling of downward motion like a march. We call these beats "downbeats" and "upbeats" for a reason. For most dances, your foot goes down hard on the downbeat. In a jumping dance, you jump up on the upbeat and land on the downbeat. Counting only on the upbeats emphasizes this feeling of upward motion and leaves out the downward motion. As Shevliaskovic said, it makes the song swing, and I think it's the "lift" and the absence of "thud" that does it.
In Reggae there is a heavy accent on Four, lesser accents on the second half of each beat - One AND two AND three AND four AND. The first beat may even be un-played! But it's still there, and very important. You can't accent Four unless you know where One is.
I think counting (tapping) on two and four also applies to other forms as well. Country, rockabilly, folk, ska, reggae, and probably other styles. Some people find this easier than others to do this. I find that counting this way makes me play locked into the rhythm of the song, where as when I tap on the strong beats, I tend to float over the tune with norhythmic emphasis. Uptempo songs also seem to benefit form this style of counting (2 & 4). If the tempo is 200bpm, set the metronome at 100. Thesebeats will imply the 2 & 4. I find when playing these faster tempos in this fashion I never speed-up or slow down.
Actually the difining trait of funk music is an emphasis on the 1 and the 3 - but especially the one. If you listen to James Brown, you'll here him say things like, "Gimme the one," or "Hit me". "Hits" were beaten the one. It's something that he pretty much came up with. Before that the emphasis for jazz was always on the 2 and 4 - even though they like to experiment - and the emphasis in the blues was usually on the up beat. Both were a swing kind of feel.
I think most of the jazz beats supplied are way too busy. I edit them in BeatBuilder, a free little editor that you can download. There is a download and documentation here: -midi-editor-designed-for-beatbuddy.2545/
I made up a few for Jazz and Swing and here they are. Let me know if these will work OK for you. I antennuated the harsh cimbals some and balanced the drums out to a liveable level. Most of these were done with the Beat Builder and Anvil. These are SNG files so they will load into BB Manager just by importing them into it.
Sincerely, Fingerstylepicker.
To anyone else out there. You are more than welcome to download these songs This is typical of the songs (Drum Patterns) that I either doctor or create that I use for myself. Let me know what you think and/or give me more ideas of what you might need. By the way, these ar SNG files and they can be imported direct into BB Manager.
Sincerely, Fingerstylepicker.
Once you get confident verbalizing with the clicks, move the voice to your mind. So, instead of saying each beat number, hear the numbers and clicks in your mind. Practice hearing the beat numbers and clicks in your mind until it is second nature to hear the clicks on 2 and 4.
Gradually, increase the tempo a few beats per minute at a time. If you started on 60bpm, progress to 63 or 65, making sure to stay at a tempo that you can still confidently hear the clicks on 2 and 4. Keep increasing the tempo, a bit at a time, spending several minutes on each increase until you reach somewhere around 104bpm.
Just as you did with the hearing exercise, gradually increase the tempo a few beats per minute at a time until you get up to 104bpm. You can always go faster in the future, but 104bpm is a good starting place to aim for.
The next step in developing a stronger sense of time is to acquire the ability to start phrases in different parts of the bar. Breaking down the bar into eighth notes is the simplest way to approach this.
Start by learning to hear the clicks as 2 and 4. Next learn to play a simple eight-note phrase over it. Then truncate the phrase an eighth note at a time to learn how to start lines from anywhere in the measure.
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As with many of you, my Aretha Franklin vigil began with the news of August 13 that she'd entered hospice, and for the next two days I posted some reflections on Lady Soul on Facebook. Then on what proved to be the eve of her death, I listened to her throughout a three-hour drive to Cape Cod and could hardly contain myself. Hers is simply the most powerful-- and versatile-- voice of my lifetime. The line that's resonated most for me over the past ten days is from her 1968 song, "Since You've Been Gone (Sweet Sweet Baby)," where Aretha pleads, "If you walk in that door, I can get up off my knees." For as deeply and inexorably as she was tied to the civil rights and women's liberation movements (Martin Luther King was a family friend at whose funeral she sang "Precious Lord, Take My Hand;" "Respect" galvanized feminists), her music was mostly about the wages of love and the pain of abandonment. A simple note of appreciation sent last week by a 70-year-old female friend underscored what made Ree's pleas so universal: "Boy, did she ever get me through some tough times."
Aretha's power lay not only in her supremely soulful singing, but in the deep blues and gospel harmonies that grounded her piano playing and inspired her voice to soar to its spine-tingling heights. Like Billie Holiday with "love," no one could match Ree's way of singing "Lord." I was 14 when I became aware of Lady Soul through her breakthrough AM radio hits, "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)," and "Respect," and she remained my number one for at least the next half-dozen years. During that period, I became a fairly hardened blues and jazz convert and found little to embrace on the pop charts, but let's face it, there's a particular vulnerability that virtually all teenagers face and the music business aims for it with laser-like precision. While I hid mine away by hanging as deep in the grown-ups musical alley as I could get, Aretha always pulled me closer to something resembling my true adolescent self. Her take on the Ben E. King classic, "Don't Play That Song for Me," has long impressed me as epitomizing Ree's unique skill at combining gospel gravitas and pop sentimentality, a unique blend that made her music-- and soul music in general-- so powerfully incisive and broadly appealing.
Aretha wasn't the first r&b singer to pull me in, but I regard her as the figure whose musicianship and pedigreed background as the daughter of the famed Reverend C.L. Franklin made her the ideal conveyor of gospel-infused pop to the mainstream. Dinah Washington, Ray Charles, Solomon Burke, Etta James, Lou Rawls and others paved the way, but Aretha brought it to the masses. Here she is at the age of 14 accompanying herself at the piano on her gospel album, Songs of Faith. Like her father, whose best-selling sermons, "The Eagle Stirreth His Nest" and "The Ressurection," were released on Chess Records, the teenaged Aretha made her debut on the Chicago-based label that's synonymous with blues.
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