In other threads, barbeque bob and Adam have talked about playing slightly ahead of or behind the beat. Though I read those words and think that I understand what they're talking about...I'm not sure I recognize it when I'm listening to music.
Can somebody point me to two songs, one example of each type of playing? I'd really like to try and grasp what bob and adam are talking about here.
Last Edited by on Oct 20, 2010 9:44 AM
Many years ago I was chatting with Bela Fleck after one of the shows where my band had opened for the flecktones. We were back in the greenroom and I asked him areas where he thought I could improve. He remarked about how he loved my natural sense for rhythm and time but could tell that I had very little control over it.
We went to the bus and ate bananas as we talked about music and rhythm. Then he pulled out a metronome and told me to snap my fingers on the beat. Then on the upbeat. Then slightly before the beat and slightly after the beat. Then we divided my snapping into 16th notes and I would skip the beat and then we worked on playing in double time while the metronome was half slower and then four times slower.
It was the best music lesson I have ever had. He also told me to get a better drummer and said that's the core of a band. Always listen to the drummer as if he is a metronome. And because of that day, all my groups have always had top notch drummers and bass players.
---------- "I am a great believer in understanding, not copying."
This first one is ahead of the beat. The piece - starting at 0:20 - begins most of the phrases with the note commencing on the weak part of the beat, or the last third of the beat, to be exact. That note is usually tied over (joined without an audible break) to the strongest part of the next beat. This is what gives the phrasing a syncopated feel. The whole thing is in 12/8 time.
As for playing behind the beat, I think - though I'm not sure - that Adam plays much of the harp line in C C Ryder starting each main phrase on the 2nd 16th note of the beat, and ties notes all over the place. He uses the same kind of thing in Mother Mojo. Both have the same heavily syncopated feel. ---------- YouTube SlimHarpMick
Pure gold this is: (and thanks) "He remarked about how he loved my natural sense for rhythm and time but could tell that I had very little control over it...Then he pulled out a metronome and told me to snap my fingers on the beat. Then on the upbeat. Then slightly before the beat and slightly after the beat. Then we divided my snapping into 16th notes and I would skip the beat and then we worked on playing in double time while the metronome was half slower and then four times slower".
Also, some famous drummers are known for their tendency to play before and/or after beats. I read a very detailed study that (as best I can remember) compared Krupa, Bellson, Rich and Desmond and it was really interesting how different they were -although the difference in time(s) was extremely small. The most fascinating thing to me was that they were not metronomes. This is one of the components of what makes music musical. IMHO
Last Edited by on Oct 20, 2010 8:44 AM
I have always heard from others to turn a metronome on and if you hit the drum or whatever RIGHT after the beat (making a flam like sound) that's behind, and if you do before that's ahead. It's not a great example, but it's hard to explain how I DO it.
Old school reggae is actually MUCH farther behind the beat than blues is and the closest to that is early 50's Chicago blues.
THe best way to hear it is get a metronome, and instead of having it click on all 4 beats, set it up to click on the 2 and the 4. Why? Remember, the metronome is ALWAYS clicking directly ON TOP of the beat and if you leave it to click on all 4's, you will naturally gravitate to that.
Once you've set it up, the next thing you listen to is where the snare drum hits. In most music played today, the snare's hitting the 2 and the 4, which is the back beat. If you hear the snare drum hitting directly on the click, then it's being played ON TOP of the beat. If you hear the drum click just split seconds BEFORE the click, then the groove is being played AHEAD of the beat, which gives the listener the illusion of the tempo being faster than what it actually is. If you hear the snare hit splits seconds AFTER the beat, then the groove is being played BEHIND the beat, which gives the illusion of being slower than what the actual tempo is.
There was an instructional book a drummer who worked with me once had that didn't contain a single blues tune, but had 10 examples of tunes, played not only in 3 different tempos, but also being played on top, ahead, as well as behind the beat in all 3 tempos as well, and when you hear it, it often made a very DRAMATIC difference in how the groove plays out.
Behind the beat ain't just in blues. It's in reggae, funk, old school soul R&B, 50's black R&R, and even funk grooves from someone like the Meters and the toughest thing was dealing with space. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Dumb question--if the snare can hit ahead or behind the beat on the 2 and the 4, then the bass drum must always hit right on top of the beat for the 1 and the 3, correct? Otherwise, how do you even know where the beat is?
Muddy Waters vocals in Standin' Round Cryin are a great example. He slows down behind the beat then rushes ahead of it. Really dynamic. Love the Bob clip walter.
Great thread. Thank you for bringing this up. And thank you, Bob, for a simple, clear explaination.
@Dave-I believe you are correct and thats what gives the beat its charachter. Otherwise everything would be four on the floor timing. Thats what I THINK any way. I'm sure someone with a broader knowledge will fill in the blank.
---------- "If you dont go within, you go without."
@Jaybird: It's an abbreviation for a bit of rough encouragement Johnny Sansone shouted at me during a jam around the table at the CCHC cabin at Hill Country I. It has become my motto.
And, Bob pretty much described it better than I. The bass and drums need to match, and that's what the bass drum tries to accomplish (a good funk drummer locks in perfectly).
On "Honky Tonk Women" Charlie Watts is playing behind the beat. Btw, when playing harmonica one can vary where one places notes in relation to the beat depending on what effect you want your playing to have.
@The 7th Dave ---- Playing behind the beat usually means that both the snare hitting at 2 and 4 as well as the bass drum hitting on the 1 and 3 must BOTH be played behind the beat, and that also is true when playing ahead of the beat.
However, when Wilson Picket recorded his original version of "In The Midnight Hour," with Al Jackson on drums, they actually did have for effect the bass drum playing dead on top of the beat on the 1 and 3 with the snare clearly behind the beat on the 2 and 4 giving an unusally loping sort of "hop" to it and VERY few drummers I've ever met, including tons of really good ones have ever been able to do that without screwing up the time and the groove in a major way.
The big problem for many people is in the way they listen to the music. The average hobbyist/music fan/jammer's scope of listening tends to be, in a nutshell, and a number of you reading this may very well be guilty of it, is listening to solos first and everything else dead last, which is a flat out rank amateur way of listening to music. A pro musician, recording engineer, or record producer listens to music with what's often called "bigger ears," (No, this doesn't mean someone stretches your ears out to look like Dumbo the elephant LOL), meaning you have to listen in a FAR more concentrated way, listening to each and EVERY minute detail of what's going on 24/7 and that NO DETAIL is ever unimportant to listen to.
Very little rock is ever played behind the beat, heavy metal is nearly always ahead of the beat, some country is ahead (mostly on top), rockabilly is often ahead, soul is often behind, black gospel is often behind. However, in the case of rap/hiphop, the first thing to remember is that 95% of the recordings are all sampled and DON'T use a band at all, and so you have to listen to how the rap is grooving, and often that's a tad behind the beat.
Behind the beat should NEVER be confused with dragging or slowing the beat at all, which is an entirely DIFFERENT thing altogether. Against a metronome, it's always hitting in the exact SAME spot split seconds after the click of the metronome, so you are NOT actually slowing down at all. With ahead of the beat, it's the same idea, except you're hitting just BEFORE the click, but again, it HAS to be in the exact SAME spot ALL THE TIME.
Standing Around Crying isn't just with Muddy's vocals because the band is also playing behind the beat.
A lot of people think that playing slow is easy, but if you were to play Ray Charles's "Drown In My Own Tears," trust me, it's a lot harder than you think and even Jazzman Dizzy Gillespie had a very hard time playing that groove when he sat in with Ray Charles because not only it was the slowest tempo on the metronome, it was also played FAR behind the beat (almost reggae far behind), which means there's a LOT of space happening and overplaying is way too easy and because of the difficulty of that groove, you rarely see anyone play that tune in that tempo, usually faster because of that.
Remember, metronomes ALWAYS click directly on top of the beat (AKA real time), ditto with drum machines. The default setting of a metronome is to click on ALL 4 BEATS, and when you set it to click on the 2 and the 4, these two are known as the back beat, as I said before, most music being played today has the snare drum on the 2 and the 4. Once you've set the metronome to click this way, now pay EXTREMELY CLOSE ATTENTION to where the snare hits once you get to as close to where the snare and the click hits as humanly possible (and again, DO NOT LISTEN TO SOLOS OR YOU'LL NEVER GET AT ALL).
If the snare and the click of the metronome is an EXACT MATCH each and EVERY time, then the groove is being played dead on top of the beat (sometimes referred to as the middle of the beat).
If the snare seemingly is hitting splits seconds PRIOR to the click of the metronome and at the exact SAME spot each time, then the groove is being played AHEAD of the beat (sometimes referred to as in front on the beat).
If the snare seemingly is hitting splits seconds AFTER the click of the metronome and at the exact SAME spot every time, the the groove is being played BEHIND the beat (sometimes referred to as in back of the beat).
There are also a number of delineations of just how far ahead or behind.
Chuck Berry plays on top of the beat and his original Chess recordings have the band, especially the rhythm section (often the rhythm section was Willie Dixon on standup bass and Fred Below on drums and that's a classic, behind the beat, blues rhythm section if there ever was one), they would be playing behind the beat, and when compared to later recordings, which often seems to be played seemingly much faster in tempo, the truth is that because he was playing with largely white rock oritented bands, those bands were often playing on top or ahead of the beat, even tho the beats per minute listing on the metronome were often the same as the 50's recordings, those recordings with the white bands seem to be sounding like they're faster in tempo, but they really aren't that way at all.
Ahead of the beat is kinda like, "I'm in a god damned hurry, get the bleep out of my bleeping way, man," and behind the beat is kinda like, "Relax man, take your goddamned time." ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by on Oct 20, 2010 1:39 PM
I should also add that what I've found among many amateurs and many white rock musicians is that the standard belief is that the drummer IS the beat, which once you get into the pro area, you will quickly find out that this is NOT true at all, and as an old time black pro once told me and I've come to find out how 100% true the following statement he made is that, "drummer is NOT the beat, he merely dresses it up and just how he accents things will fool you into thinking the groove can be much faster than slower than it actually is."
One tune that bears that out is a Gatemouth Brown tune on the Peacock label, "Rock My Blues Away," where the band is totally behind the beat, and the tune until the last chorus seems still, tho behind the beat, really uptempo by the way the cymbols are being used to drive the groove, and then the accenting on the cymbols is toned down so drastically, it gives the effect of a totally different tempo, even tho the tempo is completely unchanged, but by the different accenting, it completely fools the listener as well as any dancer that the groove is totally different. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
@BBQBob: OK, now I'm really confused about the frame of reference, here.
Let's say you've got your metronome going with the music, and the drums are slightly behind each beat of the metronome. Why can't we just adjust the metronome back a little to match the drum beat? How did we synchronize the metronome with the beat of the music in the first place, if not by the sound of the drums?
In the video examples above, it sounds like the drums set the beat, and the other musicians play ahead of or behind the beat established by the drums.
If it isn't the drums, what establishes the reference beat in a piece of music?
I'm sure this is all very obvious, and I'm just missing it. Sorry for being so dense.
EDIT: @BBQBob: our last messages crossed in the ether. I now get that the drums don't establish the beat. (Yes, I'm an amateur, and "white.") So what *does* establish the beat? To which sounds do you synchronize the metronome?
---------- --Dave
-------------------- * BTMFH * --------------------
Last Edited by on Oct 20, 2010 1:55 PM
Unfortunately, metronomes and drum machines are not able to be programmed that way at all.
Beats per minute, based on a metronome, NEVER change regardless. For most people, this may not be obvious and it is not something that you learn in 10 minutes or less, and you need TONS of woodshedding to learn.
Many people tend to confuse playing off the 1 or the 3 with being ahead of the beat, which is NOT the same thing at all. It is easier to learn how to play behind the beat if you tend to phrase more off the 2 and the 4, and two players' recordings that it's easier to learn behind the beat from are Magic Sam (you will hear clearly where he phrases from, which is mainly the 2 and 4), and Jimmy Reed.
After awhile with some very serious woodshedding, it all comes down to the groove and feel, but as I said, metronomes CAN'T be reprogrammed to do that. On another forum, when talking about this, there was a poster who said that you can do it and it is in the instructions, so I called him out on it to show me, and he never bothered to answer so that right there showed me he was full of it and until someone actually shows me to my face how to do that, I stand by the statement that drum machines cannot be reprogrammed to play behind OR ahead of the beat and neither can metronomes.
Don't apologize for being dense because it's not something anyone picks up right away. You need to be around people who know what's going and and won't be afraid to drill that into you.
I guess I got lucky when in my early years rehearsing with some old school black musicians when I got a drum stick thrown at me just missing my ear by inches and then hearing the drummer tell me, "don't mess my groove up, m****r f****r, or next time, I ain't gonna m****r f*****g miss!!!" and you had better learn to pay attention pretty quickly.
You need to defintely stop listing to just the solos and listen to everything going around you in considerably greater detail and that means being anal about EVERYTHING, something most fans/hobbyists are not. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Again, with a metronome set to click on the 2 and the 4, listen VERY CAREFULLY to where the snare is hitting and then set the beats per minute setting as close to as possible to what you're hearing. If something the snare plays seems slower than what your ears seems to be telling you, yet the snare and BPM's are the closest possible match, yet the snare is still seemingly hitting the same spot each and every time, then the groove is being played behind the beat.
Remember the saying, "Rome wasn't built in a day." (But then Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges said, "Neither was Syracuse!") ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by on Oct 20, 2010 2:07 PM
@Bob: So if the snare isn't hitting dead on the 2 and the 4, how do you know where the 2 and the 4 *are*, precisely? Are they determined by the bass player? What's the frame of reference?
Note: I realized that I have a rock/blues drummer downstairs doing some computer maintenance today, so I went and asked him about this. He said, basically, that I'm over-thinking it, that it can't really be explained rationally.
@ 7th Dave plenty of disclaimers here as I'm no expert - but my personal definition to what represents the beat is the bass and the guitar strum. So it's all about the degree of lag between those and the backbeat.
"Drown in My Own Tears" is a good example mentioned before. From memory the bass and piano are pretty much locked in, but the snare is hit at pretty much the last split-second (or it would sound like reggae or something)
Ocassionally I hear a drum driving a groove by being marginally in front of the beat, but mainly it seems to be soloists who use this as part of their phrasing.
Thanks--at least you and I are on the same page with respect to the nature of the question. *Something* has to define where the beat actually is, in order for anybody to play either ahead of it or behind it.
Well unfortunately, I think I'm more confused now than I was when I started the thread. Which I'm sure is a ME problem. I guess I haven't been trying to listen to music in this way long enough to develop the "big ears" BBQ Bob talks about.
I will say that finding out that the drums are NOT the beat, kind of threw me for a loop. The good news is I've got so much other stuff to work on, that not getting this "playing in front of / behind the beat" thing is hardly going to make difference for me right now.
Thanks to BBQ B for being so generous with his time. When I look back at how much he wrote, I sometimes think how many of us take for granted what a great resource this forum is.
Thanks to everyone who chipped in with comments/perceptions/understandings/sample tracks etc., and thanks to Dave for showing me that, however magical/artistic music is; if you've got a logical question to ask, ASK IT, however dumb it might make you feel.
I'm gonna keep reading so if anybody else has got a nugget that might make the lightbulb go on in this musically low wattage head of mine, fire away.
EDIT: One last thing: thanks to Buddha for the great Bela Fleck story/mini lesson.
Are these two statments in conflict?
Buddha: "Listen to the drums like a metronome" BBQ B: "the drummer is not the beat"
I think my head hurts.
Last Edited by on Oct 21, 2010 9:52 AM
I think what Bob might be saying is that the beat is sort of the consensus of the band. Playing behind or ahead of it is where you play relative to the implied regular beat. Often times the bass player takes that role, and not the drummer, but in some of the examples Bob gives the bass and drums play behind, the singer ahead and the consensus is in the middle. Another way to think about it is if you listen to the whole song, count out where you think the beat is overall, then some are playing slightly in front or behind that. Bob's big ears means listen to everyone to get that consensus (what he refers to as the groove), and place your timing appropriately in that. If you have a question, playing right on the beat will never be way wrong. However, playing way behind or ahead could be quite inappropriate given the song. In the Marley clip, one or another of the players is playing or singing way way behind, and in that context it is very appropriate cause it sounds cool, you know where the beat should be yet they are hanging off the back of the beat and it gives it that feel.
It's the same beats per minute, you just don't hit it the INSTANT the beat comes, you can do it as it fades, and it still works. That's behind the beat.
I've read the posts, but I'm still not shure about ahead. Please tell me if this is video agrees with what is being said. (I am a 58 year old white male that has played bass for 40 years and harp for 9)
Or what about this second video??
To me, the harp video is about phrasing that comes in a 1/16 or 1/8 beat early or late. The second is about rythms that drive me up the wall. :) ---------- intermediate level (+) player per the Adam Gussow Scale, Started playing 2001
Last Edited by on Oct 21, 2010 10:21 AM
@Jim Rumbaugh: Interesting. Ronnie Shellist seems to be talking about something different than what BBQBob was talking about (?), but using the same terminology. Rather than playing before or behind each count, he's talking about playing the chord changes early or late, relative to the guitar (or other chord instrument).
In the second video, how would you know he was behind the beat if the computer metronome were turned off?
@Zack --- Your last two posts have that essentially correct. For beats 1 and 3, which is where the bass drum usually hits, in most cases, it is also hitting later than ususal if you're gonna play behind the beat or earlier than ususal if you're hitting ahead of the beat. One of the few exceptions where the bass drum on 1 and 3 is on top of the beat with 2 and 4 behind is In The Midnight Hour, but that's a very rare and unusual and most drummers would screw that up royally trying to do that.
The thing to remember is that anything that's about the groove, these things aren't like a flashy, in your face 24/7 solo kind of obvious like it's hitting you upside the head sort of thing, it's something VERY SUBTLE, and the more subtle things are, the harder it is to learn because it often requires you to pay FAR more attention to detail as well as more woodshedding.
As far as how would you know if he is or not, if there is a video of this guy playing on top and/or ahead of the beat, the groove would FEEL completely different. So, in other words, you have to learn how to FEEL the groove, not just play it and this takes some very serious woodshedding.
Walterharp has the very basic idea and that REALLY means paying extremely close attention to EVERYTHING the way a real pro musician does and much of what you have to listen to is, again, going to be VERY SUBTLE and NOT in your face kind of obvious.
Tho somewhat off topic in a way, from learning how to listen to music this way, when I've seen a TV show like American Idol and hear the comments Simon Cowell has given, unlike the audience/hobbyist/music fan, he is ALSO listening to the music with "bigger ears," AKA paying complete and total attention to each and every detail, even before he says it, I've already heard what he's heard 98% of the time and so I'm usually in agreement with him because that's the way real pros listen to music and even more so when you're in a recording studio with real professionals. Yep, that sure means I can hear every clam pretty quickly wheras the audience is largely oblivious to it, but those clams on a recording will stick out like a sore thumb.
All this info I'm giving you is stuff that is RARELY ever taught in music schools and if it is, often not very well, and you can only get it in REAL pro experience, and RARELY ever in an open jam because most jammers often have exactly NO clue at all about it.
As an old pro told me, this is all about groove and feel and the textbooks don't tell you this stuff. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by on Oct 21, 2010 1:29 PM
Bob, that "Midnight Hour" thing is just like a complete unknown to me, I never knew they did that. But otherwise, I think it's simple to figure out with some demonstration.
BBQBob: OK, I think I get it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing you say is that the reference beat is implicit in the groove of the music, and it isn't necessarily counted out precisely by any of the players. It could be that not a single one of the players is acting as a human metronome for the beat, but you can still hear/feel it in the groove if you pay attention.
@7thDave --- Someone still counts off the time fror the tune and think of the count as being straight on top of the beat, and then the beat is somewhat more implied. Playing ahead or behind the beat should never be confused with speeding up (in the case of playing ahead of the beat) or slowing down (in the case of playing behind the beat) and the time is still going to be played on the money, and what you're doing is essentially playing games with the time or more like playing in parrellel time.
@Zach --- I had always suspected that his was the case because no matter who played drums on the tune whenever I had played it never quite seemed to get that groove right and my suspicions were confirmed when I was watching a PBS special about Stax Records and when Steve Cropper was interviewed, this was one of the things he mentioned. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by on Oct 22, 2010 10:39 AM
apologies for taking the thread slightly off topic, but...
@BBQBob
Simon Cowell isn't always listening with Big Ears - certainly not on the UK versions of these 'talent' shows. He's watching with Big Eyes. Most of the time his comments have more to do with making the audience think someone that he wants to market and promote are more talented than they are. You only have to look at the current UK X-factor finalists to see that. There are about 6 acts (including 2 groups acts) who cannot even hit the right notes, but the praise just keeps heading their way because Cowell and his Cronies can see £££ signs in the youthful, glamourous image (not the talent) of those acts. Image is everything - autotune can sort out not being able to hit and sustain the notes. Live, the acts are shambolic (with 2 or 3 notable exceptions).
@Zach --- That was something the drummer, Al Jackson, who along with Steve Cropper, who was on that session, was asked to do by the arranger to get a different sort of hop to the groove. It sounds like doing it should be easy to do, but every good pro drummer I've ever met will all tell you otherwise. A lesser drummer would never be able to pull that off.
@VLUN --- I've never witnessed the UK version, just the American version, but what he sees with "big eyes" actually makes perfect sense because also the other aspect of how you market an act to properly target particular or wider audiences is very important.
There's also another thing that I can clearly see that he does, and that's also how does the artist connect with the audience because I've seen plenty of musicians/vocalists who are light years ahead of quite a few others musically, but totally lack the ability to connect with ANY audience, plus another important X factor, and that's in their stage presence and those with lousy stage presence seldom connect very well to a larger audience, and at best, to a niche audience.
It's like if someone's a great harp player, but if what he does only connects with an audience comprised of 98% harp nerds, of course he's more likely to connect, but FEW audiences are gonna be like that and so someone like that who's a great player with marginal vocals and crappy stage presence, outside of playing to a bunch of harp nerds, has almost no chance and even more so, NO ABILITY to connect with any kind of a wider audience, and looking at it from a more commercial aspect, unless he records for a tiny label with little money to do the kind of promotion a larger label does, he's clearly got no shot at all. Like it or not, what Simon Cowwell is doing actually makes sense because I can clearly see that other side quite well. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by on Oct 22, 2010 1:06 PM
If you want hear the differrences in how playing on top, ahead or behind the beat sounds and feels like, here's a drumming instructional book that contains 2 CD's with tons of examples that you can listen to.
The name of the book is "It's All About Time," by Fred Dinkins, and available on http://www.amazon.com, and tho it is a drum instructional book, however, for listening to groove and feel, I highly recommend reading and listening because the CD's contain many examples of grooves, tho none of them are 12 bar blues tunes at all, you actually get a chance to hear how different the groove sounds and feels by playing on top, ahead or behind the beat (or as he puts it, in front, in the middle, or in back of the beat).
Each example is done in 3 different tempos, each with the number of beats per minute set on the metronome for each and you'd be amazed at how completely different grooves will play out.
It also teaches you basic drum sheet music sight reading skills if you care to learn it.
Again, there are no 12 bar blues, but in every case, when the groove gets played behind the beat, the groove always takes on a much blusier feel. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
