Think of the classic ‘oom-pa’ sound the thump-slap pattern of early country and rockabilly bass playing the thumb-fingers pattern of folk guitar pickers, and many more examples. Furthermore, there is a tendency extending far back through many musical traditions of placing low sounds on strong beats, and higher sounds on weaker beats (in the accompaniment to melody). The final beat of the measure is known as the upbeat (in part, these terms come from conductor practice, in which the first beat of the measure is signaled with a vertical downstroke of the baton, while the final beat receives an upstroke). In 4/4 time, the third beat is recognized as having the next greatest strength, with the 2nd and 4th being regarded as ‘weaker’ (structurally speaking- in practice things get a little more complicated, as we’ll see). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the strongest beat in the measure is the first, and is known as the downbeat. The beats in a meter fall loosely into stronger and weaker categories. The vast majority of rock songs are in 4/4, and that is what we will be dealing with in this post. From this, we can see why the meter known as ‘common time’ is expressed as 4/4: four beats to the measure, with the quarter note getting the beat (four quarters equaling a whole). We describe this meter in a given piece of music with what we call ‘time signature’, which is expressed by what is essentially a fraction: the upper note being the number of beats in a measure, and the lower being the type of note that gets the beat (half, quarter, eighth, etc). Music rarely exists as a flowing, otherwise unstructured pulse, but rather organizes into units we call measures, or small groupings of beats (this concept is known as meter). Now that we have a concept of the word beat, we need to understand these three terms. In hip-hop, the ‘beat’ is often used to imply the entire backing track of the song, as well as to the basic drum beats. In parade drumming, a ‘street beat’ refers to a short cadential piece composed of rudiments. There are some other uses of the term beat that could potentially cause confusion. The terms ‘beat’, ‘drum beat’, and ‘rock beat’ are often used interchangeably to refer to this pattern, and this pattern is generally recognized as the backbone that articulates the ‘beat’- in the larger sense- for the listener (and the rest of the band). When we speak of a ‘drum beat’, we are typically referring to the main pattern a drummer plays in a given song (which in most rock and pop will typically be treated as a written part, to be played more or less the same in each performance, as differentiated from that of a jazz drummer, whose job tends to be more fluid and improvisatory, though not without its own standard patterns). It is considered the basic unit of time in a given piece of music, which is then divided into smaller units, and from which larger structural units emerge. In classical music, it can be seen in the changes in direction of the conductor’s baton, which are usually (though not always, to the chagrin of many a classical musician) fairly distinct. Fundamentally, beat refers to the underlying pulse of the music, and is often described as corresponding to the rate at which one might naturally tap her foot with the music.
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Just what is meant by the term ‘drum beat’?Įven in contemporary common usage, the term ‘drum beat’ can have various shades of meaning, which we’ll get to shortly- first we have to nail down just what exactly is meant by ‘beat’ itself. To begin, it is important to clarify what is meant by the terms ‘beat’ and ‘drum beat’, and the variety of ways the terms are used.
![basic drum beats rock basic drum beats rock](https://cdn.onlinedrummer.com/2018/02/Six-Shuffle-Beats-Fills-1.png)
In this post, I’m going to break down the principles of how the most basic drum beats in rock music are put together, and a bit of history behind them.
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In spite of the seemingly limitless variety one can find in rock drumming, there are also virtually ubiquitous commonalities.