 Hi everyone, welcome back to part two of this module on all things rhythm. We are trying to look at all the topics of musical rhythm which I could hopefully demonstrate to you and also hopefully inspire you to do it on your respective musical instruments. So to feel rhythm, you either feel your own music which you are composing, it's important to know what you yourself are doing and it's also great to listen to music from a rhythmic perspective. So in the earlier part, we looked at the pulse, we looked at the time signature. So the first thing when you hear a song or when you hear a friend, a fellow musician playing the guitar or whatever, can you feel the pulse? Very, very important. You need that pulse. In fact, if you don't feel the pulse for all, the music is not even going to be digestible unless it's maybe ambient music or classical music which has a different purpose. But even classical music, even though it wavers with tempo, they still have a pulse. There's always a pulse from the beginning of time. Otherwise, music will not resonate with people. So we looked at the pulse, then we converted that into a cyclic motion which is your meter or your time signature. Examples are what, 4x4, 7x8. I had given a lot of demonstrations in the previous part. Now, just because we have four beats in a bar doesn't mean we just have beat, beat, beat, beat. We can start having sub-beats. So the common ways in which musicians deal with the topic of sub-beats is just ask yourself the question, how much do I divide? So if you're dividing, let's say a beat into something, you could divide by the easiest number, divide by two. One might argue divide by one, but then if you divide or multiply by one, you get the same number. So forget about number one. So divide by two will give you eight beats or eight sub-beats to work with. You'll have a grid set up with eight sub-beats which we call as one and two and three and four and one and two and three. We just say that it's become like a kind of a global standard, if you will. So one and two and three and four and one and two and three and so what is actually happening here is on the keyboard, I am ending up having the opportunity to play more than four beats in a bar. Otherwise, if I did not divide the beat by two, I would end up playing, sounds nice, sounds a bit more sort of wider, a bit more lazier. And I just have four containers or four slots to put notes. If you start dividing by two, now you have eight slots. So if you see my pulse, I'm not doing, I don't even want to do that. I'll probably get a neck ache or something. So keep the pulse the same one and two. And that's a good example of eighth notes. And then again, what musicians will do to these eight notes is you can play it in two feels, you can do it straight like whatever I did. So we take the same eighth note which divides the beat into two, but we swing it. So that division point, instead of being at the exact 50% mark of the beat, pardon my geometry, it'll be slightly delayed. So one might argue that it's going to the 66 mark of the beat, 66% mark or the two third point of the beat. But then musicians also feel that they feel it as swing. So it need not be exactly as tata, tata, tata, tata, tata, which it could be, this is also swing, but it I would say that's perfect swing. So So that's your swing feel. Very, very bluesy, very swing. But if I straight that, so that's sort of like the difference between swing and maybe good old rock and roll. Rock and roll is like the same stuff, but maybe played a lot faster and you straight in the beats while swing will be more laid back and lazier and bluesy. And so on. So that's your difference between swing and straight. And there are a lot of resources which I have done in the field of rhythm. We've put together a playlist called rhythm chops. It'll be in the description, you could check it out. And if you're interested in understanding blues swing, specifically swing rhythms and blues music, we've put together another playlist which I guess will keep growing over time because there's a lot for people like me to talk about when it comes to blues. I love the blues. So we'll keep talking about that over time. So be aware of our playlist on the YouTube channel that will really help you navigate the lessons better. You can find a lesson, you can probably do something related to that. We've tried to put it together as well for your ease of learning. Okay, moving forward. So we've looked at beat division. You can divide by two, you can swing it or straight it. You can also divide by three. So how does that work? Right, that's your triplet world. Right, it sounds very much like a movie score. They use a lot of triplets. Very epic movies. Divide by three. Okay, coming to divide by four. Okay, so that's how do we count this? But what musicians now start doing is you divide, but you don't have to play everything once you divide. So I'm dividing by four. I've given myself 16 hit possibilities. I have earlier, we just had one in every beat and that adds up to four. But now in a bar of four, I have four fours or 16 places where I can hit something. You know, that's pretty much what it means. So if you hit it everywhere, you know, like it may not sound as interesting as maybe if you start knocking off some events, some elements, like for example, sounds more memorable. I don't know, maybe something more funky, right? So actually I'm still dividing by four, one and a two and a three and a four and I'm counting like that, but I've sort of stole myself. Let me not play all the beats or maybe let's distribute the beats, some beats in this hand, some beats maybe in this hand. So the eventual outcome can be something very groovy. So that's the whole idea of, you know, so where did we start? We started with the pulse, then we have the time signature, which is important. Some songs may not even have a time signature. You may not even need to care about a time signature. If you're listening to, let's say, a piece of Celtic music or a folk song from a Bulgarian dance song, which generally you cannot count the cycle. It just goes on and on. So you just have to feel it and play it and still rely on the pulse. Mind you, music from every culture will have a pulse, but they may not have a very easy to access or understand time signature. Then we looked at beat division, we divide by two, divide by three, divide by four. And now what happens when you divide the beat, what musicians can do, as I said earlier, is you don't play every single division rather than playing every single division, just play a few. Maybe you go. So that's the very famous Latin, like a dance rhythm, which they call as the thresio. So you thresios, I guess it means three, three beats. So very dancey, right? But had I done all the hits, A, it's hurting my hand, B, it sounds annoying and C, you just can't use it. So you need to knock off beat. So once you learn the division framework, you start clearing the way, just like how you build a house in nothing, right? You need to give gaps around the place. So that's where you have specific hit points. Or even if you start playing everything, even if you start, let's say with dividing by three and you start with everything, let's say you take an arpeggio, decide now wherever you want to relax the beat or not play, maybe every alternate beat, I'm not playing the third triplet. So that's a standard triplet, but I've kind of made a bit more unique, bit more interesting. Maybe you could argue this has like an Indian flavor, because a lot of the Indian rhythms are like that. Or maybe you could do something like this, start with full on triplets, minus the middle one and the next one, keep the middle one. So or just different permutations, still triplets, one, two, three, one, two, three, it's still pretty much on the triplet. So you see the algorithm or the flow chart of events, right? You started with just feeling the pulse, I'm still feeling the pulse, that didn't change. I have the time signature fairly well, you know, knit in the head. And now I can start expressing myself with these, as we call patterns. I would say the moment you start removing a few beats, you start developing these interesting patterns. And another way to kind of initiate patterns and, you know, play in a slightly different way is if you have all the beats available, but then you accent them by using pitch, you'll have to use other properties of sound or music in general. The higher pitched event will kind of repeat itself and it'll recycle itself at very odd intervals. So if you take some music like this, you find the high note coming in at every one. So one E and two E and three E and one. So can I change that? Of course. So but now you might argue, oh, he started playing triplets. Not really. I can do three plus three plus three plus three. What is that? Three fours are 12. Now I want to eventually make it four by four with semi quavers. So semi quavers means I should go to 16 subdivisions. So three fours are 12. 12 plus four equals 16. So I could get a pattern like three, three, three, three, and then end with the four. Let's see how that works. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, one, two or one, two, three, four. Change the chord maybe at that four to make it more impactful. So every one of the last hit or the last segment was an accented phrase of four. So three, three, three, three, four, three, three, three, three, four. But deep down, it's three, three, three, three, four, three, three, three, four. So you see the accents are irregular. It's one to three, one to three, one to three, one to three, four. You can count it in all sorts of ways. In India, we have this, the system called konokol in karnatic music, which is phenomenal to count all this stuff. So you develop these small words like takita, takadimi, takajunu, where every thaw will become an event, an accented event. So if you do music like that something like takt, takt, three. And pianists have this additional challenge, which maybe are not there with guitarists and other such instruments, because your other hand has to also be active. So if you just do sounds good, right, but it's not a, it's not what a professional player would do. Professional player would at the bare minimum use two hands. So if ever I would compare the piano with anything, I would just be comparing it with a percussion instrument like a drum or a, or a tabla or a jembe, you know, something like that, where the two hands are actually independent, you know, which is very unique or very rare for a melodic slash harmonic instrument, where the two hands are absolutely independent to do whatever they want, you know. So let me just demonstrate this principle of three, three, three. So we've looked at the idea of paving the way and sort of clearing the path, so to speak, by not playing all the divisions of the time field, as I call it. In this system, you're playing everything, but you're highlighting specific hit points like the accents, as we are calling it so the tongue tongue tongue so what will be that accentuated note that will be the higher pitch or even the lower pitch or just something accentuated it could be a guitarist doing a hammer on that could be an accent it could be someone sliding their note maybe as a violin player anything anything which creates a vibe or a drummer doing a flam as we know okay so if I just demonstrated with one chord at the three three three three and then one more chord at the four four accent still the song I would imagine is very much four by four right so and these are not triplets mind you these are not triplets these are just semi quavers which feel like triplets because of the phrasing or the accents created now you could combine this with the concept of maybe the the patterns or what I call as rhythmic devices where you take a beat remove anyone so in this case I'm going to remove the E one E and two E I'll remove that and see what I have you get a kind of a very unique feel this almost feels like a gallop you know you're galloping on a horse so it gives you that kind of impact right so far what has been our flow chart we've looked at the pulse feel the pulse get your time signature very very important then you get your accents slash rhythmic devices or rhythm phrases or rhythm patterns and then use them together so what we'll do now is we'll proceed towards the next part the next part I just want to share a few unique things or a few more advanced things about rhythms where we'll try and look at how a poly rhythm works we look at how a dotted feel works we'll try and mess around a little bit further right but for this lesson I hope we have got to the point where you have to listen to music get the pulse get the time feel how much is or rather get the pulse get the time signature how many beats in a cycle then we look at how is the how are the beats being divided are they being divided into two units three units or four units is the division straight or is it swing is it keeping the same tempo mind you and last but not least you start building patterns you have a grid you don't have to play every note in that grid you can play few notes or some notes you don't want to play zero notes then you'll be doing nothing so you pick and choose and the general mantra if you look at playing music in a rhythmic perspective will be divide more and play less if you can just keep those words in mind at the end of this lesson I think that should be something which hopefully can stick with you divide more divide the beat more and play less don't play all the notes in that division that's why a few musicians who say oh I'm playing the major scale in 16th note super fast I mean that is not a great achievement if you ask me because that musician yes is dividing more but is not playing less so when you don't play less when you just fly your fly your instrument like if you play this you know right now I'm actually able to talk to you while I'm doing this example that proves that even though I'm playing something fast like this my brain is almost zero I'm not using my brain for the piano you know why did that happen why was there no brain used because I did not play less right so there's a difference between playing fast and playing all you know playing all the division so you need to keep all this in mind to become a stronger rhythmic musician and rhythm is the foundation rhythm is the is the thing which it's just like the foundation of a house you will not see that even when you move in you're never going to talk about the foundation you're just going to talk about your rooms what you did in the room the interiors the decorations blah blah blah where you're never going to talk about that foundation that's how rhythm is for the listener the listener will only feel it they'll feel the the foundation the structure and this that just gets them to dance and then of course they will remember your melody they'll remember all of that stuff so the melody in a sense is like the lead actor of the movie while the rhythm is all the background work which is getting all that to happen you know so work on the foundation and I hope you get you have gotten a few more insights about rhythm through this lesson keep rocking keep practicing and again don't forget to subscribe turn on the bell icon for notifications hit that like button leave us a comment with something you'd want to learn and I will see you in the next one cheers