musical notation questions

[jj.833]

If you dive into this 8ths and dottet quarters bussiness, you'll be plaing these super cool afro-cuban rhythms in no time, so you might as well start right now. There's awesome book that covers it all: https://www.amazon.com/Latin-Bass-Book-Oscar-Stagnaro/dp/1883217113

 

[Slevage]

To me "one and two and" = ♫ ♫
so your verbalization is confusing

in 4/4 time I'd verbalize
| ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ | = "one, two, three, four"
| ♪ ♩ ♩ ♩. | = " one and , and, and"

So I think the answer is yes. That quarter note does fall on the "and".

That kind of notation annoys me though
I prefer an 'offbeat quarter note' notated as two tied eight notes
It makes the downbeat more explicit to me

Good example. To clarify- The last rest is an eighth rest not A period.

 

[SteveCS]

It may give more meaning to view it like this, as @mambo4 mentioned earlier.
View attachment 3042770

Perfect!

 

[HolmeBass]

As you can probably tell from my first post I tend to count quarter notes in my head as "one and" because I don't have a good sense of quarter note time when the bar also contains 8th and 16th note subdivisions. It's more a timing mechanism to help me anticipate rhythmically. This may not be a good habit to develop. I don't know. Sometimes I will even count quarter notes mentally as "1 e an a 2 e an a, etc. along with the 16th notes just to keep the feel.

This is a great habit. The more you feel the subdivisions of the beat, the better your timing will be. The more you match those subdivisions to the drummer's hi-hat/ride subdivisions, the tighter your lock will be. Frankly I never understood this how locking to the kick works; I match the subdivisions and provide my own "one" in that context, as fat as I can drop it.

If I am to match the kick, that will be determined by the line I play and whether the drummer does his job to play the same thing. If we're locked on the subdivisions of the beat and we both play the same thing, voila, airtight lock. Never understood the people who want to watch the kick drum pedal. But different strokes, YMMV, etc.

 

[BaileyMan]

By the way, don't beat yourself up over struggling with Jamerson'rs rhythms.
SITSOM is a master class in subdivisons.
I have found tremendous value in practicing reading rhythm in isolation, ignoring pitch
This can even be done away form any instrument
I have a binder of rhythm exercises I take to the gym and read on the treadmill

I was going to suggest the same thing. Work through the rhythm only at first. Ignore the pitch. I've worked on this book in my lessons. We break it down to the fewest number of beats at a time to get the rhythm right at a tempo that's doable. I've had lessons where we spent an hour on only 2 measures from that book.

 

[mambo4]

There's awesome book that covers it all: https://www.amazon.com/Latin-Bass-Book-Oscar-Stagnaro/dp/1883217113

+1 To learn syncopation, rests and ties you can't beat Latin stuff.
If SITSOM is the master class in 16th note subdivison
Latin music / Stangroo's Book is the Mater class in 8th note subdividion

 

[MixBass]

If I've learned anything about reading music it's expect to see it any way possible! I know how I like to see figures written but often it doesn't come that way.
A great book is the Belson Briens book. It's laid out perfect and shows the same figures several ways.

 

[tubatodd]

I studied music education at Ithaca College in the late 90s. A few of the professors invented a universal system for learning subdivisions. It helps a lot.

Takadimi - Wikipedia

 

[mambo4]

I've used takadimi (or something like it) a bit when I first started reading complex 16th note stuff.
But I ultimately left it behind as my comprehension improved. I look at it as something like tab - useful for deciphering unfamiliar notation but ultimately an extra layer of mental burden.

This PDF explains it better than the Wikipedia page and includes examples of syncopation

 

[mambo4]

It's nice to see so much discussion of reading rhythm
Nothing has improved my playing as much as rhythmic literacy

 

[SLO Surfer]

Sometimes I will even count quarter notes mentally as "1 e an a 2 e an a, etc. along with the 16th notes just to keep the feel.

This is called subdividing and it's very helpful in keeping time and feel, especially when the whole band is feeling those same subdivisions. You should hear the before and after difference in my middle school band when I have them go from counting quarter notes to counting eighth notes in their little brains.

 

[consectaneus]

I studied music education at Ithaca College in the late 90s. One of the professors invented a universal system for learning subdivisions. It helps a lot.

Takadimi - Wikipedia

I find this sort of thing very helpful. I do something similar as taught by Ed Friedland. It's not nearly as all encompassing and systematic as takadimi. It involves associating certain regularly occurring 16th note rhythmic figures with their own rhythmic "scat" phrase.

 

[mambo4]

associating syllables with rhythm, notation can certainly be helpful
There are plenty of images like this floating around the web

 

[consectaneus]

Well, whatever works I guess!

 

[Fredrik E. Nilsen]

I agree, systems like that can be helpful in the beginning, but always remember that the goal is to read rhythm in larger quantities, like bars or phrases (same as with language: you don't read single letters, you read words and sentences). Read a lot of real music, with real notation, and listen to recordings of written music. Like reading books, not just lists of short words without a context.

 

[Johnny StingRay]

Purchase Carol Kaye's Reading Music instruction book from her site www.carolkaye.com
Her method for reading rhythms is the best and you won't need to learn the antiquated "1 e & ah" crap.
Practicing her method will make reading rhythms habit and more natural to keep great time.
I'll get crap from people on this forum about that, but I don't care.
What I know is that after learning from Carol Kaye, reading rhythms is so much easier and natural for me.

 

[consectaneus]

^^
I am a fan, and I have her beginning bass DVD and booklet, but ultimately I found that for me it moved too quickly and seemed to assume more knowledge than I have. I felt like I was having to understand on my own things I shouldn't have had to struggle with. That's on me, not her since she is obviously a great teacher. I just wasn't getting it. That said, I gleaned some great nuggets in there on which I have built many of my own views. But I still have interest in that reading book. Maybe some day.

Incidentally, speaking of parsing rhythms, I find using a pick a great aid in that the down beat corresponds with the physical movement of the down stroke, and the off beat with the up. It's an extra reinforcement that helps me feel it better even if I eventually end up playing the piece with fingers.

 

[Rip Van Dan]

that is usually true of 6/4 time, but traditionally, 6/8 time is in two, with each beat being a triplet division of a dotted quarter.

True, it "can" be directed like that, especially if it's a waltz at a slightly higher bpm. A lot of how you want to count it depends on brsd beats-per-minute (bpm) and the feel of the music itself. I did have one director actually direct it with all 6 counts. Conversely I've seen one marching band director who just beat out every beat as the same up and down stroke (good luck finding your place if you got lost).

Regardless of how you want to count it, the point is that if the time signature uses an 8 as the lower number, that means the 8th note gets one beat as opposed to the quarter note getting one beat. All though it is the most common way to write music, which is why 4/4 is called "common time", not everything uses a quarter note to denote one beat. So don't get dogmatic about a quarter note always being one beat, because it "ain't necessarily so".

 

[stringtapper]

Regardless of how you want to count it, the point is that if the time signature uses an 8 as the lower number, that means the 8th note gets one beat as opposed to the quarter note getting one beat.

But this isn't always true. In fact it's more often not true. Here's why…

6/8 is a compound meter. What that means is that the beat is subdivided not into a group of two, but rather a group of three. Thus 6/8 is defined as a duple compound meter, which means that it has two beats (dotted quarters) with each beat subdivided into three (8th notes). This is also true for other compound meters such as 9/8 (triple compound) and 12/8 (quadruple compound).

So in terms of how many beats you have and how one would conduct the meter you can look at it like this:

2/4 : 6/8 = duple meter
3/4 : 9/8 = triple meter
4/4 : 12/8 = quadruple meter

In other words you can use the same conducting pattern for 6/8 that you use for 2/4, since they are both duple meters (have two beats).

The instances you're talking about—where the 8th note would get the beat on a compound meter—do indeed happen, but they are exceptions to the rule.

The instances where the 8th note would properly get the beat would be in the cases of non-compound meters with '8' in the metric denominator. So meters like 2/8, 3/8, and 4/8.

 

[SLO Surfer]

I find using a pick a great aid in that the down beat corresponds with the physical movement of the down stroke, and the off beat with the up.

This is a great idea, and it can also be achieved in finger style by alternating fingers. Example is pointer/first finger gets the downbeats and second/middle finger gets the up beats.